Fuji WEC: Teammates end Alonso's victory streak

It is the second victory at Fuji for Conway and Kobayashi following success in 2016, and it is a first WEC win for Lopez.

Despite starting the race from the back of the LMP grid after being penalised in qualifying, the #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrid executed a thrilling race to carve its way through and take the winner’s trophy and maximum points. 52,800 spectators enjoyed the WEC action at Fuji Speedway this weekend.

The #8 Toyota took the flag in second place but kept their championship points lead today. Nakajima started and finished the race which saw Toyota score a sixth victory in seven Fuji FIA WEC races.

The 2018 edition began in difficult wet but drying conditions and included an extended Safety Car period in the first hour with debris on the main straight and then an accident for the #3 Rebellion Racing R13 driven by Gustavo Menezes.

This period of the race proved vital as Kobayashi pitted first for a change of tyres. After a tense battle with the #8 sister Toyota, some mighty double stints by Conway and Lopez in the middle part of the race saw a winning gap forged.

Kobayashi who shared the second place #8 car with Alonso summed up their race, “We had to start from P8 and we were quite disappointed and we had to have a take some risks strategy that is why we didn’t take the extreme wet tyre and with the two formation laps we were struggling to warm them up.

“After the second lap or something like that we only had the same speed as the privates so we decided to change as the same as Car.8 (extreme wets) and straight away our lap times were quite good. I think we were then a bit late on the inter tyre so we decided to jump on to dry tyres and we gained a lot of positions and gap during the safety car. In the end we could the margin to car eight.

“We obviously had a tough start at the start of the week but I think the team did a good job in preparing the car for the race and we all did a great job,” added Kobayashi

Rounding out the podium was the #1 Rebellion Racing crew of André Lotterer, Neel Jani and Bruno Senna. The Rebellion R13-Gibson ran as high as second position in the first hour before being demoted by the Toyotas, but coming through to take the non-Hybrid LMP1 honours.

Jenson Button took his best WEC result since making his debut at Le Mans with a fighting fourth position along with teammates Vitaly Petrov and Mikhail Aleshin in the #11 SMP Racing BR1-AER.

The ByKolles team claimed fifth position after being overtaken in the closing stages by the SMP LMP1.