6hrs of Fuji FP3:
A valkyrie on top?!

The Aston Martin’s on top

What a surprise, for the first time this year an Aston Martin Valkyrie has topped a practice season! With the whole top 10 within half a second, it looks to be a very interesting and close qualifying. Both Cadillac’s finding pace taking p2 en p3 although they haven't driven the most laps, it at least shows they are in a better place then the friday practice seasons.

There where the #20 BMW has found some pace compared to Friday finishing 6th today, the Italians are still behind position wise. With the #83 Ferrari finishing 10th and the best factory car only making 14th, not the results they were hoping for, but with both still within 8 tenths of the leading Aston Martin there is still all to fight for. Same for Toyota having a difficult time on home soil, finishing p9  and p12 but again with both cars within 7 tenths there is all to play for. The 3 Porsche 963's are having a difficult time here in Japan,finishing 16th, 17th and 18th. Not really helped with the BoP for the weekend, and also plagued by a lot of small things and heavy traffic.

LMGT3: Race pace

Just like in the hypercar class it's an Aston Martin topping the charts, with a 1.40.800 set by Zacharie Robichon. Again closely followed by the United Autosports #59’s McLaren just 0.038 behind, with the #81 Corvette in 3de.

It was a productive session for the GT3’s, with the Temperatures on the lower side all the teams were fine tuning their race setups as these conditions will be very similar to what we can expect at the start of the race. When taking a look at the times and overall consistency we expect Lexus, Mclaren and Aston martin to have a good chance of taking pole later today.

Curb Problems:

The session ended with a red flag, after the curbs in turn 1 needed some work done, in the end it shortened the session by about 20 minutes.

We'll be back later for the Hyperpole starting at 2pm local time, or 7am CET.