A few changes have been announced for the FIA World Endurance Championship race at Fuji.
A single Ginetta G60-LT-P1 was originally entered for the race, with an AER engine instead of the Mecachrome, that the CEFC TRSM Racing used earlier in the season. That car has now gone from the list, and it’s getting very doubtful if we will see any more of the Manor team let alone the Ginetta car in the 2018/19 season. ACO will have a hard time giving them two entries at Le Mans 2019, when they basically only have done Le Mans back in June – plus very few laps during the practice at the opening round at Spa Francorchamps. There are so many other teams from the European Le Mans Series and Asian Le Mans Series waiting in line for an entry, which are more worthy of getting that entry compared to what the CEFC TRSM Racing team has managed to do so far this season.
That puts on down to 8 LMP1 cars – and amongst those 8, there are also some changes. DragonSpeed #10 will run with Ben Hanley and James Allen, since Renger van der Zande will be busy at Road Atlanta for Petit Le Mans, and Henrik Hedman has chosen to stay home from this race. Allen competes in the European Le Mans Series for the Graff team, and showed very good speed in 2017, while the team hasn’t had as good results this year.
ByKolles Racing Team #4 keeps Oliver Webb, but has called in Japan expert James Rossiter to join him and Tom Dillmann.
Jean-Eric Vergne replaces his French countryman Loic Duval in TDS Racing #28, like we previously has reported.
Keiko Ihara will jump into Larbre Competition #50 alongside Erwin Creed and Romano Ricci. Ihara has experience from LMP2 racing in both the FIA WEC plus Asian Le Mans Series, and will do a one-off in her home race.
There are no changes to GTE Pro, while Giorgio Roda Jr and Matteo Cairoli in the Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche #88 will be joined by Satoshi Hoshino instead of Khaled Al Qubaisi in GTE Am. Thomas Preining will replace Australian Alex Davidson in the Gulf Racing UK Porsche #86.
The 6 Hours of Fuji will be run on 14 October.