Double Ferrari drama! Kubica receives penalty for quadruple crash

Wild start to the WEC 6-hour race in Fuji – and double drama for the Ferrari hypercars! A collision caused by Robert Kubica at the start of the second lap has thrown several favorites far back. The Pole in the #83 AF Corse Ferrari (Kubica, Shwartzman, Ye) was identified by race control as the culprit and had to serve a 30-second pit stop penalty.

Kubica, who had given the private team AF Corse its first WEC victory at the last race in Austin, came into Turn 1 at high speed at the start of the second lap and hit Frederic Makowiecki's #5 Porsche 963 (Campbell, Christensen, Makowiecki) roughly in the corner. The Frenchman slid uncontrollably into the #51 Ferrari of Antonio Giovinazzi, who in turn was pushed into the front of Ferdinand Habsburg (#35 Alpine).

Early safety car phase at the WEC race in Fuji

The end of this four-way collision: Makowiecki had to drag his damaged Porsche to the pits to have the front and rear sections and the rear wing replaced. The same went for Giovinazzi, whose #51 Ferrari had to have the front and rear sections replaced. Due to numerous carbon parts on the track, the race management sent the safety car onto the track for the first time.

Makowiecki and Giovinazzi fell back at the end of the 18-car Hypercar field and used the safety car phase to head to the pits once again to refuel. Alpine driver Habsburg was able to continue the journey largely unscathed, but fell from sixth on the grid to P13. One of the winners of this tumult was Mick Schumacher in the #36 Alpine: The racing driver's son, who started from 15th place, improved to eleventh position and later took the #63 Lamborghini for P10.

Marco Wittmann chases pole-setter Cadillac

After the restart on lap 9, Kubica served his pit stop penalty. At this point, pole-setter Earl Bamber in the #2 Cadillac (Bamber, Lynn) was leading the race ahead of Marco Wittmann's #15 BMW M Hybrid V8 (Wittmann, Marciello, Dries Vanthoor). The two-time DTM champion had prevailed against Sebastien Buemi's #8 Toyota at the start and took second place.

The second Toyota, the #7 with Mike Conway, also lost a position at the Japanese team's home race to the #6 Porsche (Lotterer, Estre, Laurens Vanthoor) of Laurens Vanthoor. The Belgian from the trio of world championship leaders was in third place after the first 30 laps, ahead of the Toyota duo. In sixth to eighth place: Miguel Molina in the Le Mans winner #50 Ferrari, Peugeot driver Loic Duval and Neel Janis #99 Proton Porsche.

LMGT3: McLaren collision in the battle for P2

In the LMGT3 class, Tom van Rompuy led with the #81 TF Sport Corvette, while pole-setter Francois Heriau had to make an unplanned pit stop with his #55 AF Corse Ferrari. Bitter: On lap 10, the two McLaren 720 S GT3s from United Autosports collided while battling for second place!

Josh Caygill in the #95 was the loser of the team crash and had to make an unplanned repair stop shortly afterwards after flames burst out of the rear of the McLaren. Teammate James Cottingham lost second place to Iron Dames driver Sarah Bovy (#85 Lamborghini) shortly afterwards. Proton team owner Christian Ried in the #88 Ford Mustang GT3 had to pit early, was driving too fast and received a drive-through penalty. A short time later, the race management also gave him a 5-second time penalty for an overtaking offence.