“We can’t fight with 40 kilowatts less!” Alpine rider Andre Negrao blows off steam after the first two practice sessions for the 2022 6 Hours of Fuji. “They drive over 320 km/h and we 300. We’re missing 20 km/h!” He tells our sister portal “Autosport”.
The braking of the Alpine A480 was expected after the somewhat surprising victory at Monza. But it is surprising that it turns out so violently. In the run-up to the race, Toyota and Peugeot lost almost 20 kilograms and Alpine lost a significant amount of power, up to 39 hp at the top.
150 hp is the deficit to Toyota with 100 kg less weight. For comparison: In Monza it was 111 hp and 119 kilograms, in Le Mans (after Alpine took 13 hp following the Hyperpole) 120 hp and 118 kilograms, in Spa there was the biggest discrepancy to date to Alpine’s disadvantage with 129 hp and 118 kilograms difference. At the start in Sebring, Alpine had the advantage with 103 hp at 118 kg.
Toyota 1.4 seconds faster
The difference at the Fuji Speedway is by far the greatest that has ever existed between the Le Mans hypercars and the LMP1 “old car”. Although everyone agrees that the track suits the lightweight Alpine more than the hypercars, the track characteristics cannot make up for this difference.
The result: In the two free practice sessions on Friday, the #36 Alpine was around 1.4 seconds down. Peugeot drove on par with Toyota in the first practice (although Toyota Gazoo Racing is usually very difficult in the first practice), in the second the 9X8 fell back to the Alpine level.
The top speed measurements show that Negrao’s 20 km/h deficit is exaggerated. However, 14 km/h difference is still huge. Even on the long straights at Le Mans, the difference was only 11.5 km/h.
In the first two races in Sebring and Spa, Alpine was around 15 km/h behind on the straights. However, the blues drove with more downforce there, while the wing is as flat in Fuji as it was in Monza and Le Mans.
Overtaking the LMP2 is still possible
Negrao continued: “It’s a 6-hour race, so a lot can happen. We’re trying to stay as close to the Toyotas as possible to keep the battle open for Bahrain. The best we can hope for is third place. But now we have There’s also Peugeot who can take points away from us too, so following them will be difficult too.”
Toyota enjoys home field advantage in Japan. Negrao says what was suspected behind closed doors: “We have [mit einer Einbremsung in der BoP] already expected at Toyota’s home track. But that’s really extreme. We can’t start the fight like that.”
“If we get to Bahrain with a similar number of points then I think we can win the world title. It’s 38 points and eight hours there. But we have to do a good race here to see the light at the end of the tunnel .”
Another factor is that with less power than ever, Alpine could have even more trouble getting past the LMP2 bolides. These drive this year with an output of 392 kilowatts (533 hp) and are therefore only 15 hp weaker.
“I actually expected it to be as bad as at Le Mans, but in the end it’s okay,” says Negrao. “But it can be difficult to overtake the GT cars in the last sector because they are very fast there. But we can easily pass the LMP2 on the straight.” The GTE vehicles are known to have a very high level of mechanical grip.
Toyota keeps team orders open
In the World Championship, Negrao, Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere hold a ten-point lead over the #8 Toyotas of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa. The #7 (Conway/Kobayashi/Lopez) is another 20 points behind.
Toyota technical director Pascal Vasselon keeps the possibility of team orders open: “We never plan something like that in advance. We decide based on the circumstances during the race.”
Should the #8 win, both the #8 and the #36 would be able to become world champions on their own at the finale in Bahrain because of the 1.5-fold number of points for the 8-hour distance, as long as Alpine does not score a zero in Fuji. Because you can’t get worse than P5, which would mean a 15-point swing. So Toyota would have a five-point lead.
The difference between the first two places in Bahrain is eleven points. The two bonus points still to be awarded for the pole positions in Fuji and Sachir do not distort the picture.