Porsche Penske Motorsport secured a brilliant third-place finish in the 6 Hours of Fuji, with a fantastic effort from both cars to secure valuable World Endurance Championship points.
The #6 Porsche 963, shared by
The pair were in the fight for second until the very final moments, but despite valiant efforts were unable to make up an additional place.
The sister #5 car of
The #99 Proton Competition Porsche 963 driven by Neel Jani, Nicolas Pino and Nicolás Varrone, narrowly missed out on points in 12th place.
A challenging race for Manthey in the LMGT3 class saw both cars penalised for incidents.
The #92 Manthey 1st Phorm car shared by Ryan Hardwick, Richard Lietz and Riccardo Pera finished fifth in class, while the Iron Dames #85 trio of Sarah Bovy, Célia Martin, Rahel Frey were 13th.
The #6 pair are now just seven points behind second place in the Drivers' Championship, while Porsche is second in the Manufacturers' standings.
The #92 Manthey 1st Phorm team lead the way in LMGT3, topping both tables with one round remaining.
Story of the race
After a tough qualifying session on Saturday, the #5 car lined up seventh, with Andlauer at the wheel, while Vanthoor started in the #6 at the back of the Hypercar field.
Andlauer immediately made progress, though he lost one of the two places he had gained after being nudged onto the gravel.
Soon after, he made it past the #50 Ferrari at Turn 1, with a great move to secure sixth place.
Behind, the #6 quickly gained positions, and was up to 11th by lap 10 before gaining two more places to run ninth ahead of the first Full Course Yellow.
The #5 car dropped to seventh on the restart, with the #6 holding position, before the latter suffered contact from the #20 BMW and lost a part of the rear-left bodywork.
This meant the #6 had a longer stop than most, exiting the pits into 10th with the #5 in fifth when the safety car was deployed at the end of the first hour.
The drivers swapped shortly before the two-hour mark, with Estre in for Vanthoor and exiting in 17th as the field bunched up post safety car. Jaminet took the wheel of the #5 car six laps later to run ninth.
There was another pause in the action soon after as the #15 BMW crashed at Turn 8. On the restart, the #5 car passed the #50 on the start-finish straight to take eighth.
Soon after, it passed the sister Ferrari in a fantastic sequence: Jaminet ran tight on the apex into Turn 1, keeping traction into Turn 2 before completing the move the following corner to run seventh.
Unfortunately, the #5 car was then handed a drive-through penalty for abusing track limits, dropping it outside the points.
More bad luck came with the full course yellow shortly after the halfway mark, with the #6 car forced into an emergency fuel stop and so having to stop again once the pit light went green to avoid any further penalties.
Once action resumed, the #6 car was running seventh, with the #5 car two places behind.
The #6 took sixth from the #51 Ferrari soon after, and following another full course yellow, made up two more positions to run third.
The #5 car continued to fight back from its penalty, continuing to make progress with strong pace to run fourth after the final round of stops.
Vanthoor, in the #6 car, put in some fantastic moves across the final stint in a bid to catch the #93 car.
The gap was as low as 0.5s at times, with dashing and darting across the track, but Vanthoor was unable to pass the Peugeot and crossed the line in third, eight seconds ahead of the sister car.
Customer racing
The #99 Proton Competition Porsche 963 lined up 18th for Sunday’s race, with Pino first to drive.
Running a clean race while others had issues or incidents meant they were quickly up to P13, having made up places across the first two hours.
With a well-timed pitstop, the customer racing outfit was leading the race under the Virtual Safety Car around the one-third distance mark, with a six-car battle as action resumed.
It managed to hold a strong position until a spin on lap 111, prompted by contact with another car, dropped it to ninth.
That slipped to 11th after another safety car, and despite a good effort from all three drivers, went on to finish 12th at the chequered flag.
LMGT3
The #92 Manthey 1st Phorm car started fifth in Fuji, with the #85 Iron Dames sister car in 17th.
The pair had contrasting fortunes in the opening stages, with the #92 losing six places while the #85 climbed to 14th place.
Both cars continued to progress throughout the first hour, benefitting from traffic, and climbed to run 10th and 13th respectively.
The #92 car was handed a 10-second penalty after contact with another car at Turn 1 shortly before the two hour mark, but a Virtual Safety Car soon after meant that it still ran fifth.
Meanwhile, the #85 had made a fantastic charge to run in second in the LMGT3 field, though their chances were also damaged after a drive-through penalty for breaching Full Course Yellow procedures.
The #92 led at times into the closing stages, but was running a stop behind. The final splash and dash with 43 minutes to go dropped them back out in eighth, but they continued to fight hard and finished fifth.
The #85 car was dropped to 15th by its penalty, but made up two places to finish just outside the points in 13th.
Coming next
Just one round remains of this year’s eight-race World Endurance Championship.
The championship heads to Bahrain for the 8 Hours of Bahrain as the season reaches its climax on November 8.
It was at last year’s event which Porsche Penske Motorsport was crowned champions, while the #5 car finished second in the race.
