Andre Lotterer is leading the 6 Hours of Fuji for Porsche at the halfway mark, having recently overtaken Nicklas Nielsen in the #50 Ferrari 499P for the lead of the race.
The Porsche started fifth and has been up in the took spots for the whole race, having taken the lead through strategy after the first set of stops.
The German has built a gap of around four seconds to Nielsen in the Ferrari 499P. Third is the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Raffaele Marciello, a further few seconds back.
In the second hour the battle for the lead was between the #2 Cadillac V-Series.R, with Alex Lynn at the wheel, the #15 BMW, and the #6 Porsche, which had Laurens Vanthoor behind the wheel at the time.
After the first set of stops, Vanthoor, who had been third, leagfrogged bith the Cadillac and BMW to take the lead.
The Belgian started to extend a lead but this was curtailed when the virtual safety car was brought out to recover debris from around the track, and fix an unsafe advertising hoarding.
Almost every Hypercar pitted under the VSC, but Vanthoor and Lynn did not. This essentially gave the #15 BMW, plus both Toyotas and #50 Ferrari, a free stop.
When the safety car, brought out after te VSC period to group the cars up, was brought in and the race went back to green, Nielsen, who had brand new tyres, made short work of Fred Makowiecki in the #5 Porsche, the #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid of Sebastien Buemi, and the sister #7 Toyota of Mike Conway.
This put Nielsen into fourth, behind Vanthoor, Lynn, and Marciello. Try as he might, the Ferrari driver couldn’t find his way past Marciello’s BMW.
At the next stops, however, Nielsen stayed out longer than his rivals and, using an overcut strategy, jumped up to the lead.
However, Lotterer, now in the #6 Porsche after replacing L. Vanthoor, caught Nielsen and, after putting the Dane under pressure, passed the Ferrari for the lead with a move into turn 1. Marciello is third in the #15 BMW, still very much in contention.
Michael Christensen in the #5 Porsche is fourth, but is out of sync on pit stops and will need to pit soon. The two Toyotas are fifth and sixth, Nyck de Vries in the #7 ahead of Brendon Hartley in the #8. Callum Ilott is seventh in the #12 JOTA Porsche 963, with Alessandro Pier Guidi in the #51 Ferrari eighth, although he too is out of sync.
Ninth is Jenson Button in the sister #38 JOTA Porsvhe, while Charles Milesi in the #35 Alpine A424 rounds out the top 10. The #2 Cadillac V-Series.R, the polesitter and leader for the first hour, was running well in the lead group until battling with Marciello in the #15 BMW. Hard racing saw Marciello push Bamber off into the run off at turn 1, giving the Cadillac a puncture and demoting the American car down the field and into 11th.
In LMGT3, Gregoire Saucy leads the way in the #59 United Autosports McLaren 720S GT3 Evo. His teammate, Nicolas Costa, took the lead in the class after moving through on new tyres after the VSC and safety car period.
Most teams still had their bronze drivers in the car, while Costa is silver. This enabled United Autosports to move to the lead, using Costa’s speed and experience.
He overtook Ian James, in the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, and the #85 Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 of Sarah Bovy at the restart, before taking the lead off Tom Van Rompuy in the #81 TF Sport Corvette Z06 GT3.R, who had led much of the race up until that point.
Second in the class is Valentino Rossi in the #46 WRT BMW M4 GT3. The Italian motorcycle legend replaced his teammate Ahmad Al Harthy in the car and stormed through the field to move into the podiums positions. He’s 25 seconds behind Saucy, and has a further 5 second gap to Joel Sturm in the #92 Manthey Purerxcing Porsche 911 GT3R.
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