Opinion: How WEC Got a 100th Race Worthy of the Occasion

Jamie Klein explains why he believes last weekend's 6 Hours of Fuji ranks as one of the best WEC races of the Hypercar era...

Last weekend’s 100th FIA World Endurance Championship race was just the event that the championship would have wanted – and perhaps needed – to celebrate its century in style, with a popular breakthrough victory and action aplenty.

Had the race been a Sao Paulo-style borefest, it would have been an anti-climax. But instead what we got was easily the best race of the year, and a potential contender for the honor of best WEC race of the Hypercar era outside of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Undoubtedly, the race was chaotic, with five full-course yellows, three safety cars and a massive 56 stewards’ bulletins generated during the six hours that was filled with on-track incidents. Such was the backlog that the final results weren’t declared until just after the stroke of midnight, a full seven hours after the checkered flag had flown.

But fans were also treated to no shortage of memorable passes and battles, and one of the most open races in terms of the competitive balance in Hypercar in recent times.

To top it off, the race produced a popular winner in the form of Alpine, which scored a hard-earned first overall win with its A424 LMDh. Yes, there was some luck involved, but the circumstances in which the No. 35 crew of Charles Milesi, Ferdinand Habsburg and Paul-Loup Chatin snatched it away from Peugeot made it a well-earned win.

Of course, not everyone left Fuji happy. Toyota in particular was rendered uncompetitive by the Balance of Performance, which will have hurt even more on home soil. Some were frustrated about the slow speed of decision-making by the stewards, others by some of the calls made by race control, in particular the final virtual safety car that became a safety car.

But the overall picture has to be one of positivity, which comes as a welcome change after a curiously underwhelming edition of Le Mans, a forgettable Sao Paulo race and a Lone Star Le Mans blighted by terrible weather, a race control mess-up and the win being decided via a clumsy piece of contact between the leading two cars.