Alpine A424 sets fastest time on practice day at the 2026 6 Hours of Fuji

The first day of practice for the World Endurance Championship (FIA WEC) at the sixth round of the 2026 season in Fuji has come to an end – with Alpine at the top of the field. Victor Martins, who is sharing an A424 with Jules Gounon, completed a lap of the 4.563-kilometre circuit in Japan in exactly 1:29.304 minutes. Incidentally, in the run-up to the race weekend, Alpine decided to field only driver duos in both A424s at Fuji.

“It was a very positive day. We worked hard on the car. However, we don’t yet know what the conditions will be like in the race or even in qualifying, so we focused on a dry-weather set-up today. The car feels very good and we’re looking forward to the rest of the weekend,” explained team-mate Gounon.

Generally speaking, it seems as though the Fuji circuit suits the Alpine. It was here that the French team secured their only WEC victory to date with the A424 last year. The second Alpine, driven by Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi, finished the day’s practice in third place, 0.093 seconds behind.

In between, the Aston Martin Valkyrie driven by Tom Gamble and Harry Tincknell moved up to second place, 0.039 seconds behind. Fourth place went to Paul-Loup Chatin, Mathieu Jaminet and Daniel Juncadella, who were 0.188 seconds off the pace in the Genesis GMR-001 hypercar. The top five on the first day of practice were rounded off by Luis Felipe Derani, André Lotterer and Mathys Jaubert in the second Genesis. In the LMGT3 class, the fastest time of the day, 1:39.828, was set by the Ford Mustang LMGT3 driven by Eric Powell, Sebastian Priaulx and Ben Tuck.