Saturday 27 / September / 2025
Tokyo: Hundredths of a second were all that made the difference in qualifying at Fuji Speedway today, Saturday, 27th September, to restrict Ahmad Al Harthy to an 11th place start on the LMGT3 class grid for tomorrow’s penultimate race of the FIA World Endurance Championship season.
On the bubble of reaching the top 10 Hyperpole shoot-out in Japan for the bulk of the 12-minute session, the Omani’s quickest time of the run was a lap of 1m41.456 seconds. With just a minute or so remaining he was ninth on the timing screens, but was ultimately shuffled back to 11th.
As usual, Al Harthy – who is supported by OQ Group, Sohar International, Omantel, Oman LNG, BMW Oman, Oman Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth and Experience Oman – is looking for a strong raceday with team-mates Valentino Rossi and Kelvin van der Linde. Not least as the No.46 BMW LMGT3 achieved a podium finish at Fuji last year from 12th on the grid.
The build-up for tomorrow’s six-hour race started on Friday, 26th September, with opening practice where the Team WRT trio started off with the fifth fastest time, a lap of 1m41.679 seconds, before then placing 15th in session two as more focus turned to work on race set-up.
Saturday began with the usual third practice run and the team posted a time of 1m41.523 seconds to conclude the outing 12th quickest in session, but only 0.7 seconds away from the fastest ahead of the afternoon’s qualifying.
Al Harthy started off the grid determining session with an initial lap of 1m52.094 seconds and then improved to 1m44.914 seconds on his next attempt. With just four minutes of the session to go the Omani jumped into the top 10 with a time of 1m41.770 seconds, but so close were the times just a few tenths of a second were making the difference between four or five places.
On his penultimate lap Al Harthy went ninth fastest, a lap of 1m41.456 seconds, but he was almost immediately edged back to 11th place – missing out on the Hyperpole top 10 shoot-out by a miniscule 0.081 seconds.
Ahmad Al Harthy said: “Our one lap pace, compared to our competitors, is what we delivered in qualifying. It’s very difficult to push more than I did, I feel I gave it close to 100 percent from my end. In terms of the race itself, we hope to have a stronger race car and we’re looking forward to tomorrow. The aim, as always, will be to make strong progress and then see how the race unfolds from there.”
The penultimate race of the FIA WEC season, the 6 Hours of Fuji, is scheduled to get underway at 11.00 local time on Sunday, 28th September. Live timing and live coverage will be available at the official championship website www.fiawec.com
