Alex Lynn – Fuji World Endurance Championship preview

It’s fantastic to be back in action in the FIA World Endurance Championship this weekend with Aston Martin Racing after such a long break since the last round at Silverstone. And it’s particularly exciting that we’re racing at Fuji in Japan.

We took a big step forward in competitiveness with the brand-new Aston Martin Vantage GTE last time out at Silverstone, and that’s really encouraging for the last two WEC rounds of 2018 at Fuji and Shanghai, and the opening races of 2019 that conclude the current WEC season, which finishes at the Le Mans 24 Hours in June.

I haven’t been to Japan for a couple of years, but it’s my third time in the country. I raced here when I was 14 in the Asia Pacific Karting Championship, so that’s over 10 years ago now! And my second time was for the WEC in the LMP2 class with Manor in 2016, and that was my first experience of Fuji.

Before we flew East, we went to Jerez in Spain for a test, just getting back up to speed with the car and developing the new GTE Vantage more and more, not only the #97 car of Maxime Martin and I, but the #95 of our team-mates Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen.

Of course, going long-haul into a hugely different time zone means it’s beneficial to come out a little bit early to get used to things. With that in mind I flew out a few days ago, and I spent two days in Tokyo with my team-mate Maxime. He’s an extremely good bloke – we were rooming together and just exploring a new city, which was really great. We had a lot of fun.

The last two days we’ve had a lot of fun acclimatising and then socialising together as a team. Then we had an enjoyable day of promotional activities and filming for Aston Martin Racing on the Thursday. But the real work has started today. We’ve had free practice, and that was encouraging because the #95 car – the Vantage we call the ‘Dane Train’ because of Nicki and Marco – was quickest, so that’s really encouraging for the weekend.

The weather’s looking quite mixed for the days ahead, but we’re well-prepared and we’re going to get our heads down and hopefully get a good result. The Balance of Performance seems a lot closer this weekend with our competitors, so I think in the GTE Pro category it’s going to be a good fight, and one that we’re all looking forward to. We’re certainly due a really good result so I’m hoping we can get on that podium on Sunday!