Rene Rast, driving for BMW, acknowledged that the Bavarian manufacturer ended up paying the price for its practice strategy during Fuji’s 6 Hours weekend when qualifying was canceled due to heavy rain, leaving the No. 20 crew in 17th and last place on the Hypercar grid.
Saturday’s qualifying session was abandoned owing to the deteriorating conditions, after an early collision involving Francois Heriau’s Ferrari LMGT3, which meant the starting order had to be determined by the combined results from Friday’s two free practice runs.
BMW’s choice to skip qualifying simulations on Friday has left both M Hybrid V8s positioned lower, with the No. 15 entry driven by Kevin Magnussen, Dries Vanthoor and Raffaele Marciello the better-placed BMW, sitting 14th.
Rast, Robin Frijns and Sheldon van der Linde, meanwhile, will launch from the back of the Hypercar field in line with their Free Practice 2 result.
“It’s something we didn’t have on our bingo card,” Rast told Sportscar365 immediately after qualifying.
“We had anticipated the possibility of a qualifying cancellation after FP2, but the timing was a bit late! And then, clearly, FP3 was wet, so there was nothing we could do to improve our overall standing based on the combined times.”
“We were geared up for the race, concentrating on long runs, and now we’ve been bitten by that. But it is what it is. You can’t really plan for situations like this.”
“Hindsight is always easy, but you never stop learning. It’s something we’ll keep in mind when we come back here next year.”
Looking ahead to the possibility of contesting the race, Rast admitted that making meaningful progress up the order will be difficult without a bit of luck, noting that a top-ten finish would count as a solid result for the No. 20 car given its grid position.
“Race pace looked decent,” the German commented. “We’re certainly not the quickest, but we’re in the mix, I’d say.”
“Starting from the very rear isn’t easy, and we may need to gamble on strategy, as we have done in previous races. The challenge of beginning so far back is that others can react to you. We’re also last in the pit-lane order.”
“It’s an unfortunate position. A top ten would be nice. Anything beyond that would require some luck.”
Rast and Frijns sit level on points at the head of the Hypercar standings with Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries and Mike Conway, who will begin Fuji’s race 13th in the No. 7 Toyota TR010 Hybrid.
Toyota’s No. 8 entry, whose drivers sit third in the championship and 11 points behind the leaders, will start eighth, while the cars at the front of the grid—primarily Alpine, Aston Martin and Genesis—are further behind in the title race.
“Not much has changed for us, because most of the cars at the front of the grid aren’t really championship contenders,” Rast said.
“The main challengers are just ahead of us, not in the first two or three rows, so I think it will be tough for all of us tomorrow.”
Speaking more broadly about his and Frijns’ title chances with three races remaining, Rast added: “As long as it’s still possible, we’ll absolutely fight for the championship.”
“But our primary objective is to squeeze the most out of every weekend, collect points wherever we can, and ideally stay in contention until the final race while delivering an entertaining show for the fans.”
“We focus on ourselves and strive to maximize every weekend.”
