At the beginning of the season, as a privateer team and up against ‘factory’ opposition, Hertz Team JOTA’s first goal was always to win the FIA Hypercar Team World Cup title.
And with a fifth place overall finish in the latest race in Japan recently, that secured us the Trophy. Our #12 Porsche has been pretty consistent in terms of results throughout the season and so we’ve achieved what we set out to do.
We ended up very close to being on the overall podium but just missed out by seven-seconds or so in the end. The track itself is quite short featuring some very complex sections which made it very difficult to pass the GT3 cars at times.
It was my first time racing at Fuji. The atmosphere was awesome with lots of very knowledgeable fans in attendance which made it a memorable experience and it was good to get a decent result again after suffering disappointment in São Paulo and Austin.
Will [Stevens] started our #12 but lost out early on having to avoid a multi-car collision, ultimately working his way back up the order and into the top-10. I battled over fourth until a second Virtual Safety Car with less than two hours remaining put
the majority of the field back onto the same strategy with Norman [Nato] taking over from me for a 90-minute run to the chequered flag.
Respecting most of you on Dailysportscar are sportscar fans, you may not be aware that earlier this week, it was announced that I’m returning to IndyCar next year with PREMA Racing – a team that recently competed in LMP2.
Having raced in IndyCar for three years until last year, I’m very excited to be going back to single-seaters. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this year with Hertz Team JOTA but I need to take this incredible opportunity to experience PREMA’s first steps in the series.
But I’ll always be eternally grateful to Sam (Hignett) and David (Clark) at JOTA for this year. So I’ve a double incentive to sign off with success in the 8 Hours of Bahrain in November, the final round of this year’s WEC.
So with the World Cup title secure and no more sportscar races planned for the immediate future, I’ll be going full out to secure my third overall podium and second outright race victory at the Bahrain event with Will and Norman.
Will and I are currently sixth in the overall Driver’s Championship but I want to finish as high as possible so it’s now maximum attack in Bahrain.
I’ve competed six times at the Bahrain track when I contested the FIA Formula 2 Championship in 2017, ‘19 and ’20, scoring a podium. It’s an exciting track with very high tyre degradation – an element that has previously suited the JOTA Porsche this season.
