For the final race of the 1976 season, in Japan Brown was replaced by Local man Masami Kuwashima, He took part in the first practice session for the race, but proved rather slow. In any case, later that day his sponsors withdrew their financing of the Wolf–Williams deal, and Frank Williams promptly replaced Kuwashima with Austrian Hans Binder for the second practice session and the race itself. In qualifying Merzario 19th and Binder 25th, Both men retired in the race Merzario with a broken gearbox and Binder with a wheel issue. However the problem with the FW05 was the car turned out to be overweight.