SUMMARY: There were close battles for the top four positions after the first pit stops, but the race was neutralised for some time by the safety car after a big off for Howard Blank in the #49 Am Cup Ferrari. Following the second round of stops and an on-track pass, the #23 Nissan led the #63 Lamborghini, with a superb battle raging between Bentley and Marc VDS for third.
As the second hour got underway, so too did the first round of scheduled pit stops, with the #3 WRT and #74 ISR Audis among the first to come in. The majority of the top runners, including the leading Lamborghini, came in on lap 30.
Bortolotti stayed aboard the #63 at the stops, while Reip took over the #23 Nissan from Chiyo. The duo were nose-to-tail upon emerging from the pits, and the Belgian almost got ahead the first time they powered down the Mistral, but had to tuck in behind and was just three-tenths adrift at the end of that lap.
There was also a post-pitstop battle (for third and fourth) between Smith in the #7 Bentley and Mike Parisy, who’d taken over the HTP-run Bentley (above) from starting driver Abril. The latter car was just inches ahead and around 2.5 seconds behind Reip on lap 32.
Further down the top 10, Yelmer Buurman in the #21 Black Falcon Mercedes had taken over from co-driver Haupt and moved ahead of the team’s #18 Pro-Am car, which had been started by Engel and now ahead Oliver Morley at the controls. Morgan Moulin-Traffort was holding station in fifth in the #20 ASP Ferrari (below) – a significant gain from the car’s starting position of 18th.
Approaching half-way through hour two, Bortolotti had 1.5 seconds on Reip, who was 4.3 up on third-place Parisy. The gaps were soon eliminated, however, when the safety car had to be deployed following a serious incident for the #49 AF Corse Ferrari, which had caught fire after an impact with the barriers. Driver Howard Blank was conscious but helped out of the car by marshals. With the first round of stops not long done, there was little advantage to be gained pitting under the yellows, so the field stayed out.
The safety car came in on lap 48, with around 15 minutes left in the second hour of the race. It was still Borotolotti-Reip-Parisy-Smith-Buurman-Vervisch in the top six, but Fabio Babini had now got the #19 Lamborghini into seventh and Stef Dusseldorp was running eighth in the #99 ROWE Mercedes, ahead of Karachev in the #70 GT Russian car (above), who’d benefitted from a storming opening stint by co-driver Asmer. Christopher Mies in the #5 Phoenix Audi now rounded out the top 10.
Further back, Sean Walkinshaw was making good progress in the #73 MRS Nissan, getting it to within the fringes of the top 10 as the second round of pitstops beckoned, with the #75 Audi and #22 Nissan among the first to dive in.
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The second stops saw Giovanni Venturini take over the leading #63 Lamborghini from Bortolotti, Alex Buncomble climb aboard the #23 Nissan and Harold Primat get into the #84 Bentley from Parisy. Andy Meyrick relieved Smith in the #7 Bentley and Pier Guidi got into the #20 ASP Ferrari – started by Moulin-Traffort.
Slick pitwork and perhaps some left-field strategic thinking from the French Ferrari team saw the latter car emerge in the lead on lap 61 with a lead of over 30 seconds on the #63 Lamborghini. Buncombe was another 2.7 seconds back in the #23, with Franck Perera now fourth in the #12 TDS BMW (above) – a car that had run outside the top 10 until now. Meyrick was fifth in the #7 ahead of Maxime Martin in the #46 Marc VDS BMW, which had made great progress from its pitlane start in the hands of first Palttala and then Luhr.
Missing in action at this point was the #84 Bentley, which was now in the garage for attention with a no-doubt frustrated Primat at the wheel. Race-control messages indicated there had been contact with the #78 Team Russia BMW. The HTP mechanics returned the car to the pit lane but it conked out again at pit exit and had to be pushed back. Meanwhile Meyrick had got the #7 Bentley past Perera and into fourth.
Buncombe was soon up to speed, despatching with Venturini in second and then setting to work chipping away at the 35-second gap to the leading Ferrari (although Pier Guidi’s co-driver Tristan Vautier admitted in a TV interview that the team was banking on another safety car to make its strategy work).
The #84 Bentley eventually got going again from the pits, well down the order, but there was bad news from the Black Falcon garage – the #21 Mercedes now a retirement due to mechanical trouble. There were also problems for the MRS Nissan, with current driving Craig Dolby attempting a reset to cure a loss of power.
Buncombe moved the #23 Nissan into the lead on lap 73 with three hours 20 minutes to go as ASP’s odd strategy played out and Pier Guidi dived into the pits for Vautier to take over again. The Nissan in P1 had 3.7 seconds over the Lamborghini in P2, with Meyrick now in a podium position in the #7 Bentley and Martin looking strong for Marc VDS BMW in fourth.
In Pro-Am, a good stint from Micheal Lyons in the #11 Kessel Ferrari had elevated that car to sixth overall and second in class behind Perera’s BMW, with a large gap back to 11th overall where third-in-class Gaetan Paletou could be found in the #22 Nissan.
Martin was soon all over the back of Meyrick’s third-place Bentley, almost drafting past on the start-finish straight at one point as they lapped a backmarker. The tremendous battled raged on for several more laps, while behind them Perera pitted the TDS BMW from fifth.
At the start of lap 83, just before the three-hour mark, Martin finally found a way through at the end of the start-finish straight.
Stephen Errity
