News from Dunlop at the start of Hour 11 – the air temperature is 13° ambient and 14° track. The #26 G Drive Oreca Nissan is going from double to triple stinting the soft compound; the#45 Oak Morgan has triple-stinted the soft compound; the #35 Oak Morgan has triple stinted the medium compound; while #24 is on its fourth stint on mediums with laptimes looking good. Both Greaves Zyteks are easily triple-stinting the mediums.
The top six in each class after ten hours were as follows:
P1 – 2, 8, 7, 3, 13, 12
P2 – 35, 24, 38, 42, 26, 46
Pro – 99, 92, 97, 91, 51, 71
Am – 76, 77, 55, 61, 88, 75
While the gaps from first to second were one lap in P1, 100 seconds in P2, 80 seconds in Pro and 50 seconds in Am.
The second in Am was knocked into a spin by a passing P2 at the first corner and looked to be stranded. Just as the Safety Car began to think about venturing out once more, however, the American managed to restart the #77 Porsche and rejoined the race, but by now down to third.
Soon after, Cooper MacNeil had a couple of spins in the Porsche Curves in the #70 Larbre Corvette and ended up facing the wall. After a couple of minutes of trying, the car finally got going and headed immediately for the pitlane….where it died at the head of the pitlane. The crew pushed it back, but had they handled the car in a forbidden zone?
Just past the half-hour mark, Rob Bell brought the Pro leader into the pits for a regular stop. The stop looked like fuel-only and the #99 returned to the track five seconds clear of Lieb’s Porsche. In Am, meanwhile, Marco Cioci was catching Dempsey at the rate of 12 seconds per lap in the #61 Ferrari and a change for third looked to be likely within three or four laps.
Tom Kristensen pitted the overall leader – the #2 Audi – a few seconds later and handed over to Allan McNish.
In P2, Alex Brundle was catching Gonzalez in the fight for the class lead, the #24 Oak Morgan being four seconds a lap quicker and only 20 seconds behind the #35 after 10:45. A pitstop five minutes later, however, dropped him back a further minute.
Anthony Davidson made the #8 Toyota’s 14th stop – a lap early after the driver reported on the radio that he couldn’t see anything!
Marco Cioci ran out of time in his pursuit of Patrick Dempsey and was in for the #61 Ferrari’s latest stop at 01:50. In Pro, however, Darren Turner was once again pushing Lieb for second in the #97 after its and the #92 RSR’s latest stops.
