Summary: With three hours gone, all three P1 factory teams were still in with a shout, all with a car apiece in the top three.
LMP1: Porsche take control
So with 21 hours remaining, Porsche leads Toyota, with Audi sitting third. All three factories ran close throughout, but not close enough for battles for position.
When the leaders were back in sequence after the second round of stops, Brendon Hartley retook the lead, but was just 3.5 seconds ahead of the second place Toyota of Mike Conway, with the #8 Audi a further six behind.
Conway and Duval gradually caught up to Hartley through the first half of the hour, with all three of them being within two seconds of each other by lap 34. Despite being very close, a battle didn’t ensue before the third round of stops.
The Toyotas could clearly go longer on fuel, taking a 1-2 at the head of the field yet again as the hour came to a close, but the stops would happen before the start of hour four. When the #6 rejoined from the pits, it came out just two seconds behind the #1 Porsche, still with Hartley peddling, which would lead at the turn of an hour for the first time.
Third, behind Conway, was still Loic Duval’s #8 Audi, just 11 seconds in front of the second Toyota driven by Sebastien Buemi.
LMP2: Manor Out Front
Into the third hour of the race and all was running steadily in LMP2, with Mehri fronting Beche by much the same margin as previously, 20 seconds standing between the #44 Manor Oreca and the Thiriet by TDS Oreca. Kane, still charging strongly in the Strakka Gibson, had narrowed the gap to Beche to a more attainable 12 seconds, but now had polesetter René Rast closing to within seven seconds of his tail. Rast had just passed Dennis for the place, and the G-Drive Gibson was just about to lose another slot, Bradley easing the KCMG Oreca into a class fifth at ten-past the hour.
An incident for the #30 through Dunlop at just after the quarter hour, with the ESM Ligier picking up some minor damage. Scott claimed to have been hit before the incident, and pitted at the end of the lap for repairs.
Bright sunshine was now bathing La Sarthe, and lap times were steadily falling, as drivers came to terms with the improving track conditions. The leaders in P2 were typically posting times in the 3:42 region, with the occasional dip towards the forties and below. Lapierre was quickest at this time, posting a best of 3:39.951.
Twenty past the hour and the next sequence of scheduled pitstops came into play, with Mehri, Beche, Kane and Dennis all making a stop, while Rast regained the class lead from Bradley in second. The status quo was restored a lap later, when Rast also pitted, leaving Merhi back at the top of the table, with Albuquerque second for RGR #43 and Rast third.
Aside from setting the occasional new fastest lap, an honour shared by several of the front-runners as the track continued to dry out, the leading pack remained largely unchanged for the next half hour or so. Mehri’s lead continued to stretch, easing out to 45 seconds by the time the race closed on the end of its third hour.
If Mehri was comfortable in his lead, Matthias Beche wasn’t so cosy in second. As the laps ticked by, Bradley moved in inexorably closer, and the KCMG Oreca soon began to loom large in the Swiss driver’s rear-views. By the end of the hour, that gap was down to less than a second.
An absentee by then was Albuquerque, for some time a contender in the top three, but now languishing in the garage, not far from the #48 Murphy Prototypes Oreca 03, both of them slipping swiftly down the order to rest 53rd and 54th overall by the time the minute hand ticked over into the fourth hour.
GTE: Fisichella pressures Ford; Porsche battle in Am
Giancarlo Fisichella led on track at the end of the third hour, but the real leader was the #69 Ford, which had just pitted for Richard Westbrook to hand over to Ryan Briscoe having held off pressure from the Risi Ferrari for a good deal of the hour.
Back at the start of the hour, the field had made their first pitstops under green, with Westbrook retaining the lead afterwards, less than two seconds ahead of Calado in the #51 Ferrari, who himself was only tenths ahead of Fisichella in the Risi 488.
Behind them, Dirk Muller caught and passed Sam Bird in the #71 Ferrari for fourth in class, while both works Porsches had driver changes at their stops: Bamber in for Makowiecki in the #92 and Tandy in for Pilet in the #91, dropping them to sixth and eighth in class respectively.
About half-way through the hour, battle was truly joined between Calado and Fisichella, with the privately entered 488 getting past and holding the position despite a concerted fightback from Calado. The Italian then set his sights on reeling in the leading Ford.
The GTE Am lead continued to be a private battle between Wolf Henzler and Pat Long in first and second, just 1.5 seconds separating them half-way through the hour. Elsewhere in the class, the Formula Racing Ferrari was running last having earlier lost a wheel on track and there were also more pitstops than planned for the #83 AF Corse Ferrari.
Third-place Calado got the second phase of GTE Pro stops underway earlier than expected, handing the #51 over to Bruni on lap 38. “We’ve got an issue with our battery running out of power,” Calado reported and indeed it wasn’t long before Bruni was back in, clearly more mechanical woes for the luckless #51 crew after their Silverstone and Spa disappointments.
On track, Fisichella closed right up on Westbrook’s Ford, while there was an equally close contest for third in GTE Am between Leh Keen and Ben Barker’s Porsches, resolved in favour of Gulf Racing’s Barker with less than 10 minutes of the hour to run.
Fisichella lost touch slightly as he and Westbrook were lapped by prototype traffic and he was unable to get back up on to the GT’s back bumper as the third hour concluded and Westbrook came in for his scheduled stop. There was still little to separate Henzler and Long at the head of GTE Am.
