LMP1
Night descended and the fireworks commenced on the 2018 Le Mans 24 Hours but at the front, the order stayed the same.
In the lead it continued to be the #7 Toyota TS050 with Kamu Kobayashi leading the #8 car with Kazuki Nakajima in second place, some eight-seconds behind.
The two cars have completed 12 pitstops.
The only scare for the Toyotas was a communication issue with race control that they were able to rectify without losing time.
The battle for the third place and the top non-hybrid is developing into an interesting one. The #17 SMP Racing BR1 has been able to produce 12 laps stints while the #3 Rebellion R13 has been able to put in better lap times but running 10 lap stints.
The fights have been between Matevos Isaakyan in the #17 and Gustavo Menezes in the #3 – the latter putting in a quadruple stint.
At the end of the hour, Isaakyan had a massive spin in the SMP at the entrance to the Porsche Curves. He was out of the car in order to take the rear engine cover off the car as it was preventing him from bringing the car back to the pits.
Isaakyan also damaged the rear assembly and is losing considerable time.
The fight for third, for now, is over.
Elsewhere the #5 Ginetta spent some time in the garage but at the after eight hours of running, nine of the ten LMP1 cars were still on track.
LMP2
The #28 G-Drive Racing continued to lead with Jean-Eric Vergne at the wheel.
The battle in the class continued to be for second place with tactics proving to be interesting between the #36 Signatech Alpine with Nico Lapierre, the #23 Panis Barthez Ligier and the #48 Idec Sport ORECA. The three cars are separated by about 50 seconds but change positions as the pit stop cycles progress.
There were a few moments in the with the #35 SMP Racing Dallara breaking the rear suspension. Harrison Newey bringing the car back to the pits for repairs.
The #34 Jackie Chan DC Racing entry also had a brief off-track moment.
There were three cars that were reported to the stewards for not having their number lit up on the side of the car including #44 Eurasia Motorsport, #40 G-Drive Racing and the #39 Graff SO-24.
Finally, the #25 Algarve Pro Racing was still in the pits with an overheating gearbox.
Sam Tickell
GTE-Pro
Into the eighth hour and darkness had fallen, just the vestige of battleship grey lightening the western skies.
In GTE-Pro, the #92 Pink Porsche continued to eke out a steadily extending lead, the margin stretching to around 2 minutes 20 over the sister #91, the two retro-liveries getting the better of their more conservatively coloured team-mates. Patrick Pilet, circulating strongly in the #93, held fourth place by almost 10 seconds.
Antonio Garcia was the one applying the pressure, bearing down on the #68 Ford, and then passing Dirk Müller under braking into Mulsanne Corner, the Corvette then able to power away towards Indianapolis.
The #81 BMW in fourth place would be his next target, but Tomczyk in the M8 was capable of matching the Corvettes pace, posting similar and consistent lap times in the 3:53’s, which meant reducing the 10 seconds gap might take some time.
Though the Porsche dominance at the front appeared to be settling down, there was still plenty to watch. The contention for fifth place was on a knife’s edge, Garcia’s Corvette edging away from the #68 Ford of Dirk Müller, but only marginally, while Vilander’s AF Corse Ferrari was in touch with the Ford. The gap between them was yo-yoing by only half a second or so as they worked through the traffic.
With the GTE Pro class embarking on a further series of pitstop, driver changes became the norm. Luis-Felipe Derani was installed in the #52 AF Corse Ferrari, the pursuing #69 Ford GT and #63 Corvette C7.R now driven by Richard Westbrook and Jan Magnussen respectively. Although the gaps between them remained relatively unchanged, this was still the closest battle in the GTE-Pro field as we completed yet another hour, reaching third-distance.
GTE-Am
Following the last round of pit-stops, the leading #77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche had an advantage of over 2 minutes on the Project 1 Porsche, second, which pitted so that Patrick Lindsay could take over the #56.
Jeff Segal had been posting consistently sub 4-minute laps aboard the #84 JMW Motorsport F488, and took over second from the Project 1 Porsche at the latter’s pitstop. Segal’s times were marginally quicker than Christian Ried’s in the lead Porsche, yet he appeared to be making little impression. However, his pace did serve as an effective defensive measure against Matteo Cairoli, back aboard the #88 Dempsey-Proton car and putting in some decent race laps of his own, typically in the 3:56s.
The new player starting to show strongly in GTE Am was Jeroen Bleekemolen. The Dutchman aboard the #85 Keating Motorsports Ferrari had moved through to fifth and was matching the pace of those ahead of him, clocking regular 3:56s, and just under 6 seconds shy of Cairoli in the #88.
Heading up towards the end of the hour, Christian Reid’s lap times appeared to ease off considerably, and his former impressive turn of speed had backed down towards the 4:05s, but Segal was still pushing on, ticking off a consistent run of 3:56’s and steadily closing the gap to the lead, which stood at just over half a minute.
Finally, Matteo Cairoli’s persistence and consistency paid off, and the Italian eased the #88 Porsche through into third place.
Martin Little & Marcus Potts
