The 92nd annual 24 Hours of Le Mans has reached the end of the first quarter as night begins to fall, with the private label #83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P out front as it has been for the last four hours.
The leading car of Robert Shwartzman, Robert Kubica, and Ye Yifei has completed 95 laps, and recently pitted from the lead with an advantage of just about 50 seconds, keeping its Ferrari factory counterparts and the rest of the field at bay.
Ye handed the car off to Kubica who will drive the car into the night-time hours, but minutes ago, heavy rain began to fall at the high-speed Porsche Curves – about the worst possible place for concentrated showers as more rain has come in from the west.
The #5 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 runs second, in the hands of Frederic Makowiecki and on the same general strategy as the leader.
Rounding out the top three was the #50 Ferrari AF Corse 499P of Nicklas Nielsen who’s gotten back aboard the car that he led in in the opening two hours.
Ryo Hirakawa is in for his first shift in the #8 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 Hybrid, currently fourth with not much to separate him from the two cars in front.
The #51 Ferrari of Antonio Giovinazzi runs fifth, with the #7 Toyota of Jose Maria Lopez just outside that threshold.
And the first quarter brings even more bad news for supporters of the Alpine Endurance Team: The #36 Alpine A424 is now retired following a mechanical failure.
Nicolas Lapierre drove the car into the garage less than half an hour ago and there was a lot of attention in the engine bay, and Alpine has since confirmed that an engine issue is the suspected cause of the #36’s retirement.
It’s a devastating setback as the French marque that had, to this point, comprehensively outperformed its national rivals at Peugeot – now accounts for the first two Hypercar class retirements, joining the crashed #54 Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 as the only other official retirements in the race.
The #4 Penske Porsche, which was involved in the incident with the #85 Iron Dames Lamborghini LMGT3 in the last hour and had its light panel replaced following the contact, began to shed more bodywork and went to the garage where it is now a lap off the overall lead.
The race was on pace to surpass 380 laps completed – though weather and the risk of more incidents could slow the overall pace down.
COOL Racing seizes command in LMP2
The #37 COOL Racing car has now taken the lead in LMP2, while on the same pit cycle as the #10 Vector Sport car, with Lorenzo Fluxa now enjoying a five-second gap ahead of Stephane Richelmi.
The Vector Sport car has not had the same pace since changing tyres at the top of the last hour, while Fluxa has stayed on the same tyres throughout. The extra time needed for Vector Sport to change the tyres erased the gap they held, and COOL Racing emerged from the last pit stops ahead.
The #22 United Autosports is sitting a comfortable third, with Bijoy Garg now at the wheel, with Nielsen Racing’s #24 and IDEC Sport’s #28 now holding the top five.
A string of pit stops just ahead of the end of the hour to switch on to wet tyres has effectively cleansed the strategy, however, the top two cars of COOL Racing and Vector Sport – have stayed out to battle the conditions on slick tyres.
The Pro-Am leader is once again the #183 AF Corse car, with Francois Perrodo having just handed over to Ben Barnicoat. PJ Hyett had caught and passed Perrodo on track, but a recent pit stop has dropped the AO by TF #14 car back to second place in Pro-Am.
There was another challenger eliminated from the top group, in the sixth hour, as the #9 Proton Competition car ground to a halt at the Porsche Curves, a quarter before the hour.
There didn’t appear to be any damage to the car, as Jonas Ried attempted to power cycle the stricken ORECA, but eventually a Slow Zone was called, and marshals pushed that car behind the barriers.
While that car has not been retired, it is still behind the wall at the exit at the Porsche Curves, with it now Ried’s responsibility to fix the car to get it to the pit lane.
Manthey, WRT going blow-for-blow in LMGT3
The #92 Manthey PureRxcing Porsche has been in the groove, Joel Sturm taking chunks out of the leading #46 WRT BMW’s advantage.
Rossi pitted the BMW with the gap down to just over a second and Sturm got the move done for the lead as the Italian superstar resumed for a second stint and got up to speed out of the pits.
But with the leading LMGT3 pit stop regimes still showing little consistency, the status of the top three #46 BMW and the Manthey Porsche pair is in a state of rotation, and the lead gap is fairly elastic.
Maxime Martin is now back aboard the BMW M4 LMGT3, currently trailing Sturm by 52 seconds. Richard Lietz has taken over the #91 Manthey EMA car, 23 seconds back in third.
At this point, Aliaksandr Malykhin’s minimum drive time is half complete for the #92 Porsche, the Bronze driver had toughed out the challenge of the opening hours, leaving his professional teammates plenty of opportunity to take hold of the race.
The #95 United Autosports McLaren out-braked itself in the wet on approach to the Ford Chicane, but the other two McLarens are back in the hunt, Bronze drivers back in. James Cottingham’s #59 United Autosports 720S LMGT3 Evo is currently fourth, with the Inception Racing McLaren back in the hands of Brendan Iribe fifth, the pair a minute and a half off the leading trio.
