After a four-hour, 26-minute Safety Car intervention for heavy overnight rain, the 92nd annual 24 Hours of Le Mans finally resumed at 8:10 AM CEST to the delight of the millions of fans at the track and watching from home, whose patience was finally rewarded with green flag racing at last!
It left Ryo Hirakawa to lead the field back to racing, and the Japanese driver firmly held his advantage in the #8 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 Hybrid once the green flag waved again.
He built a two-second buffer to Laurens Vanthoor in the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 9623, a gap that has been maintained since both cars came in for routine service.
The #7 Toyota of Nyck de Vries was third but is now off-sequence after De Vries came in for an unscheduled stop shortly after the restart. Oil had accumulated on his windscreen and the Dutchman reported unacceptable visibility.
Rounding out the top six in Hypercar at this interval is the #50 Ferrari AF Corse 499P of Nicklas Nielsen in fourth, followed by the #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Robert Kubica in fifth, and the #2 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R of Alex Lynn in sixth.
The #51 Ferrari of Antonio Giovinazzi has dropped to ninth following a drive-through penalty for speeding under a Full Course Yellow.
Back underway in LMP2, Barnicoat puts the hammer down
Meanwhile, Barnicoat had the hammer down before pitting the #183 AF Corse car on the hour. His 20-second advantage was not quite enough to avoid losing the lead briefly to Stephane Richelmi – who is due a stop in the #10 Vector Sport car.
Manthey EMA leads LMGT3 – but PureRxcing team hits unwanted trouble!
A change of lead has come in LMGT3, after Richard Lietz’s #91 Manthey EMA Porsche made the best of the restart to get past Klaus Bachler’s #92 Porsche.
Bachler went into the pits for fresh tyres, but the car was wheeled into its garage for extended work. The problem would be a gearbox issue, no selection available, and the car losing laps. With 25 minutes spent in its garage, the Porsche is out of contention, five laps down.
This had put Sean Galael’s #31 WRT BMW in touch having steadily risen through the order overnight, however, Gelael would lose places with an excursion. This would position Daniel Mancinelli’s #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin second, albeit at a gap of half a minute, over Michelle Gatting’s #85 Iron Dames Lamborghini that was pressing on in third.
As the stops cycled again near the top of the hour, Lietz’s lead was just 10 seconds. Gatting’s pit stop saw her gain a place and pace towards the lead in class. Hirioshi Hamaguchi’s #95 United Autosports McLaren runs third but due is a stop, with Heart Of Racing ready to retake the place.
