Julien Andlauer in the #5 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 continues to lead the 93rd 24 Hours of Le Mans after two hours.
He has a six- second lead over the #50 Ferrari 499P of Nicklas Nielsen, the defending champion, who is stretching his legs and settling into a rhythm having got past the two Hertz Team JOTA Cadillacs after his first pit stop. After his second stop he overtook the #6 Porsche of Kevin Estre down the Mulsanne Straight.
Nielsen was not too happy with a harsh block to the left from Estre and raised his arm in frustration on the way past. But he’ll be happy to be over five seconds ahead of Estre, who’s gained eighteen positions on his own.
Jack Aitken runs fourth in the #311 Whelen Cadillac, then the two Hertz Team JOTA cars of Will Stevens and Earl Bamber in fifth and sixth. The #8 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi, #20 WRT BMW of Rene Rast, and the two other Ferraris of James Calado and Philip Hanson round out the top ten.
Dries Vanthoor set the fastest lap of the race at 3:27.936 this last hour but he’s only 11th in the #15 BMW.
At this interval, Patrick Pilet leads LMP2 in the Pro/Am #16 RLR MSport ORECA 07-Gibson. The #43 Inter Europol Competition car has come out in second after the most recent round of routine stops with Silver driver Jakub Smiechowski aboard, following a commanding double stint from Tom Dillmann at the front.
The #48 VDS Panis Racing car of Franck Perera is third, followed by the #28 IDEC Sport and #25 Algarve Pro Racing cars, both driven by their Silvers Paul Lafargue and Matthias Kaiser.
All LMGT3 front-runners have installed their Bronze drivers and among them, it’s Ahmad Al Harthy who leads in the #46 Team WRT BMW M4 LMGT3, with a ten-second gap to the #78 Akkodis ASP Team Lexus of Arnold Robin.
Bernardo Sousa is third in the #77 Proton Competition Ford Mustang, just ahead of the #87 Lexus of Petru Umbrarescu and the #81 TF Sport Corvette of Tom van Rompuy.
The first penalties of the race have been handed down, though there is still time to overcome them: TF Sport’s Ben Keating and CLX Pure Rxcing’s Aliaksandr Malykhin each had ten seconds added to their most recent pit stops for contact with intra-class rivals Custodio Toledo and Rodrigo Sales, respectively.
The #28 IDEC Sport ORECA had five seconds added for an unsafe release, the same penalty that David Heinemeier Hansson of United Autosports received for cutting the second Mulsanne Chicane.
All 62 cars continue to run with no major mechanical dramas.
