In hour 14 at Le Mans, the #19 Genesis Magma Racing GMR-001 had maybe the worst luck of the bunch when it came to a halt, dead stick on the racing line in the Esses.
Another control-alt-delete was enough to get it moving again, but it would later pull into the pits for a standard pit stop, only to spend seven minutes in its pit box struggling to get it going. Daniel Juncadella would later bring it back out four laps down in 15th position.
As the sky lightened, things went from bad to worse for the #38 JOTA Cadillac when Bourdais brought it back in, the team taking the front end off of it once more and showing really no urgency to resolve its prolonged power steering issue, a bad sign for the fate of the crew who held the fastest overall lap of the race.
Coming up on the 10-hour remaining mark, the Cadillac fell down into the LMP2s in the running order, 15 laps back with no sign of finding or fixing the issue they were coping with.
The overall leading #12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA pitted on lap 217 after going 13 laps in that stint, Robin Frijns in the #20 BMW following him in.
At the beginning of the hour, the gap had closed to 1.6 seconds, but 60 minutes later, the gap had grown to over 10 seconds. Sébastien Buemi sat in third on the same pit cycle as the top two in the #8 Toyota, 43 seconds back but not completely out of touch with the lead after serving the drive-through penalty.
Leaders in LMP2 and LMGT3 pitted, then cycled back to the front due to the large gaps they had built. The #30 Duqueine won out over the #343 Inter Europol for the lead in LMP3, while the #33 TF Sport retained the lead in LMGT3. Nick Yelloly, newly announced future Ford Hypercar driver, in the #43 Inter Europol held third position in the LMP2 class.
Ian James, Bronze driver, returned to the cockpit of the #27 Heart of Racing, with some more time to kill on his minimum drive time, sitting in second position in LMGT3, with fellow Bronze Dustin Blattner in the car behind in the #74 Kessel Racing machine.
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