At the halfway mark of the 2016 6 Hours of Circuit of The Americas, it was still an Audi 1-2, though the #8 R18 of Oliver Jarvis, Loic Duval and Lucas di Grassi leapfrogged the sister #7 Audi to take the lead of the race during the second round of stops.
40 seconds back in third was the #1 Porsche, with the #2 fourth. The pair of Porsches were able to see off the Toyotas after an early scare.
The #36 Alpine, #95 Aston Martin and #98 Aston Martin continued to dominate LMP2, GTE Pro and GTE Am respectively, but with three hours still to run there was still plenty to play for as the race entered its night faze.
The second hour started with the two Audis – the #7 leading the #8 – driving off into the distance, over 30 seconds clear of the other P1 runners. Davidson, who emerged from the pits third in the #5 Toyota and slipped down to fourth after Hartley’s bold move, soon fell to fifth. Neel Jani in the #2 Porsche managed to muscle past the Brit to take the place and put both Porsches back ahead of both Toyotas.
In LMP2, Ricardo Gonzalez fell behind the hard-charging Rene Rast to third, who was on a mission to take the lead of the class in the G-Drive Oreca. The #36 Alpine still led, but G-Drive were closing in.
There was a shuffle in the pack of the GTE ranks too, with James Calado’s #51 AF Corse Ferrari vaulting from fourth before the stops to second in Pro, ahead of the sister #71 488 and #97 Aston Martin that were locked in an on-track battle. Nicki Thiim, who took over from Marco Sorensen after the first stint, still led the class though, in the #95 Dane Train Aston. In Am the Gulf Racing Porsche achieved the same feat as the #51 in Pro, emerging from the pits second in the class, with the #88 Abu Dhabi Porsche down to fourth from second. The Larbre Corvette was sitting pretty in third.
With 90 minutes run in the race, Toyota weren’t giving up, and used team orders to allow Kamui Kobayashi to get past Anthony Davidson, who was all of a sudden struggling for pace in the #5 Toyota – to take fifth place and start to hunt down the Porsches which were a handful of seconds up the road.
Later in the second hour, the battle for third in GTE Pro continued to rage on, with Fernando Rees in the #97 Aston Martin getting past Sam Bird in the #71 AF Ferrari 488 after multiple laps sizing up the move. Bird didn’t make it easy, but he wasn’t able to fight back once the position change occurred.
In the second round of stops shortly after, the lead changed, with the #8 Audi of Lucas di Grassi taking the top spot after a slower stop for the #7 which saw Benoit Treluyer climb aboard cost it about four seconds. The two R18s though, were over forty seconds clear of the two Porsches in third and fourth.
Meanwhile, Matt Rao in the fourth place Manor Oreca, managed to squeeze past Ricardo Gonzalez in the RGR Ligier to take third spot down the back straight. The move had been long in the tooth, as Rao spent almost 20 minutes reeling in the Mexican, taking the place just before the two-hour mark. Gonzalez wasn’t able to hang with Rao, and had a spin just after the move was made.
While the on-track battles in Am were few and far between, the off-track action suddenly heated up at the start of hour three, quite literally. The championship-leading #83 AF Corse Ferrari was pushed into the garage, with mechanical troubles, and the #88 Abu Dhabi Porsche, which was fourth, had a fuel fire in the pits during its second stop. The #88 Porsche’s pit issues promoted the KCMG 911 to just outside the top three.
A short while later WEC debutant Lars Viljeon in the Larbre Corvette took second place in Am off Mike Wainwright’s Gulf Porsche, Wainwright unable to match his pace.
With the sun setting, a Full-Course Yellow was called with three hours and forty minutes remaining when the #37 SMP BR01 of Victor Shaitar stopped shortly after giving up fourth place in LMP2 to the RGR Liger of Bruno Senna. Shaitar did get going again shortly after though. With the break in the action, news then came out that Nelson Panciatici was taken to hospital with a heat-related health issue while driving the #35 Alpine car. After running in a podium spot, and then down a driver, the car sat sixth.
The caution period unfortunately was while the LMP1 runners were stopping for the third time. It didn’t affect the running order in the top three though, as Duval climbed in the #8 Audi and rejoined the race just ahead of the #7 of Marcel Fassler. The #6 Toyota though, moved up into fourth spot, with Toyota not changing tyres, Sarrazin got in the car and lost the place almost immediately to Romain Dumas in the #2 on fresh tyres. The Toyota though, had effectively completed its short splash required at the end under Full-Course Yellow.
As the second half of the race approached, the race had settled down in all the classes, with headlights ablaze as the sun set. The only noticeable incident was Mike Wainwright going straight on into the gravel at Turn 1 in the Gulf Racing Porsche just before the turn of the hour, causing a second Full-Course Yellow as Wainwright struggled to escape from the trap.
Up front though, it’s Audi’s to lose with three hours remaining.
