Unfortunately, the combination of heavy rainfall and poor night-time visibility has meant that the preceding three hours of the 24 Hours of Le Mans have been spent with cars circulating in one of three Safety Car queues.
The Safety Car intervention that began at 3:44 AM CEST has continued ever since. In fact, Safety Cars have even had to be replaced by “reserve Safety Cars” as they ran low on fuel.
So where do things stand at the moment? The good news is that as of publication, Race Control has said the rain may end as soon as 7:10 AM CEST, but there is standing water at parts of the circuit. The sun has also risen over Circuit de la Sarthe, which will help with visibility.
In the Hypercar and overall running order, the #8 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010 Hybrid leads the race from the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963. These two cars broke clear of the pack earlier on and are now at least one Safety Car queue ahead of the remaining cars on the lead lap.
Ryo Hirakawa recently boarded the Toyota, as did Laurens Vanthoor in the Porsche.
At the 15-hour interval, the #50 Ferrari AF Corse 499P is third with Nicklas Nielsen driving, followed by the #7 Toyota of Nyck de Vries, and the #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Robert Kubica.
There are still 11 cars on the lead lap in Hypercar – rounded out by both Hertz Team JOTA Porsches, both Ganassi Cadillac Racing cars, the #5 Penske Porsche and #51 AF Corse Ferrari.
In addition, there are still only three official retirements from the top class – both Alpine Endurance Team A424s, and the crashed #15 Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8. However, the #20 WRT BMW art car hasn’t been seen outside its garage for some time and is looking increasingly unlikely to resume.
What’s been going on in LMP2 and LMGT3? Teams have taken this opportunity to allow their lowest-graded drivers (Bronzes and Silvers) to meet their six-hour minimum drive time obligations, which will open up driver deployment strategies for the remainder of the race.
AF Corse to the front in LMP2 outright
AF Corse still holds the overall LMP2 and LMP2 Pro/Am class lead, and François Perrodo has now completed his minimum Bronze drive time in the #183 ORECA.
PJ Hyett has also reached the same key threshold, but his Pro/Am AO by TF ‘Spike’ car is the best part of two laps adrift.
Second place overall in LMP2 is currently the #37 COOL Racing car currently in the hands of Lorenzo Fluxa, with Jakub Śmiechowski’s Inter Europol Competition car third.
Both these cars are in the second safety car train, which includes the fourth-placed #10 Vector Sport for Stephane Richelmi, from the #22 United Autosports Oreca of Bijoy Garg, all having recently taken on fresh rubber.
Manthey 1-2 in LMGT3
Aliaksandr Malykhin and Yasser Shahin in the leading Manthey Porsche pairing are now past the minimum six-hour seat time requirement, as is Ian James in the third-placed #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage, although the car is held back in the third Safety Car queue, the best part of a lap away.
The third Safety Car train is where the class action is likely to ignite – should no change occur before the restart. The #27 Aston Martin is followed by the #85 Iron Dames Lamborghini, with Sarah Bovy close to her six hours minimum.
The #31 BMW of Augusto Farfus sits on the Lamborghini’s tail in fifth, followed closely by the #78 Akkodis ASP Lexus. Both of the RC F LMGT3s have survived the night robustly, with Arnold Robin now close to reaching his six-hour minimum. The sister car #87 is back in the hands of Jack Hawksworth having dropped back to ninth at its last pit call.
The United Autosports McLaren pair sit seventh and eighth, with James Cottingham’s #59 720S LMGT3 Evo ahead of the #95 car of Hiroshi Hamaguchi who still needs at least another hour in the car, as Nico Pino shouldered much of the work overnight.
