BMW M Team WRT’s Robin Frijns leads the 2026 24 Hours of Le Mans after seven hours, as the leading cars continue to trade the top position as their strategies unfold.
With the sun now well and truly set over the Circuit de la Sarthe, the #20 BMW, #8 Toyota and #38 Cadillac are rotating the lead amongst themselves, with them now all offset from one another.
The #38 Cadillac is leading the majority of laps, but Sebastien Bourdais pitted 10 minutes before the end of the hour, handing the lead to Frijns, who is due to pit shortly.
Frijns has a 0.8-second advantage over the #8 Toyota, aboard which Sebastien Buemi has slowly been catching the Dutchman having recently climbed aboard, with Earl Bamber a further 40 seconds behind in the #38 Cadillac having replaced Bourdais at its last pit stop.
The #12 Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac is fourth, ahead of the #50 Ferrari, #7 Toyota, #101 WTR Cadillac and #51 Ferrari.
Further back, both Genesis GMR-001s are both running trouble-free, in 12th and 13th respectively as the final cars on the lead lap.
The #15 BMW has returned to the circuit after undergoing repairs following its puncture at the end of Hour 6, with it now two laps down. The stewards investigated the incident which triggered it, and assigned a drive-through to the #3 DKR Engineering ORECA of John Farano.
In LMP2, Julien Andlauer leads aboard the #30 Duqueine Team ORECA by 91 seconds, with the Frenchman due to pit shortly.
The #37 CLX Motorsport ORECA is second, ahead of the #343 Inter Europol Competition entry. The #29 Forestier Racing by Panis ORECA has fallen back to fifth, after Louis Rousset lost half a minute with an issue at the Daytona chicane.
The best battle in the past hour has been in LMP2 Pro/Am, between the #99 AO by TF and #14 TDS Racing ORECAs. The French squad jumped to the lead at a round of pit stops, only for Dane Cameron to pass Kevin Estre out on circuit to move the defending winner back to the fore.
Estre has since made way for Bronze-ranked Tobias Lutke, allowing the lead margin to grow to 31 seconds.
And in LMGT3, the #91 Manthey DK Engineering Porsche of Timur Boguslavskiy leads, but is currently on its in-lap, where it will ceed the top spot to the pair of Akkodis ASP Team Lexus’.
The #78 Lexus of Tom van Rompuy currently has a 15-second advantage over the sister #87 entry of Petru Umbrarescu, with the many of the top LMGT3 crews currently utilising their Bronze-rated drivers for the second time in the race.
The #61 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG has become the second retirement of the event, with the car now officially withdrawn following its suspension failure the previous hour.
