Saturday, November 5, 2016

6 Hours of Shanghai: Hour 1

Yours truly fell asleep, and is joining the action, 45 minutes into the 6 Hours of Shanghai.  Brendon Hartley is leading for Porsche at the moment.  LMP2 cars are pitting at the moment here at the Shanghai International Circuit.  Here is the pre-race notebook from Shanghai.

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/shanghai-pre-race-notebook/

Brendon Hartly stays in the car and has new Michelin tires.  They used nearly half their tires in qualifying.  Three of eight allotted sets.  Porsche, Audi, Porsche.  Alex Brundle, Andy Priaulx, and Pedro Lamy, lead so far.  Ferrari now takes the lead in LM GTE Pro.  Emmanuel Collard in the #83 Ferrari pits for routine service and a driver change.  Davide Rigon and the #71 car had a slow tire puncture and pit under safety car conditions.  Marco Sorenson and Aston Martin make a stop.  We saw this team using long fuel runs back in Japan a few weeks ago.

We are an hour into the race. Let's go back to hour one.  Yours truly missed it.  Green light!  Brendon Hartley was beaten into the first corner by Sebastien Buemi in the Toyota.  Mathias Beche spun in one of the Manor's and there was a huge wreck for the Ford and Aston Martin GT cars.  Game over for Richie Stanaway who got clouted after hitting the Ford GT.  LMP1 has seen some battling.  Alex Brundle had a fabulous start, fighting through to take the lead from the Alpine #36 leading the championship in LMP2.  Porsche #2 has been able to have a competitive race so far as Mike Conway passes his Toyota team mate.  Tire grip is at a premium here in Shanghai.

Stefan Mucke moved ahead of the Ferrari's in LM GTE Pro.  Under the safety car, the pits were closed, putting some teams out of sequence.

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