Let's review where we've been so far. Jackie Chan was grand marshal. The race started and Brendon Hartley took off as Sebastien Buemi whistled by into turnh one. In mid pack, Mathias Beche spun in front of everyone and was clobbered by Richie Stanaway in the Aston Martin. Game over. Toyota, Audi, Porsche, battle. Alex Brundle went around both Manor and Alpine. Stefan Mucke made a good move and we saw the SMP boys battle with Andre Lotterer right in there and ker-runch! From the lead, a mega opening stint for G Drive and Alex Brundle. Kobayashi and Lieb have been battling the whole way. Romain Dumas, looking on.
ESM hits the lane. Routine service. The #98 Aston Martin has dominated LM GTE Am. Andy Priaulx and company have led LM GTE Pro for Ford. Timo Bernhard and Romain Rusinov lead in the LMP1 and LMP2 divisions. #35 for Baxi DC Racing in the lane. Will David Cheng continue to run his team? He is also the driver. He ran last weekend in Asian Le Mans Series competition at Zhuhai. There's a major racing scene developing in China and that's why the FIA WEC chooses to come and race here. Big lockup for the #71 AF Corse Ferrari into the lane! Yikes! Change those flatspotted tires ASAP. Davide Rigon and Sam Bird have been a lap up on the field.
#77 pits as Richard Lietz hands the car back to Michael Christensen for Proton Racing. Porsche beats Ferrari to the punch! Whoa! That was unexpected. Ford #66 and Ferrari #51 tussle. James Calado vs. Olivier Pla, as Harry Tincknell leads the class in the sister car. Kamui Kobayashi is second ahead of the #2 Porsche, taking three points out of the lead for the Porsche for the championship lead before the season finale. Ten points is the lead in LM GTE Pro. In GTE Am, Ferrari's 32 point lead could be reduced. Aston Martin #98 is in the lane from the class lead. Joel Camathias leads LM GTE Am in the #78 KCMG Porsche 911 RSR.
This championship battle might just go to the wire. For every single position that the Aston Martin's and Ferrari's can get, changes the points arithmetic all the time. Toyota #5 of Buemi catches and passes Porsche #2 of Dumas. Romain Dumas struggles in the traffic. Not sure what the trouble for that car could be. Dumas is using the hybrid energy in the battery pack of the Porsche 919. Does he have enough stored energy to have a go? Romain Rusinov held up Romain Dumas. Olivier Pla makes a move on James Calado. Benoit Treluyer takes two seconds out of the Porsche, so Audi are improving a little bit here, but not by much.
Marc Lieb has just not run as consistently in the second half of the season. Qualifying was very close together. Since Le Mans, the #2 Porsche has not had the pace to be competitive. Benoit Treluyer carves his way through lapped traffic. Ooh! #8 spins! That costs Benoit Treluyer ten seconds and that was Audi on Audi, red on red contact. Good grief! Do the stewards investigate Oliver Jarvis running into the side of his team mate? You have to. The team has to. The stewards have to. Do they? Should they? Christian Ried and Emmanuelle Collard battle in LM GTE Am for the manufacturer's cup between Porsche and Ferrari.
Romain Rusinov makes a pit stop and does a second stint in the car. Check that. Will Stevens will take over. Sean Gelael makes a pit stop in the #30 ESM machine. We have the #31 sister ESM car in the lane, too. Two and a half hours remain in this race. We have just a couple of pit stops left in this race. We are three and a half hours in. Timo Bernhard continues to lead. Lots of off track news lately. Mark Webber will retire and of course, Audi will not return. Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich will also retire. Many questions still to be answered as we keep racing.
Into the pit lane comes the Porsche. #2 is being taken over by Neel Jani. Audi continues to have fuel issues, although it seems their mileage is getting better. Timo Bernhard will pit and Mark Webber is going to take over the car, with just one race left in his FIA WEC career before he retires. Audi #7 will have a driver change. Porsche also in the lane. #7 and #8 have different fueling rigs. Romain Dumas ran 29 laps in his most recent stint. Sebastien Buemi now inherits second spot. New Michelin tires for Porsche #1. #7 has trouble in the lane. It's going to the garage and is on the dolly's.
Audi has had a horrid weekend and a horrid year. What a disappointing way to end a 17-18 year campaign. Spare a thought for these blokes at Audi. The VW board decided to can the program before they could have a chance to go for the title next year after such a hard season this year. A terrible decision by the Volkswagen group. Audi wanted to go out on a high, but that won't happen. We see Porsche and Toyota still battling for position. We've got two hours and fifteen minutes to go in the race.
Kamui Kobayashi pits and allows Porsche to lead. Mike Conway takes over. The hybrid cars will need two more pit stops unless we see a safety car period. Just over two hours now remain. Bruno Senna pits the #43 RGR car from fourth in class in LMP2. Benoit Treluyer can only wait while work is being done on his Audi. This team has fallen from their once lofty perch. They will have to change the floor on car #7. Neel Jani is the fastest bloke on the track on new tires. Uh oh. Pit lane infraction for the #71 Ferrari. Davide Rigon did not have his seat belts on exiting. This is a penalty. Not good.
The #8 Audi had the connection for the air jack system, broken. They are still working on the system. A broken air jack connector, after the earlier contact. It's over for Audi insofar as the championship. They will end up fifth and sixth today. Quit while you are ahead, or not. Car #7 is going to fall into the clutches of the privateer #4 CLM with Oliver Webb at the wheel of it. The CLM will move to sixth overall and in class. Aston Martin has not had a good day in the manufacturer's standings today after Richie Stanaway's crash. What can Nikki Thiim do with James Calado?
#71 Ferrari is now in the lane. Pit stop time for Abu Dhabi Proton. Davide Rigon gets a penalty for a few minutes ago when he didn't have his seat belts fastened. Audi's issues with the air jacks were that when they pulled the air line out, the system was not charged to properly let the car down onto the pavement.
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