The lights are extinguished on the safety car. We are seeing a lot of shuffling as we anticipate the restart. As we come to the end of this race, it is time to back time the race. The #66 has leapfrogged it's sister car. Mike Rockenfeller in the #3 Corvette C-7-R- might also be in with a shout here. This will be a humdinger for sure. Wow! There's a huge jump for the #31 Cadillac. Mike Conway gets a lap back and he's scything through the field. Conway is a master, and races for Toyota in the FIA World Endurance Championship. Graham Rahal has spun the #7 Acura ARX-05. Restarts are a dangerous time with just short of six hours remaining.
Colin Braun has to get a lap back and get around the #32 United Autosports entry. Colin Braun at the controls of the #54 CORE Autosport entry, with his father, Jeff Braun, as team manager, who has loads of valuable experience in that role. Mike Rockenfeller says, "I'll pull up a chair and watch you blokes tussle." Ford and Corvette are a big deal, and Porsche is also very competitive. Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber are back in the GT fold. Yours truly watched the Porsche's race through the night and they were right up there. 2018 marks the 70th year of Porsche. It's 50 years since the first Porsche win at the Rolex 24, with Vic Elford, Jochen Neerpasch, Rolf Stommelen, Jo Siffert, and Hans Hermann, a five driver team, piloting a Porsche 907LH.
Bonus points have just been awarded for the North American Endurance Cup, which has three more rounds this year. Mike Rockenfeller is trying to split the two Ford's and Mike Conway is going for the lead. The two Action Express Cadillac's are on the same lap, as Joao Barbosa and Felipe Nasr have run 612 circuits to this point. Hugo de Sadeleer is four laps in-arrears, third overall in the #32 United Autosports car. In spite of the engine issues earlier, Christian Fittipaldi leads. Now, we see side by side stuff as arl Bamber tries to take the high line aropund Dominik Farnbacher in the Lexus RC F GT3. The two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner, he was off the road.
The battle between #5 and #31 rages on. Joey Hand might finish this race for Ford. The #31 has lost ground to the #5. Maybe Mike Conway is trying to recycle something in the electronics. At Action Express, the #31 Cadillac has an overheating issue just as the #5 did. For the #48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini, they are up front right now. Team boss and namesake Paul Miller wants to keep things clean. Miller is a former driver. Now, we have a tire blown on the #51 Spirit of Race Ferrari 488 GT3 of Paul Dalla Lana.
The stall test, is when you shut down the air restrictor, the engine has to stall, and there could be more air coming into the engine, which thus creates more power. Paul Dalla Lana's accident was where he spun in the chicane, and then, slid across the grass and... ker-runch! He hit the tire barrier. There's a lot of damage to the right rear corner. Dalla Lana will race an Audi R8 at the Bathurst 12 Hour enduro next weekend. You will hear more about that race on Endurance... The Sports Car Racing Blog, as well. The #32 squad for United Autosport is in the lane. Will Owen at the controls. Do they know their rivals are having trouble?
Five and a half hours remain in this motor race. A Lamborghini 1-2 in GT Daytona, as they are trying to win their first 24 hour race. Bortolotti makes a clean pass on Madison Snow. Snow opened the door, and instead of getting it slammed in his face, Mirko Bortolotti just walked right through it. Snow maybe gave Bortolotti a lane, wisely. That's the sign of a good racing driver. Discretion is indeed the better part of valor. Mike Conway is shown two laps down to the #5. Is #31 back in the garage? Yes. Conway sits in the car, and it looks like the rear bodywork will be bolted back on. The same issues for the #31 as the #5. Temperatures were a lot higher. The 6.2 liter engine had lots of power. The new 5.5 liter V8 has equal power to other engines. But, cool downs, flushing the system won't work.
If CORE Autosport can get past the #32, and the Cadillac's hit trouble, CORE Autosport might taste champagne. Romain Dumas is at the controls at the moment, along with fellow Le Mans winner, Loic Duval. Both of them won Le Mans, for Audi. Too much water was pushed out of the radiator of the #31 Cadillac. Paul di Resta is now in the #32 car. He was in line to race for Williams in F1 this year. This is the first time di Resta has raced a car without Mercedes power since 2005. He was eating breakfast and told that he had to get into the car. But now, there's engine troubles for the #32. Anything that can happen, will happen, in a two to three hour stretch.
Romain Dumas might just leapfrog the #32. Will Owen could not get the car into gear without clearing the clutch. The clutch isn't used on the track because of the auto blip on downshifting the car. But, trying to get the car out of pit lane, it is necessary to use the clutch. This promotes car #54 and despite their issues, the #5 Cadillac crew is back into P1 at the Rolex 24. Paul Di Resta has just left the pit lane. The clutch had to be bled. Keep driving. Keep focusing forward. Mike Rockenfeller is trying hard to catch the two Ford GT's. It's great to have pace in your car, but your toughest competitors are standing on it. That being said, they know that any little issue for the leader, their rivals (Corvette), will be the sharks, smelling blood in the water.
Nicky Catsburg in the sister #24 BMW M8 GT, is running really well. Mike Conway says that his driver time limit was up, according to IMSA's calculations, but it was IMSA who made the mistake. Team boss Tim Keene didn't want to risk a penalty. Any driver in the field can do 13 maximum hours, but no more than four hours in any six hour bloc of time. We are now closing in on the 19 hour mark.
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