Pit stop time for the #67 Ford, deep into the darkness as we begin hour ten of this race, just two hours from the halfway mark. We are in a slow zone as Alex Lynn has spun the Aston Martin in the Porsche Curves. He was blipping the throttle and the car got light and went onto the whirligig. Pit stop time for one of the Aston Martin GTE Pro cars, making repairs. We are in another set of slow zones at the moment, running through a complete field summary. Aston Martin #97 is in the farage as the slow zones continue through the darkness. The racing has been wonderful to this point. Poor old Alex Lynn was tipped into a spin, by someone else. Patrick Pilet and Sam Bird scrap in GTE Pro. Paolo Ruberti is in the pit lane with the #4 ByKolles car. Aston Martin's race, after their pole spot, has gone pear shaped.
The Franz Ferdinand concert is over now. Clear the Slow Zone. That's what is happening. The tire wall has been repaired, and we are clear of the Slow Zone. Back to green flag racing here, at Le Mans. Patrick Pilet is slipstreaming Sam Bird, currently. Pilet is sixth in GTE Pro, Bird, is fifth in class. It's hard to see withall the headlights in the gloom, who is who. Ferrari, Ford, Porsche. Sam Bird, Jonathan Bomarito, and Patrick Pilet. We have a safety car onh the track and another Aston Martin has wrecked! Marco Sorenson has smashed backwards into the wall! This race can't get any worse for Aston Martin. The Dane has smashed the wall in Indianapolis. Did he lose a tire? The car pitches violently to the right. There was fluid in the corner, or, a blown tire, perhaps. That'[s a really fast corner.
The rear end was unloaded completely. This was the pole sitting car in LM GTE Pro. Sorensen limps away from the car, but he's unhurt, having exited the car under his own power. Sorensen lost it before the corner at Indianapolis. That is a massive impact for the Aston Martin. A massive wallop to that car indeed. Will Aston Martin get the #97 car back on track? That is the big question at this point in time. The safety car is still on the circuit. The marshals are going to have to check everything and see how safe the track itself is. Sebastien Buemi asks how long the safety car will last, and his engineers reckon that if the safety car stays out, they can eke out an extra lap on this current tank.
It is time to pit when the field is running slowly, but don't get caught by the red light in the pit lane. Mike Conway leads Sebastien Buemi and in third, the SMP car with Stephane Sarrazin it seems. The marshals need track space to clean the track up. The Toyota's have been split by a safety car as the Aston Martin is now back out on track here at Le Mans. When will Mike Conway pit? He's done his stop, his most recent stop. Sebastien Buemi had to pit under the safety car. Alex Lynn has made it back, but the sister car is out of the race. It's game over. You can't step more than ten meters away from the car, or you are out of the motor race.
Michael Christensen now leads LM GTE Pro. He is having the blowtorch applied, by James Calado in the Ferrari. Christensen is totally committed to the outside line. They brake from sixth gear to fourth gear, and on turn in, the bumps rattle the whole car around. Porsche's are more softly sprung than the other GT cars. Sebastien Buemi is in the pit lane from second place behind the sister Toyota. Seb is in the lane. He has a new set of boots (tires) on the car. Mike Conway continues to lead, having made 13 pit stops and Buemi has just made his pit stop. Patrick Pilet is chasing Jan Magnussen. It's Porsche vs. Corvette.
Jeroen Bleekemolen leads LM GTE Am, a class we haven't seen on the TV screens too much today. The Corvette has a lot of grunt out of the corners. The Balance of Performance is helping the Corvette to remain relevant and competitive compared to the newer GTE Pro cars like the Ford GT, Porsche 911 RSR, and Ferrari 488 GTE. Patrick Pilet has made the pass, as we watch the Toyota of Mike Conway pit. Mr. Director, you should have stuck with the GTE Pro scrap. That said, Mike Conway is fastest of all, setting purple sector times as we head towards 1:00 A.M. French time.
There's hardly any ambient light besides the headlights. Night at Le Mans, out in the French countryside, is pitch dark. Conway picks up the tow from the Racing Team Nederland car. The kink in the Mulsanne straight, was the fastest part of the Mulsanne straight in the days before the chicanes were installed, and there was the tall hump in the straight which was shaved down over the years. There is a nameless corner before or after Indianapolis, which is a real hairy corner as well. Arnage, slow, slippery, no downforce. A wide berth into the Porsche curves, and he's offline into the Porsche Curves, and headed up to the Ford Chicane! What a great lap! This is as close as yours truly will ever get to being a race car driver.
There are huge gouges in the tarmac, after the painted curbs, that can rip the underside of the race car to shreds. Headlights hazily pierce the gloom of night here, at Le Mans. Keep looking in your mirrors. That's the key, to avoid a collision. A battle between the Ford's through Indianapolis. This race is very mentally fatiguing. There's a fine line between being right on it, and dropping the car off the road. Past the trees at Tertre Rouge again. They used to paint the trunks of those poplar trees white, to point the way with the headliights, as DragonSpeed is in trouble again. Renger van der Zande has been really having a tough old time of it in this motor race. You have to get the car back to the pits as Patrick Pilet is flying down the Mulsanne.
The raised curbs are costing the driver's half a second a lap. These guys are rolling the dice on the curbs every lap, going out on all the exits of all the corners. Another Porsche, Richard Lietz in the #91 car, is in the pit lane. Ditto for the #86 car. Playing the long game, going as quick as possible with damaging the car, is the name of the game, here at Le Mans as we have a yellow flag at marshals posts 24 and 25. We are getting great commentary from former drivers Sam Hancock, Terry Rymer, and Damien Faulkner. We run through the LMP2 running order. After ten hours, three of the four Ford GT's are within a second of each other.
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