Toyota #7 pits. Mike Conway is back into the car, and he wants his first Le Mans win. We saw the MR Racing Ferrari, car #70 out on track racing someplace. Olivier Berretta, Eddie Cheever III., and Motoaki Ishikawa, on the driver's strength. Use your tires in a strict sequence or get spanked by the stewards. Porsche #94 is in the pits, in the garage. Fernando Alonso will still win the championship if he finishes seventh or better. Le Mans = points and a half instead of double points like it used to. Matthieu Jaminet, Sven Muller, and Dennis Olsen is the trio of drivers in that car. Rain could roll in towards the end of this race. Yikes! That'll change things. Romain Rusinov is a lap up on Pierre Thiriet in LMP2, scything through the field. It's hot knife through butter stuff.
Gustavo Menezes is off the road in the gravel trap, again! Menezes has spun off the road, and he's beached it, look. Wow. There is a local yellow there as the #1 Rebellion is seven laps in-arrears. Menezes just had the rear end snap around very suddenly. Was that a driver induced spin, ramming the curbs? It could very well have been that. That's a hugely fast turn. Something very well could have broken on the car. Jeepers creepers! Pierre Thiret tries to pass the #48 IDEC Sport car, Memo Rojas at the wheel of it. We have a slow zone as the cranes are going to winch away a couple of cars. Menezes was flying, running a 31.625 sector time. He was 8/10ths of a second faster through the sector... that's the fastest sector one time of anyone, from the start/finish, just about into Tertre Rouge.
He was on the limit, and he clearly stepped over it. Sven Muller is back onto the track after having engine problems fixed on the car. Muller has handed over to Dennis Olsen. Saved by the Re-bell-ion, as Menezes is off the road once more, chaps. Menezes is in the lane to check the car. The Slow Zone has been taken away as Mike Conway continues leading the motor race. 50 cars still running of rhe 61 cars that started. Just 11 retirements. That's amazing. It's a far cry from 5-10 years ago when Prototypes went out of the race pretty regularly if they were privateer cars. Bruno Senna will be a lap up onn Menezes as the #3 car is back on the track, look. The advantage over the team car has been expunged. Clouds are gathering, and there might be a tiny shower, but hopefully not a deluge.
Stoffel Vandoorne pits from third spot, three laps up on Menezes. Stoffel Vandoorne has a cushion, as the sister car retired. Egor Orudzhev had a major shunt. Matteo Cressoni has pitted and Cooper MacNeil has gone by sharing the WeatherTech #62 Ferrari with Toni Vilander and Englishman Robert Smith. We have 42 active cars on track right now. Mike Conway has made a purposeful drive, and he wnats to win. Gabriel Aubry is having a problem with the #38 car, absolutely crawling. Is this mechanical, or is it fuel starvation going into Mulsanne corner? No worries for the Ford GT running over one of the floppies.
Gabriel Aubry is still having issues with the #38 car. Maybe he can only drive slow to avoid running out of petrol, or maybe he's stuck in gear. Watch out for mechanical issues, as we still have about the same distance as a regular six hour WEC race to go. This is a very confined pit lane and adjoining pit boxes, based on yellows, can be really crowded. Patrick Pilet is now the driver in the #93 Porsche 911 RSR. The TF Sport Aston Martin overcooks it in the chicane on the Mulsanne straight, going down the escape road, and fortunately he could escape. Pop rivets and aluminum hold the hood on one of the GT cars, and no Bear Bond tape.
Pierre Thiriet is running really well. Ho-Pin Tung was thought to have a comfortable advantage in third, but he is being harried by Francois Perrodo for TDS Racing. More and more debris is littering the circuit. There are shards of carbon, and plastic shards from the floppies as well. Mike Conway pits the #7 Toyota, and he is in the zone at the moment. A spin for Spirit of Race sponsored by Vista Jet. Thomas Flohr is at the wheel of it. Fatigue setting in at the moment for many it appears. Contact there, betwqeen the Ford, the BMW, and a P2 car with a Toyota keeping a watching brief! That was wild!
No harm, no foul there. The tire wars are raging between Michelin and Dunlop. LMP2 cars have become much better looking than they used to be, rather than looking like a policeman's helmet on casters. G-Drive might just get a class win in LMP2. They are angry in a way, and they want a win. Ben Keating in the lane from the LM GTE Am class lead. They've dominated right from the start and Jeroen Bleekemolen will take over the car. Ben Keating is a very accomplished amateur driver. 87 years of this great race.
Ho-Pin Tung overcooks the chicane on the Mulsanne straight. The circuit is always changing. Gustavo Menezs has recorded the fastest overall sector time as we watch Mike Rockenfeller in the #63 Corvette. Toyota is lapping betwen 3:20 and 3:22, but they are five seconds off their overall qualifying pace. Pit stop time for AF Corse. Ben Keating has driven just about everything in sports car racing. Ben is a very straightforward driver. He takes motorsports really seriously. Keating is a really quick driver.
AF Corse still leads the #93 Porsche GT Team car but the Corvette leads GTE Pro. 253 laps run by Corvette, 2,142 miles.
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