Antonio Garcia has indeed gone by the Ferrari. Harry Tincknell makes the pass on Alessandro Pier Guidi. Harry Tincknell has really been running well, taking that Ford GT by the scruff of the neck and wringing it out in the best way possible. The GTE Pro boys are still in a train, running together, and this has continued for eight hours solidly. Yikes! Yours truly is bamboozled by this. Thomas Laurent has brought the #3 Rebellion to pit lane. Ford #67 has made it's pit stop-. Ferrari #51 pits as well, and they will be dusted by the Ford for third in class in GTE Pro! Phillip Enhg is at the wheel of the BMW Team MTEK BMW M8 GTE, having repairs made. Matthieu Jaminet brings the #94 Porsche 911 RSR to the lane. The Frenchman, sharing with Norway's Dennis Olsen, and Sven Muller of Germany.
Toyota #8 in the pit lane, and Sebastien Buemi is now at the wheel of it, giving the #7 sister car the lead. Ben Keating, Wei Lu, and Edgidio Perfetti are the top three in LM GTE Am. Porsche #92 in the pit lane. Kevin Estre hands over to Michael Christensen, I think. It is Christensen in the car indeed. Mike Conway is suited and booted to take over the #7 Toyota. Jose Maria Lopez is on his in lap, and he has to box, now. Lopez leads team mate Sebastien Buemi by a minute. Slow is fast on a driver change. Toyota #8 may take the lead, and he does. Sebastien Buemi is going to take over, but no. #7 has taken the lead again! Goodness me! This is incredible! Mike Conway is on new tires just out of the ovens. The release agent wi9ll have get knocked off the tires. Attack mode, now, as we are 17 minutes into the ninth hour of the race here at Le Mans. Sebastien Buemi wants by his team mate.
Your team mate, is the one you want to beat most in racing. There's fluid burning into smoke off the #7 Toyota. That started about an hour ago. Hard to tell what it is. It isn't sticking to the windscreen of the car. Where is this smoke coming from? There's fluid coming out of the back of #7. Strange stuff here, look. Renger van der Zande has the #10 DragonSpeed car in the garage. They've had a litany of troubles throughout this race so far. Sebastien Buemi and Mike Conway are the current drivers for Toyota as the team boss for the #31 DragonSpeed car has been summoned to the stewards. #31 is at the sharp end in LMP2. The #48 IDEC Sport LMP2 car has been into the pit lane for service.
Frenchmen Paul Loup Chatin, and Paul Lafargue, share that car with Memo Rojas from Mexico. Stephane Sarrazin and Vitaly Petrov are chasing each other in an inter-team battle for SMP Racing. The smoke out of the Toyota seems to be getting worse, and no, it isn't a James Bond spy car smokescreen. Sam Bird is in the pit lane with the #71 AF Corse Ferrari, running ninth in class in LM GTE Pro. Michael Christensen leads LM GTE Pro at the moment. He says, "just keep me up to date with the pace." It is very easy to lose concentration in the darkness, and your reference points. We see the fireworks shooting off into the sky. Is there still smoke at Mulsanne from the Toyota #7? Yes. No radio messages, and the #8 Toyota has to cut the right hander. That was a close call for Sebastien Buemi!
We have a yellow flag as the #84 JMW Motorsport Ferrari has spun off the road. This is the second place car in GTE Am. The car is back on track. Rodrigo Baptista from Brazil, Wei Lu from Canada, and American driver, Jeff Segal, share the car. Stephane Richelmi, the Monagasque has brought the DC Racing Jackie Chan LMP2 car into the lane. Full service it appears. Richelmi still at the wheel of it. Generally, teams err on the side of caution. Jean Eric Vergne has the G-Drive Aurus LMP2 in the pit lane, and guess what? Nico Lapierre is also in the lane. The G-Drive orange beats the Alpine blue. It's like a broken record on slow RPM and repeat.
Buemi wants the inside of Cponway, and the duel is for the overall lead! This could be expensive, boys! Be careful! Conway continues to lead Buemi. Wow. Unreal! Gustavo Menezes is at the wheel of the #3 Rebellion, with it's new nose section. Conway leads Buemi by 3.7 seconds. Jan Magnussen has the sole remaining Corvette out there, moving out of the way of faster Prototypes. Sven Mueller still has his position in GTE Pro. Olivier Pla was pushing hard, at the Porsche, and well, he pushes too hard, overcooks it, and he spins it 'round. Sven Mueller goes defensive, and Pla tries his best, but he's compromised, and gets on the whirligig, getting away with it. Sven Mueller was definitely in the clear on that little fracas.
Kazuki Nakajima had the lights off on the #8 Toyota, running through Indianapolis with no headlamps on. He lost the headlights, momentarily. Toyota #8 in the pit lane, a bit hott. A few streaks of oil on the screen. Clean the tearoffs so they don't bubble up and become opaque so the driver can't see out of them. The hybrid power instantly allows the Toyota to accelerate. Car #17 for SMP Racing has made a scheduled pit stop. That's the Orudzhev/Sarrazin/Sirotkin car. The gap between Christensen and Calado is 1.1 seconds in GTE Pro with the ninth hour nearly completed. Another bumper change for the #93 Brumos liveried Porsche. The Porsche blasts away from the pit lane and continues in the race. There is a move away from diffusers to a double Venturi tunnel on the car, kind of like a Group C car.
The #7 Toyota in the lane for scheduled service, from the lead of the motor race. He stays in the car and will double stint the tires. Conway has set two new quick sector times. Mike Conway is bound and determined to win Le Mans. How bad do you want it? I want it REALLY bad. He's pushing, pushing, pushing, having built a seven second lead in this motor race so far. Goodness me. He's flying. Gosh, its nearly midnight in France already. Just amazing stuff. Unbelievable. Trouble for Inter Europol Competition and James Winslow. The Full Course Yellows have kept this race very fresh compared to putting safety cars out on track like it used to be. We're surely rolling with the punches as this race goes on, while there's another off for ARC Bratislava and Konstantin Tereschenko.
Tereschenko has a major moment, spinning into the gravel trap at the Ford chicane! That was practically a Swiss Roll!
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