Ferrari #55 makes repairs with a new rear quarter panel and a new door. So, we are into the seventh hour and now the lead has changed. Jose Maria Lopez has dropped 12 seconds behind Kazuki Nakajima in the sister #8 Toyota. Both Toyota's have run nine lap stints. We continue to see the marshals cleaning the track as dfarkness falls. We see the moon, and again, rain could be on it's way. Are we ten or so miles away from seeing rain? Or rather, is the rain ten miles away from hitting us here at Le Mans? Very possible. Signatech Alpine in the lane for service and a driver change. Thomas Laurent is back into the car. That car is way down the order, three laps down to the LMP2 leader.
The longer this safety car lasts, the less topsy turvy the race order will be while everyone is just trundling around. We have had one safety car and no Full Course Yellows yet. Leaves are falling as we are in autumn. But leaves are gathering in the radiators. Watch the engine temperatures, and Andre Negrao finally joints the tail of the crocodile behind the safety car. Here's the lightning and thunder. It's coming. The rain is here, and in the previous hour, forgot to mention this, but we have seen the #33 High Class Racing Oreca Gibson in the garage. That's the car of Kenta Yamashita, Mark Patterson, and Anders Fjordbach.
A rainstorm and cold slick tires are a recipe for disaster, scrambling to the lane to grab the wet tires, on full tanks. Full tanks of fuel, and an unscheduled pit stop in the events of a serious downpour, it's doable, thank goodness. We've got gravel, bollards, and polystyrene signboards littering the circuit at the moment as well. Pit stop time for Will Owen, third in LMP2 behind Jean Eric Vergne and Gabriel Aubry. Aubry missed Spa Francorchamps after testing at Paul Ricard, and tested positive for Coronavirus, after being in Paris. How do you test positive but not have the virus? Strange. No overtaking before the safety car lines, but we are back to green as it is now night.
There used to be a purple light at the side of the track signaling night, but not anymore. There are three places on the circuit for restarts. The Prototypes are really pressing the GT cars. Tristan Gommendy and Filipe Albuquerque battle each other and Toni Vilander moves out of the way of LMP2 blokes. We've just barely started thgis race. Next hour, we'll have reached 1/3rd distance. In America, they point by the faster cars to the front, but you can't point the cars by when you have a really long track and three different safety cars.
Some drivers are still getting temperature back into their tires, down the Mulsanne straight and into the Indianapolis corner. This is really fun racing to watch, at full chat between Mulsanne and Indianapolis. It's the fastest part of the course now that the Mulsanne straight has been broken up by the chicanes which have been in existence for 30 years. Paul di Resta and United Autosports team manager Richard Dean are discusssing things, as they go through thc hicanes on the Mulsanne. Now we are back to green and at the top of tree, Kazuki Nakajima leads Jose Maria Lopez, and then comes Norman Nato and Louis Deletraz. In LMP2, it is Jackie Chan vs. G-Drive vs. United Autosport.
Still have to check for GTE running order. We see some smoke or dust into Indianapolis. Did anyone spot that? I was trying to find it while looking at the LMP2 leaderboard. Sad, sad news. Game over for the #55 Ferrari. Duncan Cameron, Matt Griffin, and Aaron Scott, are out of the race here at Le Mans. What was the terminal damage? LMP2 has the lead battle heating up between Gabriel Aubry and Jean Eric Vergne. A tire battle, too, between Michelin and Goodyear. Slow car off to the side, showing a white flag to tell the slow driver to move over.
Vergne makes the move into Mulsanne and gores ahead of Gabriel Aubry, catching the Eurasia machine. It's Alex Brundle vs. Jean Eric Vergne. "Well done, buddy" to Jean Eric Vergne. Darkness shrouds Le Mans. The drivers have only their headlights to guide them, as we welcome back to the broadcast booth, Mr. Chris Parsons to assist Mark Cole, and Sam Hancock, taking over for our pal Damien Faulkner. The 4.2 liter Gibson V8 is a great sounding motor. It's the stock LMP2 engine, and it runs out of steam at top end, but it's a great sound.
Oh dear! Bruno Spengler has thrown the #4 ByKolles CLM into the barriers at La Chapelle. The Le Mans course goes straight and the motorcycle circuit, the Bugatti circuit, goes to the right. We have a safety car. Actor Michael Fassbender wants to race the 24 Hours of Le Mans as his racing career is beginning to take off. He is here, watching, as part of one of the teams. Meantime, Filipe Albuquerque is running well, hbut another crash for Tristan Gommendy. Gommendy, where did he go off the road? Pit stop time for the #88 Porsche, the Preining/Basiten/De Leener car.
Gommendy has walloped the Armco on the entry to the first Mulsanne chicane, spinning and plowing backwardsinto the wall before whipping around and slamming the side of the car. Someone went straight on as well through the gravel trap. Not sure who it was who overshot the entry to that turn. Gommendy went backwards. The medical crew is down there attending to the drivers. Charles Milesi was perhaps the other car, the #39 SO24 Graff car. Or was it the Jota #38? Anthony Davidson at the wheel of it. We could be wrong about that. Filipe Albuquerque says he didn't have anything to do with this particular crash.
Tristan Gommendy is OK but it's game over for him. The ByKolles lost the rear wing. Bruno Spengler will continue. There used to be a rule that if you were behind the barrier, you were out of the motor race. Thirteen cars are cued behind the safety car as Gabriel Aubry locks up the brakes on cold tires. We have 47 cars still in the race and have had a dozen retirements. Meantime, the ByKolles just whacked the wall again. He's driving too fast. The guardrails used to be just two layers high, without chicanes at Le Mans. Back in the Group C days after the hard accidents for drivers like Jo Gartner and Win Percy, and Roger Dorchy also spun in front of the whole field in 1984 after setting a lap record. The Mulsanne straight used to be a 4 mile straight blast at full speed.
Toyota #8 in the garage, lookingat a brake change because we will have the safety car out while the barriers are being repaired. They've changed the brakes (pads) and the nose, with more downforce in the dark, having the car less on a knife edge in case you go off the road. We see a replay of the Gommendy crash, and a massive impact with the Armco barrier as the marshals are cleaning up the mess. There's a post bent backwards as they clean the sand up.
Another big incident. This is a really hard deal because you just can't meet up with the drivers. We have to investigate things, but it is hard to do. Oliver Jarvis is stopped on the road, that's the #16 car. Gabriel Aubry is the one, stopped on the road. He tried to get going but couldn't. The safety car remains out. Good grief. If its not one thing, its another. Everything is going pear shaped. That's Oliover Jarvis, in the #16 machine, and apparently, Gabriel Aubry has stopped on the road, somewhere. We have had a lot of stopped cars on the road as the darkness brings the trouble.
Oliver Jarvis is in the garage and the G-Drive crew are fixing it. This is the first of the two G-Drive cars. One on Goodyear tires and the other on Michelins. Toyota #7 in the pit lane and out. Tatiana Calderon might have a damping problem on the suspension on the #50 Richard Mille car.
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