Jose Maria Lopez continuing to hound Nico Lapierre here for the lead of the motor race, look. Pit stop time for Racing Team Nederland in LMP2. #22 reported to the stewards for an unsafe release and United Autosport have not changed the driver indicator. Now it has. Fabio Scherer is in the car. Remember, Fabio, to plug in your radio. WRT is in the lane with trouble. They were not ready for the pit stop and the car is on the dollies headed back to the garage. They have a problem in the footwell of the car on the right hand side. Something going on with the brake pedal perhaps. The Toyota has dropped 2.2 seconds behind the Alpine. James Calado pits from the GTE Pro lead in the Ferrari. 85 laps complete at halfway, 367 miles.
There is a brake master cylinder issue for the #31 WRT LMP2 entry. They are actually bleeding fluid for the clutch. So, there's some kind of clutch issue, but this car is not using a normal manual transmission, but it must be gear selection woes. Tom Blomqvist has taken over the #28 Jota Sport car and the sister car of Antonio Felix Da Costa is about to pit as well. Box, box, box, into the lane for a driver change at Alpine. Nicolas Lapierre has run very well and he will pit from the lead. They are on a totally different strategy than are Toyota. Toyota gets 3-4 laps more in fuel mileage. Charles Milesi is the next driver in the car at WRT. Vincent Vosse, team boss, says it was a clutch issue for that automobile at WRT. #36 in the lane for service.
Matthieu Vaxiviere is now driving the #36 Alpine hypercar. Tires and fuel into the car. Vaxiviere is very quick and good in traffic. For WRT, he started the car in gear on the starter motor. The small batteries in these cars are not meant to be like a production car battery at all. Speaking of WRT, Ferdinand Habsburg says he felt something in the clutch, came in for a pit stop, and the clutch stalled the car. The clutch woes are getting worse according to him. He says he enjoyed his most recent stint, but got unlucky. He says it is very hard for LMP2 cars to overtake on the straightaways despite being quick in the turns.
Ferdinand Habsburg is the scion of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty. Simon Trummer in the PR1/Mathiasen car gets into a dust up with a GTE car. Franco Colapinto is flying in the #26 G-Drive car, 2:05.917 for the 17-year-old Argentinian. Racing Team Nederland is passed by Jota Sport. Tom Blomqvist going around Frits van Eerd who has just gotten into the yellow car for his second stint while Matthieu Vaxiviere uncorks another very quick lap.
Toyota continue to run 1-2 in Hypercar ahead of Alpine. United Autosports leads G-Drive and Jota. That is in LMP2. Porsche leads Ferrari and Corvette in GTE Pro while in GTE Am, yours truly has to check. Brendon Hartley has the #8 Toyota in second spot. Jose Maria Lopez still has the sister #7 Toyota. The #36 Alpine will need an extra pit stop. Matthieu Vaxiviere is consistently quicker than the Toyota's right now I believe. Nicolas Lapierre says that his stint went well and he had to push a lot for the lead of the race, so did his co-drivers. Now, the strategy is different as the stints are longer, trying to open the gap.
Will the race stay green? It is a learning process for Signatech with the new Alpine Hypercar. This is very close, and now we see United Autosport moving by Racing Team Nederalnd. Fabio Scherer vs. Frits van Eeera and a tag and a squeeze between the #7 Toyota of Jose Maria Lopez and the #92 Porsche 911 RSR-19, misjudging the braking capability of the GTE Pro cars. The left front dive plane is off the #7 car but the Toyota's don't seem to be running dive planes anyhow. The left front light cover off the #7 Toyota. It flew off the car. If the light goes out, Toyota will be forced by the marshals to change the nose. Toyota #7 will be off sequence if pit work is needed.
Jaxon Evans is scrapping for sixth in class in GTE Am with Andrew Watson. Porsche vs. aston Martin. In the tag with the Porsche of Richard Lietz, car #91, that was how the light cover fell off the Toyota. Another scrap here, look, between Dempsey Proton and D'station. Pit stop time for the #70 RealTeam LMP2 car as Neel Jani now leads LM GTE Pro in Porsche #92. RealTeam are in the lane as the only car in the pit lane right now. Matthieu Vaxiviere has put in the fastest lap of the race so far, and his stint average is faster than both Toyota's for Jose Maria Lopez and Brendon Hartley.
A good battle in LMP2 as the leader makes the move. Lapierre loses a second and a half on Toyota. Tatiana Calderon is defending from Ben Hanley. Hanley is going to try somewhere, but it was not safe, diving down through Pouhon and Ben Hanley half spins! He just lost the front end of the car, down through Pouhon and Fangnes I believe. Contact between Porsche #91 and Toyota #7 could be a turning point in this motor race with less than two and a half hours to go as Matty Vaxiviere is back in the lead. Toyota has a new nose and a new tail prepared, set up exactly the same as the primary one on the car.
Porsche #91 has a right rear flat tire! The right rear tire on the Porsche's lasted 18-20 laps. He did of course get tagged by the Toyota. 98 laps, 423 miles. The damaged right rear tire is being examined at Porsche . Was the damage from the tire or from the Toyota? The car is being garaged to get fixed. Toyota #7 is also in the lane from the lead. The rear bodywork will be changed on the Porsche and the Toyota will do a nose change after it is fueled. Matthieu Vaxiviere now moves to second place. No nose change for Toyota! Wow! They don't see aero loss from the busted headlight and they don't want to lose time. That's damage assessment. The light still works.
Toyota #8 will pit next lap and so the Alpine will be back into the lead. The debris is at the 17th turn, at Blanchimont. Andrew Watson at Aston Martin is chasing Porsche factory ace Jaxon Evans. He was a Porsche Junior last year, but is not a factory driver this year. Larry ten Voorde who has run in FIA WEC before was champion in Porsche Supercup last year as the #8 Toyota is in the lane as Kamui Kobayashi is in the #7 and Kazuki Nakajima, thus, takes over #8. The debris at Blanchimont causes a Full Course Yellow. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Full Course Yellow. Full Course Yellow.
The #25 G-Drive LMP2 car is in he lane and back on track again. This Full Course Yellow is for housekeeping, cleaning debris off the track service. A cold track will make these tires cold. No question. The Alpine has been in and out and there's lots of pit activity in LMP2 as well as Jan Magnussen has taken over the #20 High Class car. GTE Pro cars also in the lane. This is a short stint for Alpine and they are back in line with Toyota as they are pitting while Kamui Kobayashi takes over the lead of the motor race. Kamui Kobayashi now leads, and he has just cleared sector one.
Full Course Yellow removed soon. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Full Course Yellow removed. We are green. #7, #36, #8, they will clear sector two, as #36 needs to clear a couple GTE cars. Kobayashi leads while Vaxiviere is 14 or so second in-arrears. 102 laps completed, 440 miles, as WRT in LMP2 could be done for the day after their clutch woes. Kobayashi, Vaxiviere, Nakajima, 1-2-3. Anthony Davidson chasing Franco Colapinto in LMP2 for second in class. Five seconds added to the next pit stops for Toyota #8 and United Autosports #22 for blocking and unsafe release. Kazuki Nakajima and Fabio Scherer. There is an investigation for the clatter between Richard Lietz and Jose Maria Lopez as well.
The top three are covered by 37 seconds or so. Rahel Frey in the #80 Iron Dames/Iron Lynx Ferrari, they've dropped down after pit stops. They could be out of sync with pit stops. Tatiana Calderon in the other all female car in the race, is 13th overall, tenth in LMP2. Manuela Gostner is still in the Iron Lynx/Iron Dames Ferrari, as Katherine Legge will get back into the car, after a horrid crash she had last year at Paul Ricard in the south of France. Kamui Kobayashi is eking out a gap on Matthieu Vaxiviere. Toyota, if they win this, they'll have earned it. Not like in years past where they've had it all their own way.
#22 did have an unsafe release from the pit lane, adding five seconds to their next pit stop, judging where 80 kilometers an hour (50 miles an hour) is. The #83 AF Corse Ferrari still leads in LM GTE Am. Kamui Kobayashi running in the 2:05 range, moving ahead of Matthieu Vaxiviere. Yikes! Some agricultural racing for the #22 United Autosports car. Something may have fallen off that car for Fabio Scherer. He was team mates with Ferdinand Habsburg, last year, at WRT in DTM. The GTE Pro and GTE Am battles are close. Alessio Rovera is really going for it in GTE Am right now. A cracking drive for him in the #83 AF Corse Ferrari.
Oliver Gavin has probably come out of a race car for the last time in his career. Antonio Garcia will be back into the car. Thank you so much, Oliver Gavin, for the great action, the great racing, over the past two decades.
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