8 Hours of Portimao: Hour 5

Alpine in the lane.  They are about to drop a full fuel stop behind the Toyota.  Kamui Kobayashi has taken over the #7 Toyota.  Managing and chasing the handling of the car is what Toyota are doing.  The tires stay consistent but there is a drop between the two stints Mike Conway ran.  Trouble brewing at Iron Lynx for both cars.  Claudio Schiavoni and Manuela Gostner both under investigation for their most recent pit stops as Matteo Cairoli is next.  154 laps for Toyota as we look at the standings.  Jota Sport car #28 in the pit lane.  Roberto Gonzalez is in the final stint he has to drive, in the #38 car.

Kazuki Nakajima is behind Kamui Kobayashi at Toyota and they will have another Japanese driver in a Tuesday test.  Sebastien Buemi is going to compete in another race for Formula E.  Glickenhaus are on the seventh lap of their current stint after the clutch change.  Porsche #86 gets biffed off the road after Mike Wainwright and one of the Ferrari’s go off the road searching for the same apex.  Toyota has more testing and more technological advances in the cockpit than does the Glickenhaus.  Augusto Farfus pits the Aston Martin, the #98 car, and Paul Dalla Lana of course, continues with AMR in the GTE Am class cars.

The GTE Pro battle, Molina vs. Christensen, continues in anger.  148 laps completed.  Takeshi Kimura is out of the Kessel Ferrari, and he is spent, getting doused with water.  That was the #52 Ferrari passing the #92 car and Porsche, they are a lap down to Ferrari.  They need a safety car, desperately.  The marshals have been able to clear incidents very quickly.  The attrition rate has gone way down in sports car races over the years.  Glickenhaus will have to get data and engineer out the weak points of their car as Thomas Flohr moves ‘round Paul Dalla Lana for the LM GTE Am lead.  Dalla Lana on new boots, and full fuel tanks.

Augusto Farfus explains that you can be fast and be able to save tires and have performance.  Open the steering earlier in a corner to keep the tires alive.  Kamui Kobayashi is bish bash boshing it right now while Kazuki Nakajima is 7/10ths of a second down.  Kobayashi is delivering the performance.  Kobayashi is going for speed.  Ferdinand Habsburg is slightly closing on Paul di Resta.  164 laps completed.  Tire rub, it appears, for the #29 Racing Team Nederland Oreca.  Lots of smoke, and a broken wheel, broken suspension!  Deary me!

The tire damage and suspension damage, caused by contact from a Ferrari, not a tire defect.  High Class Racing now takes the class lead in LMP2 as Frits van Eerd takes over the Racing Team Nederland automobile.  A curb on the inside right of the car, may have been what he clobbered.  At the hairpin out of turn five at the top of the hill, that was a double whammy.  Ugh!  No!  No!  No!  TDS runs both RealTeam and Racing Team Nederland.  There’s a driveshaft out of the car.  Things are designed to break at certain points.

Jan Magnussen now leads in LMP2.  Louis Deletraz, on a second stint on tires, had a drop off on tires, dropping them down the order.  We have a four-car battle in LMP2.  Frits van Eerd will drive his last required stint and it was Alessandro Pier Guidi who got biffed by the Nederland automobile.  Matthias Beche has been chasing down Sofia Floersch.  Sofia is 20 seconds up on Matthias Beche, and Sofia is on a fresh set of tires.  Watch the blue flags.  You don’t want to have a penalty.  Floersch, she put on the brakes and then continued.

Habsburg is a tenth quicker than Paul di Resta.  We are beginning to see faster sector times for several cars.  The track is getting rubbered in and there’s no gravel.  Plus, the fuel weight is determining how the race is going.  Ferrari are a lap ahead of Porsche in LM GTE Pro.  In LM GTE Am, it’s Aston Martin, Cetilar, Project 1.  Aston, Ferrari, Porsche.  More tire sets in the Am class could be an advantage but it is hard to say.  In Pro, and Am, there are the same numbers of tires for everyone. 

There’s less of a compromise in Am, whereas, in Pro, you have to stint the tires a certain way.  Full service for the #51 Ferrari and James Calado is now back into the car.  Kazuki Nakajima aboard the #8 tomorrow is dinged for abusing track limits.  In Free Practice, there was a 30 kilometer headwind and then in the second practice, same windspeed but in a different direction.  Racing Team Nederland cannot move the brake caliper and are whacking away at it with the hammer.

They are nine laps down on United Autosports.  They have to soldier on to the end of the motor race and have that as their only choice.  The #1 Richard Mille car has moved up a place.  It will take five minutes for the Racing Team Nederland crew.  They will remain in the race, but the points margins will be problematic.  A significant points loss as we see a huge scrum at turn three.  LMP2 cars can cut back and the GT cars need to.  That was Job van Uitert who was being interviewed and he has to be gutted.  The damage for a slight impact is actually significant.

These cars are designed to do things at high forces going through the mechanical parts of the car.  But if it is against the drive angle, it is like breaking glass.  Three hours and 20 minutes still on the board.  1:31 dead for Matthieu Vaxiviere in LMP2.  Track conditions are cooling, and it could be more beneficial to the LMP2 cars compared to the Hypercar’s.  173 laps now completed.  Paul di Resta has been very consistent through his stints, running laps in the 1:33 range.  Wayne Boyd’s LMP2 career is just now blossoming.  LMP2 leader in the lane.  Habsburg leads now and he too, will have to pit.

Racing Team Nederland are back out.  It is not game over for those blokes.  WRT of course has had two drive through penalties which have hampered their progress slightly, but they are still in it, somehow or other.  Jota are off sequence.  But they could be in good shape should the motor race stay green.  We have just over three hours remaining in the race.  Matthias Beche and Beitske Visser are scrapping and it appears Visker made the past.  Now, WRT pit and Jota retakes the lead in LMP2.  Roberto Gonzalez is uncorking some consistent times in the 1:33 range. 

Tom Blomqvist has fastest first sector time and so does Matthias Beche in the #70 RealTeam car.  Blomqvist does likewise in the middle sector and Kamui Kobayashi, he flies through sector three for the fastest lap time.  Iron Lynx Ferrari and Danish High Class Oreca pitting.  Anthony Davidson is ready to go in LMP2.  Tom Blomqvist can double stint now alongside Stoffel Vandoorne.  Matthias Beche in for RealTeam Racing.  Charles Milesi takes over the #31 WRT car.

Kamui Kobayashi passes one of the factory Porsche GTE Pro cars.  Not sure which number it is.  Norman Nato moves into the #70 car and DragonSpeed hit the lane in car #21 in LMP2 with Henrik Hedman driving.  Kamui Kobayashi is 18 seconds ahead of Kazuki Nakajima and the Alpine is on their inlap as well as the inlap for Matty Vaxiviere.  The Toyota will be one pit stop up on everyone else.  Toyota goes off the road, and slams into a pylon in the pit lane.  Kazuki Nakajima, just pitted but he locks the brakes for speeding in the pit lane after locking a rear brake and hitting the RFID chip reader.

Nicolas Lapierre is now on brand new tires.  Both front tires were locked up.  They had braking troubles at Spa Francorchamps in the last couple hours.  Portimao is harder on brakes and we have two more hours before the race is over.  Nakajima in Toyota #8 in the lane.  Romain Dumas has been warned for track limits in the Glickenhaus.  Miro Konoplka has taken over the wheel of the ARC Bratislava LMP2 car.  Lapierre wants to apply the blowtorch to the Toyota’s. 

Stoffel Vandoorne on his outlap has his hands full with Charles Milesi.  Anthony Davidson has the sister Jota car in fourth in class in LMP2.  Milesi flies ‘round Stoffel Vandoorne!  Wow!  He overtook but had all four wheels off the road.  That is a penalty for Milesi, as breathtaking as it was.  Milesi will get some kind of penalty.  Wow!  That was clse, as Rahel Frey nearly got run over.  Romain Dumas hands the Glickenhaus over to Richard Westbrook, having completed 142 laps.  188 laps for the leaders as Milesi’s front end washes out while he is defending from Stoffel Vandoorne.  Straight line speed is not the strength for Jota Sport compared to WRT.

More lapped traffic to negotiate.  Nicolas Lapierre, 1:31 dead, lap two, 1:31.1, lap three, 1:31.3.  The Frenchman is quickler than the Toyota as we see the Glickenhaus slow again.  Vandoorne goes by Milesi, and the Alpine is trapped in the middle of the mess, again!  Milesi goes high, wide, and handsome past the yellow CarGuy, Kessel Racing Ferrari GTE Am 488.  Wayne Boyd leads LMP2 for United Autosport in car #22.  Porsche #91 in the lane, the least well placed of the two Porsche’s, fourth in LM GTE Pro.  Two tires.  Left sides only.  Portimao is clearly the track that abuses left side tires.