The lead Toyota is under pressure as we watch Alessio Rovera leading GTE Am. Andrew Watson for Aston Martin in the #777 D’station entry is 30 seconds behind in second spot. We are also continually watching the progress of Ben Barker in the #86 GR Racing Porsche. Alessio Picariello has also run some very quick laps aboard the #88 Dempsey Proton GTE Am class Porsche. Picariello, the Belgian with an Italian name, he is sharing that automobile with Marco Seefried of Germany and Andrew Haryanto of Indonesia. We have seen many fast laps and we continue to watch Andrew Watson as he is trying to go for a good result. Ricardo Pera in the #56 Team Project 1 Porsche is also turning the wick up.
The #83 AF Corse Ferrari has run 124 laps, 446 miles. Oh no!
Houston, we have a problem!
Trouble for the #7 Toyota! It is
running slowly! Kamui Kobayashi is
stopping on track! Wow! 24 laps into the stint and the race leader
pulls to the side of the road and Romain Dumas in the #709 Glickenhaus comes
screaming by! Glickenhaus will inherit
the lead as the Toyota is stopped dead stick.
Will the thing get back to the pit lane or not?
The driver is being told to power cycle the car. The car starts again. He has dropped 36 seconds. So, there is now a half a lap gap between the Toyota and the Glickenhaus. Romain Dumas at the wheel owes us a pit stop soon and it looks like Nico Lapierre in the #36 Alpine, he too could have a bit of the cherry fairly soon and perhaps move his way to second spot. No pit stop for the Toyota. He is back on his merry way at least temporarily. There’s something amiss with the hybrid boost. Toyota had the plan intact at Spa and Portimao, but not right now. They have lost just a minute. Romain Dumas in the Glickenhaus leads by 41 seconds completing 137 laps, 493 miles.
Dumas now in the pits for fuel and service. 29 laps on the stint for fuel. Jim Glickenhaus is cool as a cucumber. A mirror adjustment on the car. Now, the one disadvantage is that the Glickenhaus
shall have to stop sooner than will the Toyota.
They don’t have the fuel mileage that the Cologne team does. Oh no!
Trouble for Glickenhaus as well!
The dollies are going under the car, and it will be wheeled back into
the garage! Oh my gosh! What next in this motor race? What next?!
Glickenhaus are going to undergo a brake change on the
car. That’s the plan. We see the dirt on ther elephant foot louvers
and the front brakes are taking a pasting.
From above, the Glickenhaus looks like a Lola T70. So, with their issues, this promotes the #36
Alpine back up to second spot, the Negrao/Lapierre/Vaxiviere car. The Alpine has two stints to go on fuel. The gap between Kobayashi and Lapierre is 31
seconds. Things are going bonkers in GTE
Am as we see a ten-minute pit stop expected.
If you are changing brakes four hours into a six-hour race,
imagine how often brakes must be looked after at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This car is homologated already. You can’t change the brake materials because
it takes months to put them together. In
the old days, you could change brake suppliers.
We have only two Hypercars left in the game. There is the potential to see an LMP2 car on
the overall podium with the #22 United Autosport Oreca, currently in the hands
of Fabio Scherer.
Scherer leads Team WRT by 47 seconds. Le Mans is going to be wild if we see trouble
for the Hypercars. Could the LMP2 cars
be there to pick up the scraps? Join us
in France to find out. Now, we see,
speaking of LMP2, Tatiana Calderon has overshot the chicanes at the
Lesmo’s. Tom Blomqvist is allowed to
pass. Loic Duval is coming as well. Glickenhaus are still frantically getting
repairs done to the car. There’s a huge
difference between fixing problems in testing and doing so in a race. One chap in the Glickenhaus garage is
watching what is going on. Sir, there is
no room for you. You will have to move
out of the way and let the rest of the team get the job done.
Kevin Estre and Porsche #92 lead GTE Pro currently. Fabio Scherer is now third overall. Kevin Estre’s margin over Alessandro Pier
Guidi has ballooned to five and a half seconds.
Neel Jani was able to get the lead from a good pit stop. Porsche has the tide turning towards them in
GTE Pro and GTE Am. Less corners here at
Monza than at Portimao and less energy being put into the tires. Pit stop time for Iron Lynx and the Iron
Dames car, #85. Michelle Gatting seems
to be finishing a driving stint now.
Will she hand over to Sara Bovy or to Rahel Frey?
The gentleman drivers have already taken part in the race
for a lot of the Am teams, but not all of them have. Mike Wainwright still needs to drive
more. Simon Mann and Giancarlo
Fisichella are both in their respective Am class cars for AF Corse. Jaxon Evans, Ben Barker, Matteo Cairoli, are
in the clear for drive time during this race.
Toyota #7 now in the lane, right on the nose and they need to do 31 laps
for the next two stints to avoid having to do a splash and a dash at the
end. Nicolas Lapierre, though, in the
Alpine, he has two stops left but does not need an extra splash. Right rear tire puncture for Toyota #7.
This was thought to have been caused by the debris left on
the road from the #33 Aston Martin having a tire delamination earlier in the
race. Everyone in Le Mans Hypercar, bar
Alpine, have had issues. Romain Dumas is
back on track and Nyck de Vries for Racing Team Nederland in car #29, is
leading the Pro Am portion of the LMP2 class.
Charles Milesi is now second for WRT behind Fabio Scherer. Third in the Intereuropol car is Jakub
Smiechowski. LMP2 has been nip and tuck
the whole way and it has been a race of attrition as well.
This is a wonderful race.
Monza has the history and the longevity, but it also is capable of
producing some awesome motor racing and that is what we have seen today. We still have a ways to go yet. It is four great races in all classes. Kamui Kobayashi is back in the race in Toyota
#7 and will you look at that, the #8 sister Toyota GR010 is back on the pit
apron. This is the last running car,
going for as many points as possible, should they have no further
troubles. Risi Competizione was
penalized for refueling for too long when the pit lane was closed during the
safety car.
Toyota #8 is 43 laps down.
We might break the 200-lap barrier here at Monza. We shall see.
Toyota #8 just cannot afford any more troubles. Mike Wainwright is still pressing on in the
#86 GR Racing Porsche while Andrew Watson just made another pit stop at
D’station Aston Martin and chose to stay aboard the car. Tom Blomqvist is chasing Nyck de Vries and
closing on the Dutchman is the Englishman.
Blomqvist is quicker as the battle is for fourth in class in LMP2. We could see Intereuropol in contention for
the podium.
Dennis Andersen goes off the road in the #20 High Class
Racing Oreca, cutting his way through the escape road and the polystyrene block
bollards down there. Andersen got
chopped. That was not a divebomb
move. Andersen is up the inside and he
backed out of the throttle, probably.
Right rear to left front contact.
The team does not need any more penalties as Nicklas Nielsen takes over
the #83 GTE Am AF Corse Ferrari and in comes the second place Aston Martin, the
#98 car as Marcos Gomes will hand over to Augusto Farfus.
Fabio Scherer, leading LMP2, runs third in the overall and
squeaks his way past Ben Barker in the GR Racing Porsche. What is going on with the fuel for the #86
car? Where did the misalignment on
fuel? They chose track position on the
first short yellow. They need Mike
Wainwright to do a short stint. They
have two stints to go right now. Wainwright
must run 20 minutes or so more. Nicklas
Nielsen is now in the #83 AF Corse Ferrari, with Augusto Farfus in the #98
Aston Martin, as Jaxon Evans is racing the #77 Dempsey Proton Porsche, and we
are watching an LMP2 battle. High Class
Racing Oreca vs. DragonSpeed Oreca.
Dennis Andersen vs. Juan Pablo Montoya. This could be the third WEC race in history
with an LMP2 car on the podium. One of
them was at the 24 Hours of Le Mans several years ago, and the other was in the
very first WEC race at Sebring. That was
a joint race, in 2012, on the podium for the WEC cars that competed there. Montoya is having a lot of trouble trying to
pass Dennis Andersen for third in Pro Am and eighth in LMP2 overall. Nyck de Vries in the Pro Am leading #29
Racing Team Nederland car, is fourth.
Therefore gentleman drivers love racing in WEC. Juan Pablo Montoya is a double Indianapolis
500 winner, and a Rolex 24 winner, as well as a NASCAR competitor, in Juan
Pablo Montoya. Next time out at Le Mans
he will be racing a couple of champions with the Magnussen’s, Jan and Kevin. Dennis Andersen is motoring, and he nearly
passed Juan Montoya into the Lesmo’s. Andersen
is showing spirit. High Class are
getting better and better and have climbed the ACO ladder. In Hypercar, both Toyota’s are back in the
race in second and fourth. Alpine leads,
and Glickenhaus could still get a podium place.
We have an interview with Jim Glickenhaus. He says the #708 dropped a spark plug and was
running on seven cylinders and something happened in the gearbox. Metal was dropped into the oil, into the
lubrication system, contaminating it.
The #709 is running very well and very quickly, but
Glickenhaus mentions that the front brakes were wearing more and quicker than
expected. The front brakes were
changed. There’s over an hour or so to
go yet. Toyota has had the same issues
with the brakes. He sees now systemic
problems. We still have the time frame
of a Grand Prix to run, an hour and a half. Kevin Estre leads Alessandro Pier
Guidi by six seconds and Gianmaria Bruni has caught Miguel Molina. Traffic does not help the GTE cars as much as
it does the Hypercars. The balance
between the Ferrari and the Porsche are equal over the whole lap. Two other races in WEC saw LMP2 cars on the
podium, Bahrain, in both 2013 and 2020, and we have two back-to-back races in
Bahrain to close the season.
Dennis Andersen has made it to the lane for service and his
drive time is complete. Jan Magnussen
might be getting into the car, but Anders Fjordbach, too, needs to do a final
stint as well. GR Racing is back on
track in the #86 with Tom Gamble now at the wheel of it. Kamui Kobayashi in nine laps has gone 1.2
seconds quicker on average than race leader Nicolas Lapierre. We have an hour and a half remaining. The Alpine has an advantage on pit
stops. The third place Ferrari/Porsche
battle continues. Matteo Cairoli in the
Project 1 Porsche has been up and down like the Assyrian empire to assimilate a
phrase.
That Porsche now runs third.
Egidio Perfetti went from third to second in turn one on lap one. The Porsche’s have been dealing with tire
degradation. Cairoli follows Andrew
Watson and then Nyck Nielsen in the class lead.
Ferrari, Aston Martin, Porsche, and the gaps are growing. The GTE Am cars, many of them, have driver
time to burn yet in this final 80+ minutes of the motor race. Good battle here, look, between the #52
Ferrari of Miguel Molina and the #91 Porsche of Gianmaria Bruni. Molina fends off the challenge from Bruni for
now.
Kamui Kobayashi cuts fastest lap of the motor race on lap
152 at 1:37.156. 152 laps, 547 miles in
the bag. Team WRT are in the lane for
service. A driver change is
underway. Charles Milesi could not catch
up to Fabio Scherer. He did run good
stint times though. 1:41.407
average. Fabio Scherer missed the race in
Portugal. Jakub Smiechowski is over a
minute in-arrears. But he is getting
close. No decision on the contact with
that car at Variante del Rettefilio. Glickenhaus
and Intereuropol are two of the teams getting a taste of being at the top of
the shop.
The Porsche has the top end speed while the Ferrari gets off
the corners better. Molina is not going
to just let Bruni go by. Robin Frijns
takes over from Charles Milesi at WRT. We
see that Miguel Molina leading GTE Pro has now run 144 laps, 518 miles. Cars that catch you can affect the balance of
the GTE race. Fabio Scherer leads LMP2
by 40 seconds. Filipe Albuquerque is
getting ready as the team will do a driver change on their next pit stop coming
up. Pit stop and driver change time as
well at Intereuropol as Jakub Smiechowski is out of the car, and Alex Brundle
is in now. These two drivers will double
stint to the end of the race.
Fabio Scherer has now run 152 laps, 547 miles. WRT were caught out after pitting under green and got trapped behind the safety car. Everyone else was faster. Alex Brundle is now back in the race. In comes the LMP2 leader. Fabio Scherer has run well as we now see Filipe Albuquerque taking over. Racing Team Nederland are coming. Romain Dumas now runs behind Nyck de Vries, third in Hypercar and sixth in the overall. Gianmaria Bruni, meantime, has a run through Curva di Biassone past Miguel Molina. No dice for Molina through Variante della Roggia either. Robin Frijns is just behind the GTE Pro battle as Filipe Albuquerque is back on track.
The #38 Jota Sport LMP2 car, according to reports, will soon
be back on track. Alex Brundle, Loic
Duval, and Stoffel Vandoorne complete the top six in LMP2. The Jota car is scrambling past the GTE Pro
lead battle as Miguel Molina slams the door in Gianmaria Bruni’s face. No easy pass.
The race leader is in the pit lane and that is Nicolas Lapierre for
Alpine. Toyota are not in the lead. Lapierre is a former Toyota driver. Andre Negrao is back behind the wheel. Molina puts two wheels into the gravel! That was close!
Toyota have now come back to the lead with Kamui Kobayashi in
the #7 car. Bruni is pressing Molina
hard for third. Their teammates are half
a minute ahead. Kevin Estre has a five
and a half second cushion over Alessandro Pier Guidi. ARC Bratislava are undergoing a long pit stop
as Matej Konopka remains in the pit lane.
Matthieu Vaxiviere has taken over the #36 Alpine and returns to the race
from pit lane in second spot. He will
have to push to catch Kamui Kobayashi and Romain Dumas in the sole remaining
Glickenhaus is in recovery mode.
Romain Dumas is pressing Miguel Molina ‘round the outside as
they come toward Curva Grande another time.
Wow! Bruni makes it stick. Poor old Molina has been skittering off the
curbs and splattering gravel all over the shop here. So, you had to have a sense that the Porsche
with Bruni at the controls was going to have an advantage. Bruni has more tire though than the
Ferrari. This battle will simmer down as
there is a 30 second gap to Alessandro Pier Guidi up the road in second. Toyota #7 leads Alpine #36 by 50 seconds or
so. 158 laps on the board for car #7,
equaling 569 miles.
Kazuki Nakajima in the #8, we are onboard with him. He is buried down in the 30s in the overall
but is fourth in Hypercar after the retirement of the #708 Glickenhaus for Pipo
Derani, Gustavo Menezes, and Olivier Pla.
Toyota #8 should stay in the points battle. It will receive a dozen points for it’s
efforts as the sister car, should it win, will score 25 points, bringing the
two Toyota team mates within a dozen points of each other headed for the next
race, which as we all know, is the granddaddy of them all, the 24 Hours of Le
Mans at Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans, France.
So, this point battle is going to tighten up, like squeezing
something in vice. Glickenhaus #709 is
on a recovery mission driving up to sixth place in the overall as we
speak. That gap will be shrinking. Romain Dumas is running two or so seconds a
lap quicker than the LMP2 car of Filipe Albuquerque, the United Autosports
entry. In GTE Pro, the fastest lap comes
from Gianmaria Bruni at 1:46.627. He is
half a minute back from Pier Guidi as we see the grandeur of the Italian alps
in the foreground coming down the main straight through the forests here at
Monza in the national park. This place
is gorgeous as well as diabolically fast.
Jim Glickenhaus said he was confident that the brakes on the car will hold out but under heavy braking we are seeing lots of carbon dust come off of them. They must keep improving the brakes. Is it the brakes themselves? Is it the cooling? They have homework assignments before Le Mans. Kobayashi is half a lap ahead of Vaxiviere despite being caught in GTE Pro traffic through the Lesmo’s. Alpine cross the line and now 159 laps are in the book. The gap between the Toyota and the Alpine is 52 seconds, 51.8 to be precise. Third spot still belongs to the #22 United Autosport Oreca in LMP2. Filipe Albuquerque has 38 seconds over the #31 WRT car and then comes Nyck de Vries in the Pro Am leading LMP2 car, the #29 Racing Team Nederland machine.
16 seconds in-arrears from that, is Romain Dumas in the #709
Glickenhaus and Monsieur Dumas is still on his recovery mission. Their brake change on that car took eight
minutes in the pit lane which is why they are down the order at this point. Nyck de Vries still owes us a pit stop
yet. He is fifth overall while running
in the Pro Am LMP2 lead. Meantime, there
is a scrum for third in GTE Am with Matteo Cairoli in the #56 Project 1 Porsche
followed by Augusto Farfus, the Brazilian veteran in the #98 AMR Aston Martin
Vantage. Farfus in addition to World
Endurance is racing in the World TCR championship with a car that is much
lighter but far more powerful. 800 or so
horsepower out of a 2-liter motor with a turbo.
Matteo Cairoli, much like Gianmaria Bruni, is an Italian who
happens to be passionate for Porsche and could see himself as part of the
brand’s future. Cairoli should be a Porsche
factory driver but isn’t yet. LMDh in
the United States in IMSA is on the horizon.
Maybe Stuttgart will have him on their radar. Second in GTE Am belongs to yet another Aston
Martin. Andrew Watson and D’station are
running well. Drive through penalty for
the #20 High Class car for ignoring blue flags and contacting the Intereuropol
car. This penalty was given to Dennis
Andersen and Anders Fjordbach will need to serve it.
It seems that at a circuit like Monza, the Aston has more
top end than the Porsche. It is
advantage to the British car over the German car. Full throttle for 70% of the lap. This is getting to the level of the old, long
Hockenheimring layout that existed for three decades between 1970 and
2001. At the old circuit, which hosted
sports cars only once in a disastrous 1985 race for the World Endurance
Championship, you spent 95% of the lap on full throttle in a Formula 1
car. Paul Dalla Lana and Egidio
Perfetti, the true amateur drivers in both cars, have put in their minimum
drive time for the race to score points.
Both have done well over two hours of driving. Whoa!
Tom Blomqvist is on the grass!
Wait. Hang on a second. That is the sister Jota Sport car, the #38
entry. Anthony Davidson is at the wheel
of that car sharing with Robetto Gonzalez and Antonio Felix Da Costa. Ant Davidson is trudling around making his
way back to the pits. Anthony Davidson
is out of gas. But being out of petrol
should not throw you out in the tooleys like that. He is in limp home mode now. They were good on fuel, supposedly, and
probably may have seen a warning light on the dash.
What could be wrong with that car? They’ve only been on track for four laps in
this stint according to timing and scoring.
Was there another problem with the car that came too late? Ant Davidson is now back up to full
speed. Something in the electronics went
on the fritz there. Juan Pablo Montoya
brings the DragonSpeed entry to the pit lane.
He pits from eighth in class, 11th overall. #38 is in, along with the Ferrari #60 and the
#708 Glickenhaus. Anthony Davidson
called on the radio to say the car was hesitating. They needed to check the car, but it was too
late to dive for the lane before he got there.
Ben Hanley has taken over the DragonSpeed car from Juan
Pablo Montoya and Hanley will take the car to the finish. The reliability issues have really cropped up
today. If the World Endurance
Championship wants to come back to race Monza, some teams will say, “nope. We’re good.
One race at Monza was enough.
Let’s find a different track.” GTE
Pro pit stops from third and fourth for Gianmaria Bruni in Porsche #91 and
Miguel Molina in Ferrari #52. In the
battle for LMP2, the big three teams at United, Jota, and WRT, have all hit
trouble in this season and in this very race.
When they’re good, they’re very good, and when they’re bad,
they’re horrid. Porsche #91 serviced and
sent, and he is down and away, back in the race. Ditto for Miguel Molina. #70 in LMP2 makes a pit stop. Loic Duval stays in the car. Just over an hour left on the board, and the
two protagonists here at Ferrari and Porsche have both gone a lap down to the
sister #92 Porsche. #92 owes us a pit
stop and they were the last car to hit the lane on the previous round of stops
as well. So, the cycle is the same as it
was.
Interestingly, Alessandro Pier Guidi dives to pit lane but
he has managed to save a lap of petrol as well.
Calado did 34 laps on his stint, and Alessandro Pier Guidi has now run
33 laps. So, this is the fuel mileage
they are getting at the Scuderia at their home race at Monza. Filipe Albuquerque uncorks the fastest lap
for the #22 United Autosport car, a 1:39.602.
He is just tenths off the Alpine Hypercar. Sophia Floresch also has run a fastest lap as
has the second place Aston Martin uncorks a 1:47.5. Break out the pizza and the red wine, it is
Happy Hour here at Monza.
We’re going to finish the race at the same time we started
the qualifying session yesterday. On
this Sunday afternoon at Monza, it is cooler ambient temperatures, but more
humid than Saturday was. Porsche #92
comes calling to the lane. As you
were. The #92 Porsche and the #51
Ferrari are in for service. Porsche
gained over Ferrari the last time and it seems both teams are just going for left
side tires. Team manager at AF Corse
Batta Pregliasco has a well drilled pit crew.
The Ferrari will be mired in a huge clump of traffic
including Kamui Kobayashi, in the race leading #7 Toyota. Kobayashi has 59 seconds in hand, almost a
minute, over Matthieu Vaxiviere in the Alpine.
The Alpine is not even as quick as the sixth place Glickenhaus. 155 laps completed for Porsche #92 totaling 558
miles even. The sixth place Glickenhaus
is closing on Nyck de Vries in the LMP2 Am leading Racing Team Nederland
Oreca. For the final podium place in GTE
Am, Matteo Cairoli leads Augusto Farfus.
In LMP2, United and WRT are 40 seconds apart and then it is
a further 17 seconds to Racing Team Nederland.
#56 passes #98 in GTE Am for third spot but it is not official yet. AF Corse and the #83 Ferrari leads with 153
laps complete, 551 miles. Porsche takes
over third place in GTE Am from Aston Martin as we see Racing Team Nederland in
the lane. Nyck de Vries moves up a
place, I think. A warning issued by the
stewards to the Rinaldi Racing Ferrari about obeying blue flags. Christoph Ulrich is in the car, and it is a
guest entry here at Monza this weekend and not a full season car, so no wonder
yours truly can’t find it on the entry list!
Risi Competizione are tenth in LMP2 with the #82 car. Risi Competizione have not had drama, but the
car just has not run they way they wanted it to, for the trio of Felipe Nasr,
Oliver Jarvis, and Ryan Cullen. They are
running behind both High Class and DragonSpeed at this point. Racing Team Nederland drops to fourth behind
Intereuropol Competition. Kamui
Kobayashi has grown his lead to over a minute.
1:03 clear of second spot. #7 was
the pole sitting car. A standard,
straightforward race, so to speak, for Toyota.
It looks like Mike Conway will take over the #7 to the end of the race. He will be the closer.
Romain Dumas is 62 seconds off a podium place with 62
minutes to go. The gap is
shrinking. Take pit stops into
account. But don’t bet your money in
this motor race. Jeepers creepers! Farfus squeezes Cairoli into Curva
Grande! That was squeaky, squeaky there,
look. There’s been lots of cloud cover
and it has been humid. But in the
approaching final hour we’re going to see sunshine here in Italy. We’re thirty seconds away from the beginning
of the last hour of this race. Time
flies when you’re having fun. That was
an outside move by Farfus on Cairoli. Andrew
Haryanto aboard the #88 Dempsey Proton Porsche is trying to unlap himself. Stoffel Vandoorne, the Belgian former F1
driver wriggles his way through as well.
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