More woe for Glickenhaus as Richard Westbrook spins in the Ford chciane. In replay, from the onboard camera, he just got behind in his steering and had no grip, sailing off the road. His co-driver Ryan Briscoe looks on. Glickenhaus are indeed in a learning year. We welcome Charlie Robertson, the Ginetta driver. He raced here with them in 2018. More off-roading action. Jeepers creepers! Nico Jamin has the wheel of the #32 United Autosport Oreca in LMP2. Nico Jamin, the Frenchman is the starting driver, sharing with Jonathan Aberdein of South Africa and Manuel Maldonado from Venezuela. Simon Trummer and Ben Hanley scrapping for position in LMP2 as well. Nicklas Nielsen is leading in GTE Am right now. The Glickenhaus cars are battling the #34 Intereuropol LMP2 car, the Polish bakery sponsored car with Alex Brundle, the Brit (son of Formula 1 driver and 1988 Le Mans winner for Jaguar, Martin Brundle), at the controls sharing with Jakub Smiechowski of Poland and Renger van der Zande of Holland.
Neel Jani and company have their rebuilt car after the accident we saw in practice and qualifying yesterday. He says that the car feels pretty much the same. Kevin Estre, Neel Jani, and Michael Christensen, they will have a lot of work to do. In GTE-Pro, we can see the scrap between Corvette C8.R #64, Ferrari #52, and Porsche #79. In the old days, reliability and fuel saving was massively important because the cars were fragile. Today, the cars are far more reliable. Filipe Albuquerque and Oliver Jarvis battle in LMP2. United Autosport vs. Risi Competizione. Panis Racing chasing WRT as well, with two ex Formula 1 drivers, Robert Kubica and Will Stevens.
The track is coming back and the times are dropping. The ACO wanted the Hypercars to be no quicker than 3:30 for a lap time, but they are now in the 3:24 range. This issue also happened in the glory days of Group C back in the 1980s. The Balance of Performance regulations have to be continually updated. Mike Conway uncorks the fastest first sector time of the motor race running in the 3:33 range. Will Stevens goes around Robert Kubica being followed by Alex Lynn. In GTE Pro, the top three move away. Miguel Molina is closing on Tommy Milner and behind these two chaps, we still have Laurens Vanthoor in the #79 WeatherTech Porsche 911 RSR-19.
Since the chicanes were added on the Mulsanne straight in 1990, this race has increasingly become more of a sprint race. Save the fuel but keep up the speed. One brake change is all teams want to do, honestly. Get as far out on the road as possible, while also uncorking qualifying laps all the time. 12 hours from now, in the darkness, you still need to know you must find more speed to catch your rival. What is expected from the driver in that stint? Get the most from the car but don't use your stuff up too soon.
The temperatures should be scorching hot, but it isn't. The window for softer tires at night will be larger/ Last week was hot. Next week will be hot. We have good conditions for the time being. The #39 is off the road, very deep into the second Mulsanne chicane. That's Arnold Robin in the #39 SO24 Graff Racing LMP2 car sharing with Maxime Robin and Vincent Capillaire, an all French trio. Miguel Molina is pushing hard trying to catch Tommy Milner in the Corvette. Miguel Molina is still pressing Tommy Milner, running Harry Flatters into Indianapolis. Track limits are a factor. Edoardo Freitas does not like it when you go over the white line on the outside of the road.
Only now have the Hypercars begun lapping the leaders in GTE Pro. Yikes! In the LMP1 days they'd start lapping the slower cars three laps into the motor race. Egad! There is a lowering ceiling and there's a six kilometer wind blowing. It's 19 degrees Celsius, about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. We are going to see a bit more rain. No thunderstorms as originally forecast. We see a move by the Ferrari on the Corvette down the Mulsanne! Wow! This is bonkers! The Ferrari does make the move and the WeatherTech Porsche is right in the fight with Laurens Vanthoor at the wheel of it.
Sam Bird, his co-driver seems happy. Laurens Vanthoor is creeping up on Tommy Milner. Will the Corvette be on form on slicks? That could be. All three of these cars are very evenly matched and each one of them is a mid engine car, the Corvette, the Ferrari, and the Porsche. Use the LMP2 car as a pick, as a slipstream. Into the lane, Inception Racing. We saw Ollie Milroy damage that car on Thursday night in a crash. Milroy sharing with Ben Barnicoat and Brendon Iribe. That is the #71 Ferrari 488 GTE. All three drivers in that car are rookies here at Le Mans. Inception Racing is part of this team. Barnicoat is a customer McLaren driver. They don't do a GTE car, so they are using a Ferrari. The McLaren is a GT3 car.
Pit stop time for the #23 United Autosport LMP2 of Alex Lynn. Fuel going in, windscreen being cleaned. Lynn sharing with Paul di Resta and Wayne Boyd. The #34 Intereuropol Competition car is in the lane, too, the Polish bakery car. Laurens Vanthoor is running well in the #79 WeahterTech Porsche. Dries Vanthoor, his brother, in his first Le Mans for HubAuto, in a Porsche, asked his brother about driving Le Mans and Laurens said, "bro, you'll have to find out for yourself, mate. I'm not going to help you. You have the skill. Go for it." Drivers want to drive the perfect lap for as many laps as they can. Sebastien Buemi is charging through the field, still.
Sebastien Buemi uncorks a 3:27.966 as Richard Westbrook has a warning for track limits in the #709 Glickenhaus. The rain lights are being shut off. They help in the rain, but are brutally bright strobe lights in the dry, burning your eyes. Trouble too for the #30 Duqueine Team Oreca. WRT #41 in the lane for service. That #30 car is being shared by Tristan Gommendy from France, Memo Rojas from Mexico, and Austrian, Rene Binder. What a crazy start to this race we saw. Fun to watch but a bugaboo, a pain, for the drivers out on the circuit with all that rain. It's the conditions that give team owners and managers, a bad case of heartburn. Break out the heartburn meds and water! Jeepers creepers!
Laurens Vanthoor is lining Tommy Milner up for a pass out of Tertre Rouge and onto the Mulsanne straight. Maybe Tommy Milner's tires are knackered. Mike Conway uncorks a 3:29.6 moving away from Sebastien Buemi in the sister Toyota. Robin Frijns in the WRT car runs his fastest lap so far and now we see Mike Conway in the lane from the lead after his second stint. That's a double stint. An 11 lap tire stint first and now a 12 lap stint. The first two laps run behind the safety car. This is a fuel stop for the Hypercars, for the Toyota's. Alpine can run 11 laps but they've also done the same number and we don't know the fuel strategy for the boys at Glickenhaus.
Buemi will stay in the car. This is a third stint for the driver but a second stint for the slick tire as we see more rain possibly coming? A droplet of water on the camera lens, eh? Nico Lapierre now second and a drive through penalty for track limits for the #72 HubAuto Porsche. Dries Vanthoor will see that track limits message on the driver info computer screen in the cockpit. He cannot keep that car on the island. Check that. It is Maxime Martin at the controls now and that Porsche must be tail happy in these inbetween conditions. The GTE Pro and GTE Am cars are the exact same specification. Glickenhaus #708 in the lane, with Olivier Pla still at the wheel of it.
23 laps done and dusted for the leading Toyota. Poor old Kevin Estre has had a pear shaped motor race so far. Maxime Martin may not have a radio, but that screen is going to tell him. Rely on your computer screen, sunshine. Perhaps the driver information computer screen is not working right but that needs to be fixed. It has to be working. There's a transponder wire on the roof of the car. Into the lane comes the #36 Alpine as well, look. It is so hard for a driver to go out with only one fresh tire and three worn tires which makes a pig's breakfast out of the balance of the car.
Toyota #8, ping, back into second spot. Maxime Martin is indeed given a drive through penalty for track limits abuse which is easy to do because Le Mans is so amazingly wide. Karting corner, it used to be grass, but with the pavement runoff, you can run wide if you need. If it were a barbed wire fence, you'd be in a major load of problems. Brabham hopes to race at Le Mans according to company boss David Brabham. He is reporting for Eurosport, and they have just launched a GT2 spec car. The BT62 was a show car. They will race in New Zealand GT3, and so, we will see Brabham in a number of different championships in years to come.
Alex Brundle continues giving the Intereuropol Oreca a good run as we see him chasing Ben Hanley while the battle is on between Norman Nato in the #70 RealTeam Racing car and the #82 Risi Competizione car of Oliver Jarvis. They fly around the #33 TF Sport Aston Martin. Norman Nato won the Formula E finale in Berlin in Germany last weekend. Former F1 and sports car driver, a Le Mans winner, Alexander Wurz, is part of the FIA Race Direction team. Wurz says that Le Mans throws you a curveball all the time no matter what car you are driving. It was hard to decipher Olivier Pla's collision in the Glickenhaus. Actually, Alexander Wurz is representing Toyota. Check that. Apologies for that misunderstanding.
Hypercar are running unbelievably fast times with 30% less power and more weight than the old LMP1 cars. The Hypercars are so much closer to road going automobiles. Alexander Wurz is a former winner and did so with Peugeot alongside Marc Gene and Mr. David Brabham. Charlie Robertson, too, he wants to be back at Le Mans and in a top flight sports car because the sport should be hitting an upward trajectory in the next number of years. Ginetta and Lawrence Tomlinson have done well in the past. Their LMP1 car from 2019-2020 was stunning as it was driven by Charlie Robertson and Mike Simpson. We saw that car during the Super Season and the program was ended due to this ridiculous COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic.
The battle is on for GTE-Am in fifth spot in the class between Mikkel Jensen in the Ferrari, Matteo Cressoni in the Ferrari, and Jeroen Bleekemolen also in a Ferrari. Rinaldi, Iron Lynx, and CarGuy. Car #22 is being investigated for some type of infringement in pit lane, the Filipe Albuquerque driven United Autosport #22 sharing with Fabio Scherer and Phil Hanson. A Portuguese, an Englishman, and a Swiss driver. We could see a dry race tonight because the rain has moved away and there shouldn't be anymore coming across the Atlantic Ocean.
Filipe Albuquerque chasing Sean Gelael for eighth spot. United Autosport vs. Jota. No factory Aston Martin's but John Gaw and AMR are assisting cars. The #98 Paul Dalla Lana driven Aston is being run by the factory, sharing with Marcos Gomes and Nicki Thiim. Richard Lietz is making a move on Tommy Milner, or at least trying to do so. He is sixth in class now. Daniel Serra has now moved past Alessandro Pier Guidi for Ferrari as Antonio Garcia runs fourth. Third I believe is still the #79 WeatherTech Porsche. What a competitive GTE Pro race we have boiling away here, ladies and gentlemen! Yikes!
The first lap was brutal but now the race is settling down, finally! It is getting darker and the rain may come soon. Will the wind pick up? That's a fair question. We are coming to the end of another racing hour. Early in the race when a car is right on the knife edge, you don't want that. The track is probably at it's worst and is green. But the rubber being put back into the surface will cause the track to grip up but then the car is going to understeer. Milner is battling with a loose condition but the Corvette C8.R might just come alive.
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