Jota and United Autosport continue to scrap for eight in LMP2 between Filipe Albuquerque and Sean Gelael. Daniel Serra and Alessandro Pier Guidi are scrapping for the lead in GTE Pro as both United Autosports cars are in the lane, #22 and #23, Filipe Albuquerque and Alex Lynn. Other LMP2 cars are in the lane. No retirements yet. Wow. Amazing. Toyota #7 in the lane as well for a third pit stop. They stopped early for a slow puncture on the right rear tire earlier. Our pal, Tom Gaymore from Eurosport, recovering from illness, he is still able to get information from home. Now then, the battle is going on at Toyota and we now know Tommy Milner got biffed in the rear by a Ferrari leaving the grid to go out on the formation lap. Wowzers!
Oh my gosh! Toyota #8 gets biffed out of the way, again! Wow! That was an LMP2 car through the Dunlop curves. Buemi is going to take more risks than his team mate Mike Conway. That LMP2 car should have been warned on his driver info computer. That was the #39 SO24 Graff car, Arnold Robin at the wheel of it. Goodness gracious. Buemi must be thinking, gosh, have I got a bull's eye on the side of my car?! Sebastien Buemi is on fire! He is pushing hard! The red mist is down. But his crew chief says, "calm down, mate. Don't freak out." Many teams with Am drivers have spotters to tell them when they are being overtaken, much like NASCAR and IndyCar in the United States.
The Ferrari battle continues in GTE Pro. Ferrari are looking at running Hypercar or LMDh. It would be great to have Ferrari back. They are going for Hypercar. They want to build their own car. They won't settle for buying a car from someone else. They are coming in in 2023 with a team to be managed by AF Corse. So, their GT drivers, they will be on the payroll and there are some top drivers and riders who could race for them. Kimi Raikkonen may be one and another could be motorcycle champion Valentino Rossi. Felipe Fraga leads GTE Am in the #33 TF Sport Aston Martin Vantage. Aston Martin lead GTE Am.
Felipe Fraga is being pursued hotly by Niki Thiim. This is a marvelous GTE Am scrap for two Aston Martin's. 30 laps on the board for the GTE Am leader. Whoa! A spin on the wet grass! That looks like the High Class LMP2 car, on the exit of the esses before Tertre Rouge. That was a lurid skid! Alessandro Pier Guidi is moving away from Daniel Serra and Earl Bamber is next up as he has taken over the #79 WeatherTech Porsche 911 RSR-19. Antonio Garcia remains fourth with the fastest second sector in the #63 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R. Some great racing in GTE Pro. United Autosport has three cars in this race. Two British run cars and an American run car. The two WRT cars are nose to tail battling for sixth in class. Robert Kubica being monstered by Robin Frijns.
He will have a decent tow through to Mulsanne corner. He wants to slingshot off the corner, but not quite, as they scream towards Indianapolis corner again and now into Arnage and Ross Gunn is all over the Ferrari's six right now. Wow. Gunn got snookered by an LMP2 car and Niki Thiim is second in GTE-Am at the wheel of the #33 TF Sport car. You don't want to be too manipulated. Trouble brewing for #33 as a pit stop infringement for Felipe Fraga might be in the future. There are safety rules that must be adhered to as the #71 Inception Racing Ferrari is slow! It is. Ben Barnicoat is trundling to the lane with a right rear puncture. Oooh! He drivess off into the gravel trap and turning into the second half of the Porsche Curves.
He was using the runoff area to stay out of the way. If you are speeding with a deflated tire, it becomes a giant sawblade and destroys the back end of the car, all the bodywork and the rear components with the suspension and so forth. Brendon Iribe should be the bloke who is next into the car. Drive through penalty for incorrect pit procedure for the #30 Duqueine LMP2. They are having a radio issue as well in 55th spot with Rene Binder at the wheel of it. That is going to be a long slog for those boys through this motor race. Mike Conway's most recent pit stop was slower than Sebastien Buemi in the sister Toyota.
The LMP2 scrap is finding GTE Am traffic as Ross Gunn has gone around Nicklas Nielsen and there are spots of rain in the pit lane. The whole Aston collective running together. A scheudled stop for Sebastien Buemi in the #8 Toyota. Robin Frijns is pressing Robert Kubica for the two WRT LMP2's. What a scrap. Philippe Sinault at Signatech was presented with the Spirit of Le Mans award. Rain appearing on the camera lenses. Yikes. Brendon Iribe is indeed in the Inception Racing Ferrari. Stops for Glickenhaus, both cars. Franck Mailleux is now in the #708 and Romain Dumas in the #709. Olivier Pla was too far forward on the brake bias and the wheels didn't turn. He'd gone straight to the gravel and the sister car also went straight on.
No one was being overly excited. It was simply cold tires treading on a wet track in the start of the biggest race of the year. Robin Frijns moves by Robert Kubica. Glickenhaus are fourth and fifth in Hypercar, 14th and 17th overall. Tire debris related changes for #7 and a broken wheel from contact with the #8. Toyota have to go through this stage of expect the unexpected. The punctures are affecting them as well and they have a sensitive tire pressure sensor. You want it to be sensitive at a place like Le Mans. Corvette #64 needed more fuel so they had a longer stop but every time they go on full tanks, they will lose time.
Filipe Albuquerque moves around Robert Kubica into Mulsanne corner. The weather at Tertre Rouge seems to be OK as no one has their wipers on. It is still slick in the Dunlop curve and coming out of Indianapolis according to Marco Sorensen who just had a pit stop. Lots of folks have the brollies up, the umbrellas. Toyota #7 continues in the race lead. Will the rain get heavier? We are now halfway through the third hour of the motor race. What am I running into? Use the windscreen wipers once the Rain X is not working, but you'll have clag all over the screen too, oil, bugs and the like. You cannot see what is over the other side. All these trees around the course means that only have tunnel vision. You can be screaming down the Mulsanne straight and come to a curve where the rain is tipping down.
Local Yellow and a spin for the #18 Absolute Racing Porsche 911 RSR-19 which got clattered. Satoshi Hoshino biffs Andrew Haryanto out of the way. Matteo Cairoli is really scrapping against Francesco Castellaci. So, Team Project 1 Porsche vs. AF Corse Ferrari. In a closed cockpit car, which every car here is, it is hard to tell if you have rain. In an old open top car, you could have more feel fo how much rain there is as it's super slippery at the Dunlop curve. The wet weather might be an advantage for Corvette Racing. We shall see. Tire temperature is key. The Corvette is using the same Michelin tires as they do in IMSA in the states. The Porsche's tires light up like flipping a switch, but the Corvette takes time to get it together.
Takuma Aoki in the innovative car is off the road. That is the SRT41 car for the drivers with disabilities. Takuma is one of the special needs drivers along with Nigel Bailly, who have assistance to drive with hand controls as both of them have had injuries in racing where they now must travel using their wheelchairs out of the car. The rain is very light. It is not enough at all to go onto wets although Tommy Milner very nearly slides off the road. Slow zone and we see pit stops for GT cars and for the #7 Toyota. Kevin Estre in the #92 Porsche. A full four tire change for Mike Conway in the #7 Toyota. They've run an eight lap stint and now a nine lap stint. That should have been 12-13 laps on tires. More pit work for GTE cars including the Iron Lynx car, one of them.
Kamui Kobayashi takes over the #7. #7 has been defeated by #8 for the last three races here at Le Mans. Driver change, and go out straight into a slow zone at 80 kilometers an hour. The pit lane speed limit is 60 kilometers an hour as the slow zone ends. Kamui Kobayashi now leads Sebastien Buemi by eight seconds. The #8 has had a clatter with a few cars already. They need continuity. Everyone needs to settle down and chill out here. The in and out lap times are pretty similar. Kobayashi has done four stops and Buemi has done three as we watch Nicklas Nielsen in the #83 Ferrari. Drive through penalty for Aston Martin #777 for speeding in the slow zone. That's the Satoshi Hoshino, Tomonobu Fujii, Andrew Watson car.
Anthony Davidson who was leading in LMP2, he is off the road, downhill in the esses and Andrew Haryanto has also spun while Davidson also spins into the gravel trap. Maybe there's oil or water on the circuit. The two incidents were totally separate. Wow! Antonio Felix Da Costa has just cgotten out of that car. Robert Kubica is leading but needs to stop. Franco Colapinto has just taken over the #26 G-Drive car. The #84 car is being checked over in the garage and in the lane we have Henrik Hedman and Roberto Mehri as well. Mike Wainwright also has a problem with the #86 GR Racing Porsche, and is stone last, in 61st place. Job van Uitert is chasing Franco Colapinto. G-Drive vs. Racing Team Nederland. Colapinto, the Argentinian, is the youngest driver in the field.
Francesco Castellaci is being warned about track limits as well. He could have been in the battle with Iron Lynx car #85. Slow zone for recovering Anthony Davidson. He is well off the road and so that will take a long while for him to be dragged up the hill and he will lose a lap. With a car that competitive, they could very well lose the race in LMP2. He has plummeted to 18th in the class. Wow. He is a lap down to Franco Colapinto. Job van Uitert leads LMP2 Pro Am as well over RealTeam Racing and the #70 Oreca of Loic Duval.
Nicklas Nielsen in the lane for the #83 AF Corse car and there is a driver change there. Will it be Francois Perrodo or Alessio Rovera? Maximum stint time is four hours in a six hour stretch. Physically, Le Mans is not too worrisome because of the long straights, but mentally, on the straights and also in the corners, is tough. Any driver can do a maximum of six hours, but no more in the race of 14 hours total driving. Ferrari #51 pits from the lead in GTE Pro with Alessandro Pier Guidi. Daniel Serra now leads GTE Pro in the sister #52 car. How long do we have before Toyota #8 pits? Sebastien Buemi is halfway through this stint. He has been running 13 lap stints.
Job van Uitert has more experience than Franco Colapinto in LMP2 and is thinking of the long game. Don't consume too much energy, so turn off the air conditioning. He needs so airflow, some fresh, clean air. The air conditioning sometimes does not work. Sometimes, it can get a little stuffy in the cockpit. Renger van der Zande is being chased by Charles Milesi. Milesi has run very well and did a brilliant qualifying run last time out at Monza. Milesi wants to make a move down through the Ford chicane. Charles Milesi has closed in on Renger van der Zande and here comes the #708 Glickenhaus as well. #709 that is, Romain Dumas at the wheel of it, in 15th.
It sounds like the #708 Glickenhaus is more hooked up than the sister car. He splits the LMP2 cars before the next chicane on the Mulsanne straight. Glickenhaus seems to be struggling to find the balance on #709 compared to #708, according to Richard Westbrook. Romain Dumas moves into 13th ahead of Renger van der Zande in LMP2 for Intereuropol Competition. Anthony Davidson is now a lap and two minutes behind after his excursion into the gravel. So, he is way down the order and he won't gain behind the second safety car either. Jota are way down in 19th spot. The car is fine but he was distracted by the #18 Absolute Racing Porsche going off the road.
We are coming again to the end of anothe racing hour. The marshals understand as a group how things are going because they are with the FIA WEC at every race.
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