59 cars still in this motor race. The LMP2 battle is still hot and heavy. That hasn't changed a lick, mate. GTE Pro leader in the lane. Pier Guidi out and he is buckling in Come Ledogar, the Frenchman. The scrum now in GTE Pro has Sam Bird in the sister #52 AF Corse Ferrari vs. the #79 WeatherTech Porsche and our pal Cooper MacNeil remaining at the wheel of it. An Aston Martin overshoots the chicane on the Mulsanne sttaight as we have seen a pit stop for Racing Team Nederland and the #29 car, their Oreca in LMP2. Frits van Eerd, the boss man, still in the car. We are headed to dusk and join Eurosport with Mark Cole, David Brabham, and Chris Parsons. This is the start of a magical time with the bonfires and the smell of sausages or bacon sandwiches and people cracking open a cold beer.
You get into a rhythm if you are an experienced and confident driver. There are some concerns for Racing Team Nederland. Not a bunch of happy teddy bears in that pit lane. Wayne Boyd is second in class in the #23 United Autosport Oreca he is sharing with Paul di Resta and Alex Lynn. Renger van der Zande are in there and we have not seen a Polish entry at Le Mans since 1934. That is why Intereuropol race the #34 on their car. Jakub Smiechowski, the Polish baker, is in the car. Intereuropol provides bread and pastries for food service on cruise ships and airplanes. It is humid at Le Mans and the wind speed has gone down. WRT are in their first Le Mans but they've run tons in GT3 at the 24 Hours of Spa in the past.
Porsche #91 has been very, very consistent for the factory GTE Pro team. That's Gianmaria Bruni, Richard Lietz, and Frederic Makowiecki. So, we can see Charles Milesi trying very hard to move in on Jakub Smiechowski. Tom Blomqvist pits the #28 Jota Sport LMP2, the son of Stig Blomqvist, rallying ace and the original "Stig". Andre Negrao brings the #36 Alpine Hypercar into the lane from third overall. No sign of a driver change here. They are good, and happy with what is going on with their grandfathered LMP2 car with a bored out Gibson V8. The LMP2 engines are 4.2 liters while the Hypercar has a 4.5 liter motor.
We see that Jan Magnussen was in a spot of bother in the #20 High Class car. Romain Dumas pits the #709 Glickenhaus from fifth place and Ryan Briscoe is the new driver. They are refueling the car and are going for tires, too, look. That Glickenhaus is a retro and beautiful race car. Ryan Briscoe is back on the road down in 16th place. When Peugeot comes back to Le Mans next year, their Hypercar will have no rear wing. You can have just one movable aerodynamic device on the car and the Glickenhaus has an element on the front, but they will have something under the car. Ford said they didn't need a rear wing when they brought out the GT40, but that didn't last too long back in the glory days in the mid to late 1960s.
Dominique Bastien from the United States, 75 years old, he is the oldest driver in the motor race, from West Palm Beach, Florida. But he was born here in France. This is from Dempsey Proton Racing. Julien Andlauer put that car on pole in GTE-Am along with Lance Arnold, the German. Brendon Hartley brings the #8 Toyota to the lane as the sun goes down. The screen is pitted with bugs and debris so it makes it very hard for a driver to see. Use your windscreen tear off's but do it sparingly. The Hypercar has to move under it's own power with hybrid on the front wheel of the Toyota, just as the LMP1 car did. A new ten year accord has been signed between the ACO and IMSA. The two championships will be consistent but the championships might still be different in a way.
Thank goodness manufacturers can invest in things on both ends of the world. That's the best part of the whole deal. Wayne Boyd and Stoffel Vandoorne battle in LMP2. Boyd has just made a pit stop and Vandoorne will close in on him. Wayne Boyd is a Le Mans rookie while Stoffel Vandoorne, he has gone from Formula 1 and into sports cars. Boyd was a club racer and a Formula Ford guy for a while. It appears that the Inception Ferrari has gone off and back on. Rain could be in our future here. We'll have to look at the sky. Jota Sport are discussing engine performance. Roberto Gonzalez is in the sister #38 car and they just pitted that car. Could there be engine woes? We'll find out. Hopefully not.
Kamui Kobayashi runs a personal best lap on lap 66. #7 still leads this motor race. #8 is now running like a train. They are indeed getting back on the button. The Boyd/Vandoorne battle continues. Vandoorne is no slouch, but Boyd is definitely holding his own. Boyd is another chap who is holding a pretty wheel right now. Franco Colapinto is next up followed by James Allen who had a stonking race here last year before it all fell apart towards the end in 2020. Jordan Taylor has now uncorked two personal best laps nine seconds ahead of the #92 Porsche 911 RSR-19 with Michael Christensen at the controls. The order is shuffled in GTE Pro.
Nick Tandy is also pressing hard. They've found a turbocharger, a 17 speed gearbox or something. Yikes! AF Corse have put fresh drivers into the car and Taylor has four or five laps to go in his stint. Tandy is bish bash boshing it, closing up on the #79 WeatherTech Porsche of Cooper MacNeil. Tandy is eating chunks out of his gap to Cooper MacNeil. Wowzers. The gap has been whittled down to 6.7 seconds. Kamui Kobayashi has gone fastest overall in sector two and his fastest first sector but he will have traffic on the road in sector three. The debate is about the gap between Hypercar and LMP2. Hypercar has a better performance window than the ACO was looking for. The Gibson engineer says that the #38 Jota Sport had an issue, with Roberto Gonzalez at the controls, with a dodgy sensor in the car.
Into the lane now is Kobayashi. He bails for the pit. Four and a half hours into the race. Many LMP2 cars are in the top ten. Kobayashi back on track. Jordan Taylor continues to lead GTE Pro by six seconds over Michael Christensen. Taylor and Garcia have been winning races in IMSA both last year and this year. Corvette #64 now fifth in class with Nick Tandy at the controls. That move against Cooper MacNeil was surely in the post. Speaking of in the post, Vandoorne is creeping up on Wayne Boyd and guess who is lurking? Franco Colapinto is back there. Poor old Vandoorne is stuck in the middle of the sandwich. All these blokes ran in Asian Le Mans Series earlier in the year and that was great racing to watch. We talked about it here on the blog.
Wayne Boyd might just come on the radar for a big name brand to race a top level prototype in the not too distant future. Wayne Boyd has a family owned car dealership and sells cars for a living but is also a driver. Nick Tandy also was a windshield fitter on cars before he got into top level racing. Vandoorne is pushing and has a tow on Wayne Boyd ahead sharing the car with Paul Di Resta and Alex Lynn. He has to soak up the pressure as one of the High Class cars spins, the beleaguered #20 rotates right in front of the Toyota! Egad!
Colapinto is coming in a hurry and the Alpine team is told they need to repair the rear lights. Now, this battle is still on. Vandoorne will be scything his way through the backmarkers and Wayne Boyd threads the needle and grows the gap and here comes Colapinto! Holy moly! It's not even dark yet, mate! This is bonkers! The stewards are looking at the #20 incident. Now then, traffic is always a factor in sports car racing and that's what makes this kind of racing so fun to watch. It is four races at the same time in each class. Vandoorne catches a break in traffic. These LMP2 cars are identical specs, because the driver skill is what counts. Stay out of trouble. In traffic, that deal could have gone pear shaped, and thank goodness it didn't.
Fabio Scherer in the United Autosport car is coming up. Romain Rusinov will take over from Franco Colapinto when he hits the lane. Franck Mailleux and Ryan Briscoe in the two Glickenhaus cars are pushing. #708 is dialed in but #709 still needs to find the old sweet spot. Franck Mailleux will definitely make that LMP2 scrum spicy. Franck Mailleux was really going well in the Glickenhaus GT program. He was part of Signatech in LMP2 in the early years of WEC as we watch Jim Glickenhaus in his trademark cowboy hat, watching his cars. Boyd is closing up on Stoffel Vandoorne. The light is fading rapidly.
The change of light, this is when Le Mans becomes like a video game and drivers drop wheels and drag the sharp, stone like gravel onto the road. Brendon Hartley brings the #8 Toyota into the pit lane from second overall. We could see rain coming as the darkness falls here in northwestern France. Don't run too wide. There's lots of clag and stones on the outside of the road. Colapinto has to dig into the talent locker and press the afterburner button to try and catch Boyd. Porsche #92 in the lane and Michael Christensen finishes his stint while Neel Jani gets into the car. He has come into the Porsche GT Team with zero GT experience but he is really coming to the fore now after racing prototypes for a long time. Yifei Ye and Neel Jani live together. Ye has lived with the Jani family. Jani is his landlord.
Corvette #64 in the lane. Light rain coming in ten minutes. Ricard Pera pits the #56 Team Project 1 Am class GT Porsche 911 RSR-19. Matteo Cairoli and Egidio Perfetti are his co-driver's. Come Ledogar and Sam Bird in the two AF Corse Ferrari's have been rotating strategies and now Phil Hanson pits the #22 United Autosport car in LMP2. Pluie a venir en cinq minutes. Come Ledogar still leads Sam Bird but Neel Jani, on his out lap will bring the gap down. Driving standards flag for abusing track limits, the #69 Herberth Motorsports Porsche, Ralf Bohn sharing with Rolf Ineichen, and Robert Renauer.
Porsche #92 speeds down the Mulsanne straight and the sister car has just pitted. There is a green horse outside a bricolage used as a reference on the Mulsanne straight. Corvette Racing drivers use that thing all the time to measure their speed. That's weird! Richard Lietz I believe is now in the #91 Porsche. More drama in the lane as there are some burnt out number panels that Race Control needs to see. Is it a fuse? Nope. It's time for new doors. Sam Bird pits Ferrari #52 from second in GTE Pro and will do a double stint. Darkness is coming. Le Mans at night will be a mesmerizing funhouse of lights and also, rain. Harry Tincknell in the #99 Porsche 911 RSR-19 has gone to the garage.
Ryan Briscoe uncorks a personal best lap as Andre Negrao brings the Alpine to the lane and Matthieu Vaxiviere is into the car but they need to change some parts as Wayne Boyd hits the lane and Franck Mailleux in the other Glickenhaus moves up to try and catch Franco Colapinto in the G-Drive LMP2 racer. Yifei Ye sets personal best in sector one. Nicky Catsburg now at the wheel of Corvette #63 as Ryan Briscoe uncorks the quickest lap at 3:31 but a full four seconds behind the Toyota which is running in the 3:27 range. Watch traction in Arnage. Great traction for the mid engine Corvette C8.R. The Alpine team did have to fix the rear lamps. Their stop was slower than Toyota. \They knew they had to be relying on Toyota having issues as Alexander Sims is in the #64 Corvette C8.R, making up for lost time due to a safety car split.
The drizzle starts.
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