So, Sam Bird stays ahead. How far back is Nicky Catsburg? 1.2 seconds. There's a GTE Am Porsche that just went off the road. Hard to tell exactly who it is. Slow zone. John Falb in the lane in the second G-Drive car run effectively by Algarve Pro as Ricky Taylor, too, is back out on the road in the High Class Racing #20 car. Tristan Gommendy, where is he? We have to find him. Ferdinand Habsburg is now in the lane in the #41 WRT car. Louis Deletraz and Ferdinand Habsburg both pit. It is too dry for intermediate tires and the times in Hypercar are way down from what we expected. The #47 Cetilar Racing Ferrari was off the road and back on so we are back to green. There is more spray and more marks in the road. The track is slimy out there. Not what you want.
Braking in a race car is all or nothing, especially at night in a sports car on a track like Le Mans as the #83 AF Corse Ferrari rotates into Arnage, Alessio Rovera at the wheel of it. Dylan Pereira will get caught out in the #33 TF Sport Aston Martin as he has been in the lane. Sophia Floresch is OK. We have just past six hours into this race. Feeling fresh? Yes. So far. Alex Brundle is now in the ARC Bratislava car. Alessio Rovera let the car roll from the corner so he is fine. Filipe Albuquerque spins the #22 LMP2 car. Check that. It is Fabio Scherer. Being the LMP2 leader has been the poison chalice in the race so far. Spit out that drink. You might not want to swallow that or you may not feel too well.
#22 is off the road again at Mulsanne. Franco Colapinto is summoned to the Race Director to have a discussion. They were slowing down for the Slow Zone? I don't remember to be honest. Memo Rojas' full name is Guillermo Rojas. Yours truly did not know that. He is now driving the #30 Duqueine car. Corvette C8.R #63 in the lane and so is Porsche #91. With the new Corvette being mid-engined, the car is rotating completely around where you sit. The C-7-R- with the front engine was rotating around your knees. You sit further forward and are more connected with the road. The Corvette and the Aston Martin were based on road cars and you were a long way away from being in the middle of the car.
Aston Martin has not had a mid engine car yet but they might in the future. We saw Anthony Davidson go off the road and into the gravel. Hang on a second.m We'll get back to Ant Davidson soon, as Racing Team Nederland pits. Job van Uitert will get scrubbed slick tires. Glickenhaus #708 in the lane. Toyota Gazoo Racing run 1-2 while Alpine is third. Another spin for the #44 of Matej Konopka, removing the rear wing. Anthony Davidson was in the gravel and he says he just lost it in the wet being distracted by a spinning Porsche. Konopka in the lane now and the cheese wedge on the rear left corner of the car is busted.
Davidson has to be gutted after that wreck. Stones were wedged between the engine and the oil filter, so oil drained all the way out of the engine it seems and he was out in the rain on cold slick tires. Matej Konopka is in the garage in the #44 ARC Bratislava car now. Matthieu Vaxiviere now has the #36 Alpine into the and out of the pit lane. A routine pit stop. Le Mans can be brutal. She is a cruel mistress. You think you've ticked all the boxes on the car setup and everything is peachy and the timing of one mistake in the rain, ruins your race after getting into the gravel pit. Two cars off the road as Egidio Perfetti is off the road and Felipe Fraga in the #33 Aston Martin, both of those cars spin and.... ugh! #33, the GTE-Am goes off the road! It wouldn't go around the turn and the brakes were locking up.
Why did the Porsche swap ends in the middle of the road in the dry? Did the engine or gearbox pack up? Screech! Bang! The Aston Martin is chugging back to the lane. Felipe Fraga says that something is broken in the rear. Is the rear splitter gone? The car looks like it is crabbing. The Porsche had to have had a mechanical failure and the same is true for the Aston Martin. Maybe there was something gone wrong in the differential. Simon Trummer is going into the garage for the #24 PR1/Mathiasen Oreca. We are also looking for Toyota #8 which might need tires. Safety car B has collected the leading Toyota. Egidio Perfetti is out of the car and fine, but the car is broken. Game over for the #56 Porsche. They are done for the evening.
Perfetti, the confectioner, the man who makes Mento's candies went off to driver's right and crashed and Fraga too, had a puncture and no brakes. How much damage is going on? What did he hit to get a right rear puncture? He hit something, clearly. Maybe debris caused a puncture for the Aston Martin. Toyota #8 in the lane. The #24 PR1/Mathiasen Oreca has an oil leak and an oil cooler problem. The #82 Risi Competizione and #39 Graff LMP2 cars pit. We must again, thank hugely, the marshals in the orange uniforms, for what they do on a volunteer basis. Jose Maria Lopez pits the #7 Toyota. Everyone is cuing up behind the safety car.
Toyota #7 waits in the pit lane to go out. Now the car is released. Jose Maria Lopez had to wait a long while to catch up to the safety car crocodile. Beitske Visser says "we are out due to a crash out of our control and thankfully Sophia Floresch is OK." We are headed back to green flag racing now. Green flag! It is true. We are coming towards the end of the seventh hour in pitch darkness here at La Sarthe. Toyota's are 1-2 while Alpine is third and Glickenhaus are fourth and fifth. 96 laps completed, so, almost 100 laps completed for the leader. WRT lead LMP2. Nicky Catsburg leads GTE Pro in the Corvette C8.R ahead of Ferrari and Porsche with James Calado second in class.
WRT are first and third in LMP2. A Ferrari is slow and it sounds like there's a tire down. Rahel Frey has trouble with Sara Bovy and Michelle Gatting. There's a punctured tire and we've seen loads of debris on the track from all the wrecks. She's stranded on course. Don't damage the bodywork. Ferdinand Habsburg goes into second place. His full name is huge! I can't remember all of his names. He is a genuine Archduke of Austria. He has driven for three different teams and now a fourth in 2021. Fabio Scherer is now fourth in LMP2. Kazuki Nakajima, a two-time winner at Le Mans, for Toyota. Excuse me. Three-time winner.
Raffaele Giammaria has spun the #60 Iron Lynx Ferrari 488 GTE, parking it between the tire barriers as we watch the Cetilar Racing Machine also in a scrap with the third Iron Lynx car of Callum Illott. He snagged Roberto Lacorte in the #47 Cetilar Ferrari. Roberto Lacorte has just spun off the road and crashed into the barriers out of Tertre Rouge! Yikes! Roberto Lacorte kept the welly down and it didn't work. Thank God the medical light didn't illuminate. Sheesh! He was off line on a damp patch on slick tires. Goodness me! Slow zone at marshal's posts five and six. Rui Andrade from Angola is in the lane now in the #25 LMP2.
Big damaged as the wheels are splayed out and that car is dead in the water. It won't go anyplace under it's own steam. They won at Portimao, were third at Spa and had a bad race at Monza. Well, they won't have a good Le Mans either, sadly.
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