This is Jules Gounon's time to deliver. He nearly did so in this motor race a few years ago, here at Paul Ricard, when he drove for Bentley. The Emil Frey Lexus pounced and won that race, five years ago here at Paul Ricard. Watch out for pit errors, too many mechanics over the line, a rogue wheel escaping. Gounon is back on track but has lost time to the Lamborghini with Albert Costa at the controls. Look out for the demarcation line between the pit lane and the track. Jules Gounon has not driven in the dark until now and the #32 Audi is back on track. Are the taillights working properly? Yes. They seem to be. That was sorted swiftly.
Dries Vanthoor now behind the wheel of the #32 Audi. That answers the question. From Signes through the Beauseilles. Vanthoor, slicing and dicing his way through traffic. 119 laps, 432 miles. Last year's race ran to 182 laps, a record. 1,050 kilometers, 661 miles. Jules Gounon is nw out of sequence and Nico Muller needs a pit stop aboard the #46 Audi. Vanthoor wants by Jules Gounon in the Mercedes and it didn't work. The #97 Aston Martin is still pounding around there, Andrew Howard driving I believe. Rigon, Muller, Costa, Gounon, Vanthoor, the top five. Daniel Juncadella uncorks the fastest lap at 1:54.8. Who is the sleeper? It is BMW #50 with Max Hesse taking it to the flag. So, he should run well for the next hour and 55 minutes.
Vanthoor showing his intentions. He knows where he is placing the car, running in fifth place, just behind Jules Gounon. The Mercedes gains speed breaking away from the Audi. Davide Rigon is in the pit lane and will hand over to Antonio Fuoco for the final stint aboard the #71 Iron Lynx Ferrari. Rigon is strapping his co-driver into the car and the mechanics change the tires and the fuelers get on with their work too. Reconnect the radio, the window net, the drink bottle, and so on. Fuoco may not need a drink bottle for the last third of this race.
Rigon, after his accident at Spa last year, has come back completely fit. Fuoco takes the Ferrari #71 back on track. Nico Muller leads on the road and now, Nico Muller has leapfrogged Jules Gounon and Dries Vanthoor, both. Indeed, Gounon hung on over Vanthoor. Dries Vanthoor fourth and Jules Gounon is going for a pass. Vanthoor did very well in qualifying. Nico Muller to the lane and Fred Vervisch will take the WRT/VR46 Audi to the end. He will need to make a final pit stop. Vervisch with a top mounted helmet vent with a cold air tube that attaches to it on the top. Vervisch will go out and try to keep up the pace.
He will drop down the order and then start working through, gaining places back at the end of the next hour but may lose them when he makes another pit stop. A puncture for the Legret/Mies/Niederhauser entry, the #25 Sainteloc Audi. So that one will need a new tire, or a whole new set of boots, to get to the end. Punctures in this race have affected Lamborghini's and Audi's, the rear engine cars. No worries about tires in the cooler night temperatures, but the left rear tire and the shoulder have been overheated. Check the degree of rear camber to avoid loading up the shoulder of the tire. With an hour and 45 minutes left on the board, Antonio Fuoco leads by 14 seconds over Albert Costa, with Dries Vanthoor third.
Jules Gounon is fourth. Race Director Alain Adam makes another penalty announcement. Time penalty, five seconds, to car #50 for speeding in the pit lane, to be served at the next pit stop. That's the Rowe Racing BMW, Max Hesse at the controls. Miguel Molina is ahead of him and behind him is Fred Vervisch and the positions for him will ebb and flow, chop and change. Whoops! Contact, and the #90 Mad Panda Motorsports Mercedes AMG GT3 is sent spinning. That will be one mad panda! Franco Girolami has spun that automobile, or he got a little "love tap" as they say, that sent him spinning like a top.
That is one grumpy panda. Pit stop time for somebody and it is the #32 of Dries Vanthoor. He may have clipped the Mada Panda Mercedes and has damage, out of third spot. Roll the dice when passing the backmarkers. The left rear tire has to be replaced. They are topping up the petrol. They are putting the dollies under it and it is going to the garage! In replay, we piece this together, and the Audi came together with the Benz. They met in the middle. Racing incident, and Vanthoor had the tail step out. Gounon, right to the back of the Audi. Here's it all again in real time from the onboard camera. Thwack! There was contact, left rear of the Audi to the right rear of the Mercedes. Aye yaye yaye yaye yaye.
Vanthoor knew there was a problem thinking, "why didn't the dingbat give me room?!" Vanthoor committed to a move but it just was not on. They'll lose a lap or more. Sheesh. Fuoco leads the race followed by Albert Costa, Jules Gounon, Miguel Molina, Max Hesse (with a penalty in his future), and Frederic Vervisch sixth. The car will lose a lap and the mechanics have the sticky tape, the gaffer tape out. Whoever invented the racing gaffer tape, the racing duct tape, ought to be a billionaire several times over.
The team is looking for residual damage. The impact angle can do the damage. Fred Vervisch is sixth, 1.4 seconds in-arrears of Max Hesse who'll lose a place with his penalty. The panda has to go back into his cage, simmer down, munch on some bamboo. Game over for the #90 team here at Le Castellet. Max Hesse is still going. The sister Rowe Racing BMW M4 GT3 is 15th overall with Nick Yelloly at the wheel, sharing of course, with Nicky Catsburg and Augusto Farfus. Catsburg had a puncture earlier in the race and lost time being in limp home mode.
Also down the order or out, is Patric Niederhauser, and also, Vincent Abril came to the lane and never took the #111 JP Motorsports McLaren out again. Game over for those boys. Sadly, we never saw any heroics then from Dennis "The Menace" Lind. Boo hoo. That's a sad development. He'll be back. No need to break out the world's smallest violin to play a sad tune on. Speaking of the smallest violin and sad songs, Dries Vanthoor, out of the car. Game over for the #32 WRT Audi. Play again, soon, mate. One clang against the Mercedes means the driveshaft got tweaked which could give the gearbox a wicked case of the shudders and send harmonic vibrations through it. It's like hitting your funny bone or striking a gong with a mallet.
Once again, game over. The best placed Audi is the Rossi/Vervisch/Muller car and by his own admission "The Doctor" was losing places hand over fist during his stint. How the tides turn. Team 46 might be on the podium. Where's Valentino Rossi? He's probably partying on the terrace with some champagne. Oh yeah. Podium time. It's time to boogie! Well, I guess we'll see. Vervisch must push. Not time to party right now. There's your party. Look at all those lights on the terrace. The stewards are investigating the incident between #32 and #90 as we speak.
Dries Vanthoor, Kelvin van der Linde, and Charles Weerts are all disgusted. No use talking to them right now. McLaren #111 and #112 both came in. Vincent Abril had the fire extinguisher in the McLaren deploy inside and outside the car, covering him in foam and real cold CO2. Vincent is fine, and has been treated by the circuit medics. He did have irritation to his eyes. Game over for the McLaren. Game over as well for the #25 Sainteloc Audi. Busted wishbone on the suspension. That motorcar will go no further. Broke suspension, insant retirement.
Oh yes! There's always a sting in the tail here at Paul Ricard. Or a sting in the tale, more correctly. We may see other cars' races go pear shaped. Keep it clean. Fred Vervisch is trying to gain ground on the #50 Max Hesse BMW M4 GT3. Vervisch has fought his way back into the fight. But look at this. Vervisch has caught Hesse and is going to go for the pass down the front stretch. Bish, bash, bosh. He sticks the pass. 9.8 seconds up the road, Miguel Molina in the #51 Iron Lynx Ferrari, the white one as opposed to the #71 painted bright yellow.
Vervisch has clear road and he will make up a spot or two in the next hour and 35 minutes. Vervisch is clear of traffic, and as a result runs a tenth of a second ahead of Molina. Vervisch, with clear road ahead, can start making up the deficit. Max Hesse isn't close enough. His biggest deal is keeping his own gap secure over the Aston Martin in seventh place in the hands of Maxime Martin. In the Silver division, Fabian Schiller is the leader in the #777 Mercedes. We've barely seen that car all evening, but Schiller is staying competitive aboard the Al Manar Racing by HRT entry. Marius Zug aboard the #99 Attempto Racing Audi, he runs second in the Silver rankings now.
Third is Thomas Drouet, the Frenchman, who has taken over the other Akkodis ASP Mercedes. Zug is ninth with the sister Attempto Audi next up. Dennis Marschall, the German, has taken over the sister #66 Attempto Audi is just four seconds down on Marius Zug, his countryman. Zug is catching Schiller but needs to book it to get to eighth place as we see Thomas Drouet in 11th spot. Drouet is coming back into the picture for sure. He is still going for a Silver class win. Marschall's Audi is a Pro class car. Inception Racing, the #7 McLaren, they are in the lead of the Gold Cup and now, Brendon Iribe has been relieved of his driving duties by Frederik Schandorff.
What you do in the first five hours of this race is irrelevant. It just doesn't matter. Once it is all done, put it out of your mind, and focus only on the sixth and final hour. That's where the money, the trophies, will be earned. In the good old days of 24-hour races, they were not sprints. They were true endurance events. Daytona, Le Mans, Nurburgring, Spa, any 24-hour event you can think of, the drivers and the cars, had to last. Endurance, that's the keyword. You could race for maybe the final three hours and just wait for your competition to run into trouble, taking it relatively easy.
Bas Leinders is the team boss at Inception Racing. He has been in both roles, as a driver, and a team boss. 12th overall is where the McLaren is in the running order. Through Virage de la Tour and Virage du Pont. Behing Fred Schaandorff is the Iron Dames Ferrari in the hands of Michelle Gatting, and third on the road in the Gold Cup is Lucas Auer driving the #57 Winward Mercedes. The order has shuffled with an hour and a half to go. The constant is that we've seen three cars scrapping at the top of the shop. Ferrari #71, Lamborghini #63, and Mercedes #88.
Down the order is the ROFGO Audi, the #30 car that we've seen have all the troubles in the motor race. Thomas Neubauer at the wheel of it currently, running 19th in the overall. They had the one drama where the car spun and flattened two of the tires. But it was such a slow half an in lap to the pit lane, that's where the team lost all their time. Michelle Gatting and her team mates have done well in this race after a spin during qualifying and an earlier pit stop infraction. Go out, set an objective, a lap time, and keep within your target. Stick to it taking into account traffic and so forth. Normally, you will find yourself in a good spot. 17th in the overall, the Ferrari, chasing Jordan Love next up in 16rh place.
Love is managed by Mark Blundell, himself a successful driver in both Formula 1 and sports cars. This is the #4 Haupt Racing Team Mercedes. Love, the Australian, sharing with Jannes Fittje of Germany and Alain Valente of Switzerland. We've not called their number in a while. 133 laps now completed. 483 miles. Last year's race ran 182 laps. Lucas Auer in the Winward Mercedes, formerly raced in DTM and is the nephew of Formula 1 veteran Gerhard Berger. Auer runs third in Gold Cup. Thomas Drouet passes Dennis Marschall, catching both Marius Zug and Fabian Schiller. It is easier to drive in full daylight or full darkness.
Twilight is a harder spot to drive in. Henrique Chaves, the Portuguese driver, he leads in Pro-Am aboard the #188 Garage 59 McLaren. There is additional lighting at the fa end of the track here at Paul Ricard. 54 cars were on the entry list and 52 cars started the race. Of those 52, 43 remain in the race but a few others are laps down now. We've lost 12. So, we have 39 or so cars on the road. 39-41. Andrea Bertolini in the #52 AF Corse Ferrari is next up in the Pro-Am class. Bertolini has been a mainstay at Ferrari's GT3 team for years and won the FIA GT1 World Championship with Maserati in the glorious MC12 supercar many years ago.
Bertolini second in class as we have a spinner in Signes. From 43rd spot, it is the #11 Tresor by Car Collection Silver division Audi, currently in the hands of Lorenzo Patrese in 43rd spot. He has flat spotted his Pirelli P Zero tires. That was a scary spin in the darkness, spinning like a top and not knowing where you are with cars having to check up and risk of a secondary incident. 25 minutes before the final hour the final pit stops. We will see two Sprint Cup and then the biggie, the 24 Hours of Spa. Antonio Fuoco leading by 15 seconds over Albert Costa with 136 laps on the board, 494 miles. Getting close to having completed 500 miles in this event.
Spa Francorchamps will be revised which we have seen in other sports car races this year, making the track safer. Revisions have also been made at Eau Rouge. Antonio Fuoco is making things look easy. The Iron Lynx Ferrari has been running very well. Albert Costa is losing time to Fuoco. Fuoco has no pressure and he'll just have to maintain a pace. Right now it is his race to lose. He is accelerating toward the Mistral straight another time. Fuoco will have clear sailing. Let's have a Captain Cook at the VMAX top speeds. Nicolas Scholl fastest in the Attempto Racing #99 Audi at 289 kilometers an hour (180 and 5/8ths miles an hour).
Next up on the speed chart, three cars are tied at 288 kilometers an hour (180 miles an hour even). Baptiste Moulin in the #163 Emil Frey Racing Lamborghini, Jean-Baptiste Simmenauer in the #30 ROFGO Audi R8, and Valentin Hasse Clot in the #97 Beechdean AMR Aston Martin Vantage GT3. After that, it is Brendon Iribe in the #7 Inception Racing McLaren 720S GT3 at 287 kilometers an hour (179 and 3/8ths miles an hour). 15 second time penalty for the #32 WRT Audi for causing a collision, but it's irrelevant as the car is out of the race. Dries Vanthoor will have to admit his mistake for the contact. It was an honest mistake. He could not do anything about the contact.
Yipes! Running wide out of Signes, it is Jules Gounon aboard the #88 Akkodis ASP Mercedes. He is behind the tail end cars through Beauseilles. Ugh. I'm third, 16 seconds down on the race leader and trying to sort through traffic. How frustrating! The last time Ferrari won a race at Paul Ricard was the finale in 2020 here with Come Ledogar, Tom Blomqvist, and Alessandro Pier Guidi. Pier Guidi won the title that year as well. Mercedes #88 is 32.5 seconds behind the leader and 18 seconds down on Albert Costa in the Lamborghini.
Will things swing in a different direction on final pit stops? Will there be an incident? Will there be debris on the road? We'll have to see. We don't know. Nobody does. More speed calculations coming up. Top speed through Signes corner. Lorenzo Ferrari aboard the #57 Winward Mercedes has the fastest trap speed through there. 244 kilometers per hour (152 and a half miles an hour), followed by Nico Muller in the #46 WRT/VR46 Audi at 235 kilometers per hour (146.875 miles an hour), Jannes Fittje in the #4 Mercedes for Haupt Racing Team at 234 kilometers an hour (146 and a quarter miles an hour), tied at the same speed with the #19 car of Giacomo Altoe, the second Emil Frey Racing Lamborghini.
Fifth fastest on the speed chart through Signes is Daniel Juncadella, when he was aboard the #88 Akkodis ASP Mercedes running 233 kilometers per hour (145 and 5/8ths miles an hour). Lucas Auer is the current driver of the #57 Winward Mercedes. When Ferrari cut the lap at 244 clicks, most drivers are going down a gear. Signes, you don't get a nine kilometer dip in speed. I think cars will naturally be slowing through there, shifting down a gear. Lucas Auer is currently 16th in the overall. We still wait to see final pit stops, as Antonio Fuoco is 17 seconds ahead. Mercedes #88 has just not had a good race and Jules Gounon, he's 33 seconds down on the rest of the top contenders.
Take the driver out of that factor. Maybe it is a tire issue or perhaps the handling/balance of the car has gone away. Fred Vervisch is still the cat chasing after Miguel Molina who is the mouse. The gap is 11.8 seconds. Molina has the BMW right on his six and we go back to seeing the Ferrari having good pace but the way the car reacts to the tires, is different. Excuse me. We are not speaking of the Ferrari in relation to the BMW but rather, the Audi in relationship to the BMW. A bit scatterbrained is yours truly still with an hour of the race to go.
1:56.7 is where the Audi is, but the deal is that Vervisch ought to be lapping in the 1:55 range. If someone is carrying an issue or losing pace, you have to keep that quiet. You can't give that knowledge to your competitors! That's bordering on being stone cold bonkers. You have to disguise that. Keep it quiet. Charles Weerts was dropping away in the first stint in the now retired #32 Audi as we watch Robert Renauer in 21st overall and fifth in the Gold Cup order. We go onboard with Renauer in the Herberth Motorsports Porsche, the #911 car. He is chasing after Ryuichi Tomita of Japan in the #33 WRT Audi.
Sandy Mitchell in the Barwell Motorsports Lamborghini, in the Gold Cup, is also up the road. Renauer threading the needle out of the chicane. Renauer has always been in a class car instead of an overall car. They are a customer car, not a class car, in their Porsche. Robert and his brother Alfred Renauer, the place we really see them compete is in Creventic, in 24 Hour Series racing. Renauer flying down the Mistral straight towards Signes. Foot flat to the floorboard down the Mistral. Take a glance at the gauges to see how the systems in the car and the engine are holding up. Listen for the throttle. A massive lift through Signes. That's a fast corner!
The idea of going through Signes running Harry Flatters through that corner? Forget it. Ease off the throttle. Play it safe. Through the apex of Beauseilles and around the rest of the turns, with the tail wagging on the Porsche. Renauer running 22nd in the overall right now. 150 miles an hour, hit the brakes, Left, right, don't overrun the exit of the turn. Into the chicanes, use the curbs on entry and exit, short sprint to the next right hander. Make the two curbs one big sweep. Go through Ecole and then down the front straight. Check the gauges. Click your radio to give the team an update.
275 clicks down the straight and then promptly lift off the throttle. At certain corners he has to wrestle the Porsche, and he has to watch out for snap oversteer. No wonder he is adjusting the handling of the car. More onboard camera footage with Ftederic Vervisch, 13 seconds down on Miguel Molina. Vervisch moves ahead of Max Hesse by half a second. But here comes Hesse. The Balance of Performance seems to be working. Here comes Hesse on the outside as Vervisch is cutting through the traffic, look.
Vervisch trying his level best to pass the Ferrari, but then Hesse shortcuts the turn. Vervisch tries going by the Ferrari but gets stymied in accelerating. Vervisch's mind is on "I can't let Hesse and the BMW pass me", not on "I am going to reel in the Ferrari hand over fist and get past him as well." Hesse nearly level pegging with the Audi! What is he going to do? Does he have an ace up his sleeve? To the inside. Up the curb. Vervisch thinks he has him beat. Hesse is not giving in. Hesse on the inside for the next corner. Cha ching. Max Hesse makes his move and poor old Fred Vervisch is left hung out to dry for the time being.
Hesse had him set up through the first couple of corners and with all the fighting and fussing Vervisch had to do, eventually he had to give it up and let Hesse go by. Hesse up to fifth and Vervisch back down to sixth spot. The Audi loses pace late on in the stint. He has a few more laps to do. 65 minutes is the maximum stint and could come in to change tires if they are going square. He only needs three laps in hand before hitting the lane. The handling on Vervisch's Audi is fading. Whatever he's got it ain't working. Vervisch is a sitting duck, unfortunately. Where is Maxime Martin? Too far back. Fuoco is leading and his gap has ballooned to nearly 20 seconds over Albert Costa and Costa has 19 seconds in hand over Gounon.
Iron Lynx are indeed controlling the motor race here at the Paul Ricard 1,000 Kilometers. Antonio Fuoco reeling off good laps at 1:55.2. He isn't hanging around. The fastest lap is 1:54.8. Albert Costa is half a second down and everyone else runs in the 1:56 range. 40 cars are still in this race of the 52 that started. Whoa! Hold the phone, everybody! Albert Costa has just uncorked the fastest first sector time and has taken a half a second out of Fuoco for the lead! Holy cow! What did I say before? This motor race is getting spicy! Aurelien Panis in the #26 Sainteloc Audi R8 in the Silver division is in a battle of his own. He is being chased by the McLaren in the hands of Henrique Chaves.
Panis flying onto the Mistral straight. Aurelien Panis is the son of F1 veteran and 1996 Monaco Grand Prix winner Olivier Panis. Second in Pro-Am Andrea Bertolini, car #52, drive through penalty for improvement of position under a yellow flag. Race Director Alain Adam confirms it. So, he will have to take his medicine and deal with it. Just when you think it is all quiet on the western front, something else leaps out into the open and makes you go, "whoa! Did not see that coming." 65 minutes is the maximum stint time and as the clock runs, we have only 65 minutes left on the board before this race is done and dusted.
People will be scurrying to the lane to get to the end of the race. A punctured tire, look, for the #163 Emil Frey Racing Lamborghini. Oh boy. Markus Paverud at the controls, the Norwegian driver in the first of the Vincenzo Sospiri Racing Lamborghini's. The left rear Pirelli P Zero has gone bang. Audi and Lamborghini have suffered most of the tire failures we have seen here today at Paul Ricard. So the Pirelli engineers will surely investigate and then get in touch with the teams running the cars from Ingolstadt, Germany, and Bologna, Italy, respectively.
Touch wood, car #63 has been unaffected by these tire failures. #52 to the lane to serve the drive through penalty and the #97 Aston Martin is pitting to serve it's final regular pit stop. #63 at Emil Frey Racing, somehow or other, they are avoiding any dramas. Andrea Bertolini serving the walk of shame past the other teams. Some of the teams have packed up and are prepping to go home while others I am sure are at the bar. Dominik Baumann is in the lane with the #20 SPS Automotive Performance Mercedes as well. #52 will drop down the order in Pro-Am behind #20 while Fabian Schiller pits Mercedes #777 from the lead in the Silver Cup. Overall leader in traffic.
Be careful, be patient. Don't do anything rash. Keep it on the blacktop, sunshine. Fuoco dancing onto the curb into the runoff area, and through Beauseilles he goes, passing by the new Silver leader, the #99 Attempto Racing Audi in the hands of German Marius Zug. Thomas Drouet in the #87 Mercedes for Akkodis ASP, he is split by the overall leader and cannot attack Zug. Fuoco begins lap 148. 148 laps, 537 miles, completed. Zug vs. Drouet on track for Silver honors while they also owe us pit stops allowing #777 to move ahead.
#46, the Audi, their anticipated pit stop has come to nothing. Vervisch though was struggling and now he is secure in seix spot with one hour to go. Lucas Auer second in Gold Cup, a long way down from Frederik Schandorff. Whoa! That was a really close shave for Antonio Fuoco, diving to the inside of traffic! Egad! That could have been calamity! A high risk move. Some hip and shoulder given to Marius Zug in the #99 Attempto Audi! Mama Mia! Zug's car is crabbing and it has damage to it. The plot thickens with an hour to go.
The toe link is gone. The rear suspension is totally busted on Audi #99. Right rear as Marius Zug is dragging it back but maybe to no avail. Folks, don't touch that dial. You won't want to miss the final hour of this one.
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