That is Steve Palette, 37th overall, with a massive exploding brake dsic and we are halfway home as a Harvest moon hangs in the sky. Gorgeous! Halfway home and only two retirements. The left front wheel of that car won't finish. Bang! That's a hub failure with a massive explosion. Big old fireball, and kaboom! The bell assembly separates from the hub and into the garridge. Garridge? Garage of course. Using the British pronunciation which I am told is misspelled on the spell checker. Oh dear. He goes straight across the gravel and he is doing a superb job with three wheels on ye olde wagon, using the approved tarmac going off on the inside. Steve Palette, Mikkel Jensen, and Christophe Cresp, game over for the Spanish team. It was never going to be a win for this team, sadly.
That lft front brake disc is toast. Hub failure perhaps and that wasnot an out lap. The brake disc was intact. Yikes! #28 and #31 tag each other! What was that mess? Oliver Rasmussen playing dodge 'em cars with Sean Gelael. Deary me! Double yellows at Mulsanne corner, removed. WRT vs. Jota. Toyota Gazoo Racing continue to run 1-2. Ryan Briscoe has the #709 Glickenhaus in the lane in thrid spot as CD Sport gets to work and there's the marshal collecting the errant wheel. The lead gap is shrinking by three seconds in LMP2. The brake disc is intact. What exploded? It was the disc! Holy cow!
Redoing the brake disc onto the drive pegs and then put in your brake pads. Everyting looks fine and the wheel nut though has stripped itself. Darn it. Toyota continue leading voerall while we have the WeatherTech and Hardpoint Porsche's leading GTE Am while Michelle Gatting runs 11th in class and are making progress back up the race order indeed. They almost won last year's Portimao 8 Hours. In the end, the damn thing lit itself on fire at the back and poor old Sarah Bovy bailed out. The Iron Dames can still win in European Le Mans Series. We will be talking more about European Le Mans Series after this race.
The #9 Prema entry is in the lane now with Louis Deltraz getting into the car, and Lorenzo Colombo is actually getting into the car. Sophia Floresch, 25th in LMP2. We will have Jazeman Jafaar coming into the commentary box again in a few minutes. Lilou Wadoux has passed Rolf Ineichen who has hit a snag. The gap is opening up. Sean Gelael vs. Felipe Nssr. WRT vs. Team Penske. There is a Porsche LMDh here at Le Mans but it is in a closed chalet. The #31 WRT is in the lane. Sean Gelael at the wheel of it. New nose on the #31 as Baby Yoda is the newest member of the team at Glickenhaus? Hmmm.
Nyck De Vries chasing Ricky Taylor for sixth place in LMP2. Kamui Kobayashi is under 12 seconds behind Ryo Hirakawa, the young Jedi. Ryan Briscoe continues in third in the #709 Glickenhaus. Ferrari #21 has gone to the lane for service. Nick Tandy flying around Le Mans is Corvette C8.R #64. The #38 Jota Sport LMP2 is in the pit lane as well. Penske Oreca #5 in the pit lane and we have another driver going into the car. Toyota #7 as well, as Kamui Kobayashi stays in the car. For all of Sebastien Buemi's freakouts, the #8 Toyota is in there as Kamui Kobayashi in second has the pace.
AF Corse Ferrari #51 in the pit lane. Second place, now third, now fourth place in GTE Pro for James Calado. He lost two spots in a pit stop in a seven car field. From second to fourth. This motor race is still chopping and changing with three cars maneuvering all over the shop. We are counting backwards. Halfway home, past halfway home, and we are going to see morning coming very soon. LM GTE Am leader in the lane, maybe blocking the exit for the #8 Toyota which has an 11 second lead in the motor race. Cooper MacNeil in the Porsche. The LMP2 cluster of cars, is about six deep. Panis, Penske, WRT, and more.
TF Sport are back to the top of the tree in GTE Am over the WeatherTech Porsche. So Henrique Chaves is the new race leader. That was a seven seconds longer stop from Hirakawa in #8 Toyota than Kobayashi in #7. #7 is closing. 7.1 seconds is the margin while Ryan Briscoe and Glickenhaus run third while we have two more LMP2 cars and sixth overall is the second Glickenhaus, the #708 of Pipo Derani. Le Mans is becoming more accessible for fans with disabilities to come and check the place out.
The Toyota's are now under 30 seconds apart between first and second place. Jazeman Jafar explains at 4:30 A.M. Le Mans time, it is crucial to have your sleep and take small naps, but you are buzzing. You will hit a point of being extremely tired as it is 4:30 A.M. or so. Yours truly is not quite on time having had to check where I was in the coverage as my iPad stalled. Sleep is key during one of these races, but ask me, and I am wired up to keep blogging about this. The drivers have the physical intensity and that is what makes it so hard to sleep as we are past the halfway point. 12 hours and 38 minutes into this race. Toyota 1-2, Glickenhaus 3-4, Alpine in fifth. Jota, Prema, Jota, Cool Racing, and Team Penske the top five in LMP2.
Rene Rast is the bloke coming in a real hurry while Emmanuel Collard is pushing, pushing, pushing in the #5 Oreca for Team Penske. It is a game of snakes and ladders on wheels. Collard leading Rast. Back in the 1980s during the Group C era you had to nurse the car as we see the rosy fingers of dawn coming across the sky. These cars are like the terminator, and we keep coming back. The Penske, wriggling all over the curbs and Emmanuel Collard had to open his hands and clattered his way all over the curbs! Holy mackerel! That was close! Car #30 still going through a rebuild and examination anyway. It is not suspension or brakes, but maybe steering. ne of the cars shed a wheel, but I cannot remember which one it was.
Romain Dumas is recovering the Glickenhaus #709. Porsche leads the sole remaining healthy Corvette and the Ferrari's and we have Porsche vs. Ferrari vs. Aston Martin, and Porsche in GTE Am. Never fall asleep in the garage. Rule number one. The mechanics are totally shattered at the start of the race. These cars take days and days and weeks and weeks to prepare. Then there is a debrief and a teardown after the race as well. It becomes a total routine. To the lane comes the #37 Cool Racing entry. These teams work all week and hire extra folks to work at Le Mans because of how big this undertaking is.
Mechanics are building and prepping the cars as well as tearing them down. Antonio Fuoco takes the #52 Ferrari for AF Corse onto the gravel! Holy cow! He'd been beached or shunted into the tire wall, late on the brakes. Porsche 1-2 in GTE Pro, #92 ahead of #91. Don't strain your back or pull a muscle during the race or things go really pear shaped. Felipe Fraga in the #74 Riley Motorsports Ferrari, Sam Bird, Felipe Fraga, and Shane van Gisbergen in his first Le Mans coming over from the Australian Supercars who has also raced at Daytona in the Rolex 24. Le Mans is the pilgrimage of fans and drivers. van Gisbergen has also raced the Bathurst 12 Hours.
Porsche #91 in the lane. We are looking now at the end of GTE and the beginning of GT3 at Le Mans in 2024. Mercedes, Lamborghini, Lexus, Ferrari, Corvette, Ferrari, Porsche, McLaren and more. Lamborghini has not run a car at Le Mans since 2004 or so with the Japanese Lamborghini Owners Club. GT3 is not a manufacturer category but there will be factory supported programs much like the Nurburgring 24 Hours. Teams are looking at the allocation of the cars and buying two, one for spares. The Le Mans ticket, the entry can be obtained in different ways. IMSA, Asian Le Mans Series, European Le Mans Series (some don't get the ticket), and the World Endurance Championship.
Everyone wants a seat at the table and there are only very few. Hypercar and GT3 could get a lot f entries and the LMP2 category could get squeezed. We have a record number of starters. It used to be 50 was the biggest. 59 was a novelty, 56 was a novelty, and now we have 62. The limit is the number of garages in the pit lane. The circuit is not too small but the pit lane is. Prema and Panis, and then Jota, and Cool Racing. This is the LMP2 fight. Josh Pierson being harried by Fabio Scherer. Riley Motorsports ij the lane for the #74 Ferrari. Sam Bird takes over from Felipe Fraga it appears.
Michelotto, the firm that has been a longtime technical partner of Ferrari with the 333SP, the 430, the 458, the 488. Oreca will be their new chassis maker. Crunch! Jean Baptiste Lahaye clobbers the wall and takes out the left front corner. Quoting The Wallflowers song "we can drive it home, with one headlight." The team is going to go to work on the left front corner and put the car on the dollies. That left front wheel is smoking and it is askew. Take the nose off and get a new one. That was a massive lose and a big impact.
Fuel goes into the car and then the tires are changed before the car is on the skates, the dollies, to be turned into the garage.
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