Dane Cameron passes one of the Ferrari's and it looks like Lorenzo Colombo will indeed be balked by traffic. Mega gain though for Dane Cameron onto the Mulsanne straight once again. Yifei Ye is also booking it. He is coming in a hurry. What a competitive grid we have in the LMP2 class. Yifei Ye has the bit between his teeth chasing Lorenzo Colombo in the battle for third spot. Ye has the advantage to Indianapolis corner. Late braking and Yifei Ye makes the pass! Wow! Yifei Ye is the sole Chinese driver in the Le Mans field this year, for Cool Racing based in the east of France. Nico Lapierre driving the Alpine, he owns Cool Racing. Lorenzo Colombo debuting here at Le Mans coming out of open wheel cars, Formula 4, and Formula 3. Alpine have pitted again. Nicklas Kruetten, the third driver at Cool Racing has yet to drive in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Jota in the lead over Penske with Will Stevens 35 seconds to the good over Dane Cameron. Stevens is going to run a triple stint. They are going for an ambitious strategy for the nighttime hours. Ambient temperatures are somewhere between 25-27 degrees Celsius ambient before the sun goes down late tonight at around 10PM French time. Track temperatures are what the drivers will want to know about. The track temp falls faster than the ambient at night and the car will be more hooked up, hitting it's sweet spot.
Yellow flag in the Porsche Curves as Richard Westbrook passes Matthieu Vaxiviere, while into Karting, Vaxiviere gets the pass back and that was a power move! The Alpine is very nimble especially over the bumps at Sebring in the spring and the Glickenhaus has a straight line speed advantage. Double waved yellows and a slow zone at Indianapolis. Problems for the #46 Team Project 1 Porsche in GTE Am, Nicky Leutwiler, the Swiss driver, at the controls, sharing with Matteo Cairoli and Mikkel Pedersen. The Glickenhaus has the speed on the straights while the Alpine has the stamina, the advantage, in the corners. Richard Westbrook is really having tom push and he is moving ahead of Vaxiviere as we have a slow zone, a Full Course Yellow.
Nicolas Leutwiler lost the rear end of the Porsche under braking and did not hit anything, thankfully. Ferdinand Habsburg knows trying to get back in a position to fight for victory will be tough. The Alpine rattles over the curbs and continues to lose time to the Glickenhaus. The slow zone we just saw in Indianapolis has stymied the Alpine. Alpine are falling away from the Toyota. Hyper Pole was very exciting but now that Alpine have been hit, they just cannot keep up. Slow Zone clear, back to full green on track. The Project 1 #46 Porsche has not moved. Nicki Leutwiler is stopped on the road, still. Never mind. He is moving but has a left front puncture in that Michelin tire.
Both left side Michelin's could be down, skittering into the gravel and into the pit lane. Richard Westbrook's margin is increasing over Matthieu Vaxiviere. Westbrook peels off into the lane. Jose Maria Lopez ahead of Brendon Hartley only by 19 seconds. They have a minute in hand over the #708 Glickenhaus. Mercifully, the #46 Porsche gets back to the lane. The car is wheeled back into the garage so the crew can get at it.
Jota, Penske, and Prema, the top three in LMP2 all pit. The #36 Alpine is boxed in behind the #1 Richard Mille Racing LMP2 car! Oh dear. Charles Milesi has taken over the Richard Mille Racing entry he shares with Lilou Wadoux and Sebastien Ogier. Richard Mille, famous watch maker, and head of the Endurance Comission for the FIA. Mille is also an avid car collector. Sebastien Ogier is a nine-time World Rally champion. Nicklas Kruetten is chasing down Louis Deletraz in LMP2. Ed Jones in the sister Jota #28 car and the #65 Panis Racing entry has Julien Canal at the wheel of it.
Yellow falgs at Indianapolis at marshal post 25. The #10 Vector Sport car is in strife. Vector Sport have nosed it into the tires. Ryan Cullen has clobbered the tires. Ouch! No lines going into the barrier. Maybe it was a sideways glancing blow. Time for another Slow Zone out of Mulsanne. Yours truly was taking a lunch break during the slow zone which ended fairly quickly and we have been watching the GTE Pro battle between Porsche and Corvette, the LMP2 battle, and the battle for the overall lead between the two Toyota's. Brendon Hartley ahead of Jose Maria Lopez as the two Toyota's scrapping for the lead of the motor race. "Pechito" somehow went through the gravel trap someplace.
That said, Lopez has found a new turn of speed. Maybe Lopez got stymied in traffic or simply made a mistake. The Hypercars are far more difficult to drive than the LMP1's. The LMP1's cars had G Forces, but your arms get absolutely destroyed trying to hold onto the car. But the cars look far more sorted out than they were in 2021. Last year, they were absolute animals. They do handle like a big GT car. They were like lions and tigers last year, but now they look more stuck to the road and maybe more like a big dog on a leash. A big Labrador retriever on a leash.
When the cars slide around they are a sight to see. They are as big or bigger than a GTE production car. Hartley half a second up on Lopez through the traffic, look. Who can thread the eye of the needle best? Jose Maria Lopez is scrapping and scraping through Indianapolis in second gear. "Pechito" is scrapping with Brendon Hartley though, but they are now running liner stern for the most part. Corvette C8.R #63 in the pit lane as we are seeing a driver change. Jordan Taylor, out. Will we see Nicky Catsburg into that car? Yes. Catsburg in, and we have seen Antonio Garcia in that car already. #7 has a run on #8 Toyota into Tertre Rouge. Richard Lietz now at the wheel of Porsche #91.
Davide Rigon in Ferrari #52. Lopez looking for the run into the second Mulsanne straight chicane. Mega traffic jam into the Ford and Motul chicanes. GTE Am cars styming the leaders. Trouble at Alpine, stalling the car once, twice, three times! Jeepers creepers! DStart the car in gear if it has enough battery juice. Alpine to the garage! Alpine to the garage! Oh my! This was the first time we saw a Glickenhaus in the Le Mans garage but trouble too for Alpine as we see the #64 Corvette C8.R in the lane with Alexander Sims stepping behind the wheel.
The process Alpine is going for is bleeding the clutch. The clutch fluid needs to be changed. We are also expecting the #1 Richard Mille Oreca in LMP2 into the lane, the Lilou Wadoux, Sebastien Ogier, Charles Milesi car. The #38 Jota LMP2 has snapped up the fifth spot. This is not like the LMP1 days. The cars are far closer. Everyone needs reliability now. Penske #5 in the lane with their Oreca as well, the Cameron, Nasr, Collard car. Emmanuel Collard, the legendary third driver. Christophe Ulrich off the road at the Porsche Curves, spinning at the entrance, rear end wriggles around and he splatters and spews gravel all over the place. Another slow zone. Can we see what the incident is? There may be debris down there, the kink before Mulsanne corner turning west towards Arnage out of the Mulsanne village, the Mulsanne neighborhood here at Le Mans.
There are these little towns that dot the circuit and the street maps. Marshal post 40. Driver change at Glickenhaus for the #709.
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