Buemi caught up in traffic. Ditto for Conway. Buemi loses out just a tad. Buemi has cut his personal best sector time. He is getting something back that he needs to start pushing it a wee bit more. Conway is still pushing. Buemi joined Toyota ten years ago at age 23. Three wins at Le Mans for Buemi and if he wins his fourth he joins Henri Pescarolo and Yannick Dalmas. Of course, other drivers have won ore. Happy Sunday. We are past midnight in France. Pit stop time for the #7 Toyota. The balls have fallen on the floor and bounced, and now they are back to a new lap deal. Rob Kaufmann was excluded from the race when he crashed into Mike Rockenfeller at Audi in 2011 or so I believe. Stuart Hall and Tim Greaves had a similar incident. Tim Greaves no longer drives, but now, he is making the fuel rigs these teams use, the gravity fed fuel rigs.
Porsche #91 has more fuel in the tank compared to their rivals at Ferrari. Stuttgart up on Modena for the time being. Gianmaria Bruni, though, wrestling the Porsche through Tertre Rouge and Tommy Milner, 14 seconds down, is closing up. Milner has taken five seconds off the Porsche. The Corvette is closing up in a hurry as the sister #63 car is leaving the lane after 58 minutes to repair the left rear corner and the suspension system, down by almost an hour. One more bullet in the gun for Corvette while Porsche and Ferrari have two bullets. Sebastien Buemi in the #8 Toyota in the pit lane in the wee small hours here in France. Hello, John Cleland, champion of the British Touring Cars back in the 1990s. Another British racing legend also with us, Mr. Tiff Needell, who also dropped it on cold tires in the race in a Toyota in 1988 from the lead.
Broken wishbone and chassis damage in the D'station Aston Martin #777. Game over for Charlie Fagg, Satoshi Hoshino, and Tomonobu Fujii. Terrible luck. Game over. Conway pushing Buemi for top spot. So, now we have just two retirements. Two GTE Am cars. Porsche #46 and Aston Martin #777. Buemi and Conwya pushing on the ragged edge and they are risking it all. Sebastien Buemi calling to back it down on the pace. This is like Damon Hill at Spa in the rain in the Jordan in Formula 1 in 1998. This is not a parade. The two Toyota's are racing each other. We saw this in the diesel era with Audi and Peugeot as well.
The fight between the team mates is personal, honestly. Toyota want a competitor. They don't want to be racing themselves. They want Peugeot and the others to come in later this year and into next year. You are not there to crush your team mates like open wheel or stock cars. There's camaraderie. This is pointless scrapping, there's only two of us at Toyota. But it is a race. Just like the Bill Withers tune, "just the two of us, we can make it if we try." Mike Conway is a Le Mans winner and a world champion. But the competition is tougher. Through pace, he can put himself literally in the driver's seat to get more. Buemi has a decade or more to keep going and keep being successful. We are going into a wonderful, crazy period of sports car racing's existence.
Tommy Milner in the #64 Corvette C8.R in the lane. The #33 TF Sport Aston Martin pits, with Henrique Chaves now in the car. Drivers like Nico Hulkenberg, Mark Webber, and Anthony Davidson, who is on commentary here, they have also had great success for these factory teams in sports cars in the better part of the last decade or so. David Pittard, a Le Mans rookie and as an Aston Martin works driver, sharing with Nikki Thiim who is an Aston Martin veteran. He will race for Lamborghini in DTM. Glickenhaus back in the lane in the #708 with Olivier Pla.
Olivier Pla almost made it to a Peugeot drive before the factory was done. He was called to Nissan but that program fizzled years ago, and now Pla, he is with Action Express in IMSA. With Jim Glickenhaus, if he has a car in the performance window, and can attract great drivers, but not on a factory budget level, he will continue. Balance of Performance is dumbed down to being the slowest or fastest car. It is complex. Glickenhaus were a victim of the failure of the Aston Martin Hypercar program when that one crashed and burned. But, he is pushing hard, in a performance window with a high quality effort.
Julien Andlauer runs ahead of Sebastian Priaulx in GTE Am. Nico Lapierre in the lane for Alpine, fifth overall. Chasing lap times is not the best approach. General fans who don't follow the sport every day might not know any difference. The new Formula 1 cars are slower, but they look great and the racing is fabulous at this moment. After yours truly rests up after Le Mans, hopefully I shall watch the F1 event at Azerbaijan. The Daytona Prototype Interatnional cars are on the carcass of an LMP2 car and are Balanced of Performance just like these cars are. Yellows at the Ford Chciane for the #41 RealTeam by WRT entry, Norman Nato sinking like a stone, having gone off the road.
Double yellow at marshal post three and that is again Michael Fassbender beached ij the gravel. Wait for a tow out of there, mate. I think he lost it in the Dunlop curve all by his lonesome, but there was gravel on the road. Wait for the forklift. Don't dig yourself into the gravel pit. This gravel at Le Mans, they are really sharp stones. Norman Nato also stopped on the road in the Ford Chicane. No. That is not. That is the Porsche Curves at the first right hand turn. Slow Zone. Two separate incidents. Glickenhaus still in the pit lane. Franck Mailleux in the #709, so that was a scheduled sstop. My apologies.
Richard Westbrook just finished a stint. Alessandro Pier Guidi in the lane at AF Corse in Ferrari #51 in GTE Pro. Latch the Full Course Yellow limiter so you don't overspeed in the slow zone. Penske, from ninth in LMP2, in the lane, Dane Cameron at the controls. Serviced and sent. Tertre Rouge now green as Michael Fassbender will get back into the race here. So, the only incident site is poor old Norman Nato who has been stranded down there. Mike Conway is carving through traffic, tucked up like a kipper behind the #8, trying to snooker him. Well, Conway is trying to tuck Buemi up like a kipper, taking his teammate totally by surprise.
Hello again, to Peter Dumbreck back in the booth. Buemi still leading Conway as they have a significant margin. Corvette #63 back on track after rebuilding rear suspension of course. I believe we've already talked about that, so, I digress. Buemi is being pushed hard. Conway is running Harry Flatters. Harry Flatters? Flat out. AF Corse #83 to the garage in LMP2 Pro-Am. Brake master cylinders at the rear being worked on. They've been on pace for other races this year, but not yet at Le Mans. They have deep resources for the ELMS and WEC programs. Speaking of ELMS, after Le Mans, yours truly is going to try getting back on track with that. So, stay tuned.
We have just had three slow zones on the circuit. So the tires are still going to be nearly stone cold. Buemi says he wants new tires as his current ones are knackered. Alpha six four soft it sounds like. That is secretive team lingo, so we won't know what the heck that means. Change the brake bias to stop loading the front tires. More rear brake means less heat through the front tires as maybe the car is understeering and the tires are beginning to squirm while the fuel load is burning off as well. More pit work ready for Glickenhaus in 15th in the overall in #708. Engine issue. A reset is needed. Olivier Pla in the car still.
With respect to #83, one of the chassis' had to be a test mule for the Ferrari drivers in advance of the Ferrari Hypercar program's debut for next year. Maybe AF Corse picked the wrong car. Clutch hydraulic woes at AF Corse as Julien Andlauer pits from first place in GTE Am for WeatherTech Racing, sharing of course with Cooper MacNeil and Thomas Merrill. So, with AF Corse issues, Tristan Vautier leads LMP2 Pro-Am in the #44 car for ARC Bratislava. Take advantage of slow zones, safety cars, gain a competitive advantage. Do the undercut, and that's what Ferrari has done while Porsche just got a wee bit snookered.
Antonio Felix Da Costa, the Portuguese former BMW driver, leads LMP2 in the #38 Jota entry. He leads over Prema #9 with Robert Kubica at the wheel of it. Porsche #92 has gone ahead of the sister #91 and the Ferrari #51 running in third spot. Pierre Ragues, losing oil on the road in the #71 LM GTE Am Ferrari for Spirit of Race from Switzerland. No meatball flag yet. Ragues sharing with Frank Dezoteux and Gabriel Aubry all from France. Jota has had the most luck in LMP2 as of late. Four seconds up for Sebastien Buemi and he is getting to the end of his stint, while he is apologizing to the team. He is not feeling it even though he is pulling ahead of Mike Conway hand over fist.
He seems to be doing fine. Buemi is probably being told, "you are 6/10ths up on Mike, so don't freak out, mate. Keep going." Prema and the sister Jota LMP2 are down the way from the #38 Jota car. Both Porsche's owe us pit stops which could get Ferrari to the sharp end while Corvette's struggle and Porsche's for WeatherTech and Dempsey Proton, they lead GTE Am. Toyota #7 in the lane as we reach the wee small hours. Yellows out at Arnage probably for cleaning up the oil from the #71 Ferrari. Debris on the road. #71 is in the garage, as it was puking oil out the back and billowing smoke. Debris on the road, officially.
Buemi is freaking out on the radio. Jeepers. He is clearly worried about the undercut because Jose Maria Lopez has taken over #7. He is screaming, "tell him to slow down! I don't want him to pass me!" Cool it, Seb. Cool it! Buemi believes racing each other is a folly at Toyota. He's very upset. So, Pierre Ragues must be disappointed. The car was leaking water, not oil. So that was good old -fashioned steam. Pierre Ragues says the car was losing water and having trouble with handling as well as a dashboard alarm. The steam, or smoke, is still billowing. It must be smoke if it is indeed water condensing on the exhaust system.
So, that is the second Spirit of Race car, and the sister car is the regular entry, the #55 in white and green with Matt Griffin, Duncan Cameron, and David Perel. So, from Ireland, England, and South Africa. The #56 Team Project 1 Porsche/Inception Racing car,, off the road with Ollie Milroty at the wheel of it. Coolant was poruing out of the Inception Ferrari and that is slick as anything. Porsche #91 now in the lane. Both drivers changed in the Toyota camp with Brendon Hartley now in the #8. Jose Maria Lopez in the #7. Porsche #91, Richard Lietz, in the factory car, fourth in GTE Pro with the sister car in the lane, with Michael Christensen still at the wheel of it.
Both Corvette's hit trouble and so we can see that the Porsche and the Ferrari teams are coming to the fore in GTE Pro. Back to green as Christensen takes the lead in GTE Pro. Brendon Hartley leads the motor race. Jose Maria Lopez ran into a slow zone and got stymied. Ferrari #71 now in the garage. Don't get caught behind the wrong safety car crocodile or you could lose bucketloads of time. Christensen now reunited with Kevin Estre and he was the third Porsche driver in 2021. Inception Project 1 Porsche #56 being checked with Ollie Milroy at the controls. This is an unscheduled stop as he was clattered on his in lap.
Fresh Michelin tires onto the car with an array of tires usable for the entire motor race. The mechanic checking things.
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