Saturday, June 10, 2023

24 Hours of Le Mans: Hour 13

Toyota seems to have made a mistake.  Toyota are having to extend their car to their maximum which they did not have to do with only the Glickenhaus and the Alpine last year.  Sebastien Buemi got only one set of tires or used a previous one for one stint only.  Ben Keating triple stinting in the #33 Chevrolet Corvette C8.R he shares with Nicky Catsburg and Nico Varrone.  Buemi makes a pass and James Calado moves to second as the #5 Porsche 963 is in the pit lane with Dane Cameron at the controls.  Buemi has a five second penalty in his future.  Fuel only at Porsche Penske Motorsports.  James Calado told to stay out one more lap befoee he hits the pit lane.  Buemi building a gap before the pit stops and he has the five second penalty in his future of course.

Antonio Giovinazzi will probably be next into the #51 Ferrari and the last set of tires on the Toyota only ran for one stint and the medium compound did not work.  They needed to go for softs and knew it.  Box this lap, driver change.  Brendon Hartley will take over the #8 Toyota and Antonuo Giovinazzi will be taking over the #51 Ferrari.  Toyota #8 in the pits and they are serving the penalty I think,or they doing the driver change.  Brendon Hartley in the #8 Toyota, and Antonio Giovinazzi in the #51 Ferrari.  No tires, I don't think, for Brendon Hartley.  Richard Westbrook leads the motor race for Cadillac in the #2 Cadillac V Series R.  Giovinazzi now back on track.

"Racing is life, anything before or after, is just waiting", - Steve McQueen, from the "Le Mans" movie.  Paul Newman did get a chance to race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and finished second overall here in 1979 when Bill and Don Whittington's Porsche 935 threw a belt, and then, the belt was replaced by a different one.  All the tools and parts had to be onboard the car.  The marshals were told to give him water and a sandwich and inside one baguette was a drive belt, and he got the alternator belt before the team changed all of them.

The baguette that won Le Mans.  Paul Newman finished second that day.  Pit stop time for the #74 Ferrari driven by a game designer of a game called Battle Cats.  That is Yorikatsu Tzojiko.  Brendon Hartley distancing himself from Antonio Giovinazzi with Richard Westbrook in the lead and now pitting and then Andre Lotterer is fourth in the #6 Porsche 963.  Ben Keating is still one of the hardest working drivers in sports car racing.  He has to be.  We have just now passed the midway point of the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship.  

We are over the hump now.  Scott Huffaker, the American, is now at the wheel of the #57 CarGuy Ferrari 488 GTE sharing with Takeshi Kimura of Japan and Daniel Serra of Brazil.  Sara Bovy leads GTE Am and Iron Dames will run a Lamborghini GT3 car and a Lamborghini LMDh car in the future.  Davide Rigon has just pitted.  The Iron Dames drivers were racing a Lamborghini in the 12 Hours of Sebring in the Lamborghini and the Porsche in World Endurance.  Cool Racing vs. WRT in LMP2 and almost a change of position.

Cool Racing, WRT, and Inter Europol along with Duqueine in LMP2.  #47 in trouble in LMP2.  Reshad De Gerus has backed it into the fence at the Porsche Curves!  Deary me!  He only has half a mile to go to get back to the lane.  He went off to the inside, collected the wall, and bounced to the outside!  Oh my!  That was close!  The #34 Inter Europol car now second with Albert Costa, the Spaniard, driving.  Louis Deletraz loses a place and goes to third and into the pits is the heavily damaged Cool Racing LMP2 entry.  Car #47 in a major spot of bother.  

The damage is extensive on both sides of that #47 Cool Racing entry.  The whole left side is pancaked, and the rear was crunched as well.  Ub reokatm ge kist it on turn in into the corner.  Holy moly!  Sacre bleu!  Ferrari are possibly going to do something with customer Hyper Cars but we don't know.  At Porsche Penske Motorsports, the #75 car lost fuel pressure entirely and the #5 car had a mechanical problem.  Porsche Penske Motorsports are still fighting and they want to get back on the lead lap.  20 year old cars need old computers to run them, and nobody has emulated Windows 3.11.  

Iron Dames Porsche back to the lane.  Iron Dames will have a Lamborghini next year.  Richard Westbrook in the #2 Cadillac continues running in third place or thereabouts.  A slow zone at zone eight.  Scott Dixon told to pit and that is the entry to the Porsche Curves.  Cadillac #3 caught fire during Hyper Pole.  Sebastien Bourdais, Scott Dixon, and Renger van der Zande and van der Zande is next into the car.  A five second penalty on the next pit stop for the #2 Cadillac and possibly on the #3.  We have run nearly 13 hours of this race as Toyota #8 leads and Antonio Giovinazzi has closed up on Brendon Hartley.

Cadillac #2 followed by Porsche #6 and Cadillac #3 with the #93 Peugeot next up.  Then the two Glickenhaus cars, and the #5 Porsche along with the #50 Ferrari.  Peugeot, Jota, Action Express, and Vanwall have all dropped back and the #7 Toyota of course is out of the race along with the #75 Penske Porsche 963 is also retired.  Action Express due into the lane and so is the #93 and Peugeot and the #51 Ferrari as well as the #8 Toyota.  Pit stop time at Ferrari.  Peugeot has pitted the #93 entry as well just now as we speak.


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