Reading the dynamic of the race so far, at Toyota, Mike Conway could be struggling for balance in the car. Conway experiencing understeer, griding the left front Michelin tire like a cheese grater. Three laps to go, fuel limited. Is that energy limitation too? It is measured in megajoules of course. Felipe Nasr, former Sauber F1 driver screams past Mike Conway on the Mulsanne! Into the chicane, Conway is going to be pushing and he has the other Porsche right on his six. Watch out for that brake by wire system because it can catch you out. Pit stop time for the #48 IDEC Sport Oreca with Paul Loup Chatin, and we have United Autosports and Filipe Albuquerque too. We welcome Ben Constanduros to the booth and the Porsche pressing hard against the Toyota.
Conway on the back foot. Porsche's side by side off Mulsanne corner. Michael Christensen and Laurens Vanthoor side by side with Earl Bamber watching all of this. We saw rain before the start but have not seen as much. Watch the traffic through the Porsche Curves. Overlap in traffic. We are an hour into this race. The Hypercar class has been amazing. In mixed conditions, Jack Aitken crashed of course, and Action Express are still repairing the left front suspension. Once again, I feel for my pals, and we are going to be back, I really hope so. Right now it is Toyota at the top of the shop of course. Paul Loup Chatin and Giedo van der Garde are 1-2 in LMP2. No tires for Alpine and short fuel for the #36 team as Ryan Hardwick goes through the gravel in the #16 Proton Competition Porsche 911 RSR-19. Hardwick sharing with Zacahrie Robichon and with Jan Heylen.
We have the tyrannosaurus Rex AO Racing Porsche, dedicated to his kids in the #80 Porsche 911 RSR-19 of Gunnar Jeanette, P.J. Hyett, and Matteo Cairoli. We are going to see pit stops soon among the Hyper Cars. Conway in the lane. His tires are toast. Buemi has been doing better to keep his tires in shape. Fuel the car first and clean the windscreen. The Porsche's scrappy through Chapelle with the #6! That is Laurens Vanthoor I think sharing with Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer. Toyota I believe have done a full service on the #7.
The soft tire would have worked in the rain but then, the softer tire would have had more grip. The track has dried out. The #36 Alpine in the lane. Matthieu Vaxiviere, Charles Milesi, and Julien Canal. Sean Gelael in the #31 WRT Oreca and Jakub Smiechowski chasing in the #34 Inter Europol Oreca. Gelael has a lurid moment wriggling through the turn! Yikes! That was close! The Porsche Curves are an amazing part of this course as we have a factory Porsche going through and my gosh! The Hyper Car vs. LMP2 scrap is on. The LMP2's have to get out of the way.
Pit stop time for the #8 Toyota from the lead with Sebastien Buemi being able to double stint. Peugeot #93 doing fuel and tires. Maybe the Toyota recharging issues are fine now. Earl Bamber in the lane as well in the #2 Ganassi Racing Cadillac with Richard Westbrook and Alex Lynn. James Calado leads the motor race in the #51 Ferrari. Yellow flag. Where? What for? After the first chicane, the second chicane on the Mulsanne straight. No worries. Tom Dillman brings the #4 Vanwall into the lane. Tristan Vautier is the new third driver in that car replacing Jacques Villeneuve of course, the 1997 Formula 1 champion. The shape of these cars hearkens back to the Group C era especially with the Porsche 963.
The Porsche looks cleaner than the more aggressive designs like Cadillac, Acura, and BMW. Will BMW and Acura come to Le Mans? It could be. We'll have to wait and find out. Porsche to the lane for two of the factory cars and the Jota #38. We had the merging and wave arounds before of course and Jota took advantage of that. Each car has a separate pit crew of course. Nielsen in the #50 Ferrari has done the undercut on his teammate and the others. Sebastien Bourdais now second in the #3 factory Cadillac. He is out there on scrubbed tires maybe from Hyper Pole. Advantage Ferrari, moving away from Cadillac and Toyota.
Sebastien Bourdais born and raised here in Le Mans. His father Patrick Bourdais is here who has raced Le Mans before. Sebastien Bourdais now dedicated to sports cars after racing IndyCars and the Indianapolis 500 in the past. Conway down to tenth in the #7 Toyota and now the #38 Jota Porsche 963 is working their way back to the top of the tree. Side by side, look, between Conway and Antonio Felix Da Costa sharing with Yifei Ye, and Will Stevens. Paul Loup Chatin, Robert Kubica, and Pietro Fittipaldi as the Glickenhaus gets slammed by the Iron Lynx Porsche 911 RSR-19 of Belgian Alessio Picariello! Yikes!
Picariello sharing with Matteo Cressoni and Claudio Schiavoni. Both Toyota's started on soft Michelin tires and both have moved to the medium's and no issues. The recharging issues are now OK. Cadillac vs. Ferrari. Bamber vs. Calado on the Mulsanne straight with the Porsche's side by side right behind. This is so close! It is unreal! Two Porsche's side by side through traffic and contact between Bamber and Calado! Yikes! Bamber patient and clever but now he might just be beginning to push it. Conway passes Nasr through Mulsanne. Show your stuff. Assert pressure on your rivals. Tell your rivals, I am stronger than you.
Arnage has been resurfaced and is not as slippery as it used to be. Action Express #311 back out on track. We lost 16 laps but we are back in the race! As we well know there is an allocation limit on tires. 45 minutes on energy load for the Hyper Cars. Trouble in paradise for the #33 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C8.R. Laura Wontrop Klauser says everyone jumped in to help Action Express fix the suspension issues. Great to see the team back on track and we are going to go for it. This race is not over yet. Not by a long shot!
The Tower Motorsports #13 lmp2 has contact with another LMP2 car. Ricky Taylor at the wheel of it sharing with Steven Thomas and with Rene Rast. Mchael Christensen is still pushing through the aero wash with another prototype to contend with which looks to me like an LMP2 car. Roger Penske said he wanted to come to Le Mans to win to add it to 19 wins at the Indianapolis 500. A massive accident! The #24 Nielsen Racing LMP2 has clobbered the wall! Massive damage! We are going to see a safety car. Got over the curb and lost it, smashing the wall! That was totally bizarre!
This will be a slow zone. Is he going to go back to the pits? I don't think so. We say farewell to Leigh Diffey for now and welcome Alex Brundle joining Ben Constanduros and Calvin Fish. Do not move away from the car. #14 will trundle back to the lane. Nielsen being chased by Bourdais for the lead. Ferrari vs. Cadillac. Pit stop time for Ferrari and Cadillac right at the slow zone. 60 clicks in the lane and 80 clicks in the slow zone. These pit stops are out of sync. But it is a conscious call. Driver change and tires for the Ferrari. Who will it be?
Cadillac #3 in the lane. Fuel done for Ferrari and the tires are changed after double stinting. #3 will be the race leader when this all washes out. We welcome Alex Brundle to the booth. The #24 Nielsen Racing Oreca is craned away. Trouble with a bent bonnet for the #98 Heart of Racing Aston Martin of Alex Riberas, the Spaniard, Ian James of England, and Daniel Mancinelli, the Canadian. Heart of Racing taking over the factory AMR team after Paul Dalla Lana, the Canadian, retired from professional racing. The slow zones are very specific through the traffic. Pit and lose less time. Toyota #8 has come back to the lead of the motor race with an hour and 35 minutes now on the board.
Earl Bamber still in the #2 Cadillac but Antonio Fuoco has plummeted. Laurens Vanthoor, sideways, wrestling the #6 Porsche before the slow zone! Holy smokes! Corvette and Porsche battling in GTE Am and now, Ricky Taylor has crashed the #13 Tower Motorsports Oreca! A huge crash! This is a backup chassis for them and they are now continuing on the back foot! It could be game over for Tower. In replay, down the Mulsanne the car snaps around. Was that a mechanical failure? Hard to say. Rene Rast, the team driver, the Austrian, cannot believe it.
An extended slow zone to the end of the Porsche Curves. Aston Martin to the garage to be fixed. How is Garage 56 going? We'll, this is the first time since 1976 we have seen a NASCAR Cup car at Le Mans with some amazing drivers like NASCAR champion, seven times, in Jimmie Johnson, 2010 Le Mans winner and a Daytona winner, Mike Rockenfeller, and Formula 1 champion, Jenson Button, from 2009. We have Toyota in the pit lane and Penske Porsche as well. It looks like #8 and #6. We have three slow zones on track. The #94 Peugeot has pitted and he slid in hot and was outside the parameters of the box.
The #13 incident is still being cleared up. This is such a fast section of the course. James Calado 2.2 seconds to the good over Earl Bamber. Five Hyper Cars still need to pit. Toyota #8, Porsche #6, Toyota #7, and Peugeot #93. The #14 Nielsen Racing Oreca has to do a full lap and is chucking water and petrol out of the car. We are going to have two LMP2 cars as retirements. Excuse me, I think we are talking about the #13 Tower Motorsports car. The battle of the Porsche's continues. Christensen vs. Nasr. Pit stop time too for the Ferrari #51. They might be having trouble with their fueling rig. The tape was being taped, time from a sensor.
The #2 Cadillac leads on the road through the slow zone, Earl Bamber at the wheel of it. Pit stop under investigation for the #6 Porsche? I think so. Shock (damper) failure on the #33 Corvette C8.R. Ulysse De Pauw, the Belgian, has walloped the barrier over the top of the hill out of the first chicane. He has run into another car and that is the #55 GMB Motorsports Aston Martin and the #3 Cadillac got nailed and spun off! Oh my! There's debris all over the shop. My gosh! This is unbelievable! There is damage to the #3 Cadillac with Sebastien Bourdais at the wheel.
The GTE cars were totally caught out by the acceleration of the Cadillac. We are back to green and Bourdais will be in limp home mode. Peugeot are building a replica of their 9X8 out of Legos. Wow. You can buy a 1/10th scale build of the 9X8. 600,000 Lego bricks. It might travel the world. The clock is ticking to build the full replica of the Peugeot. We are full of slow zones right now. If you have a multicar team, sometimes you can be the guinea pig. You don't want early trouble and to be the guinea pig. Action Express are the one guinea pig so far and now the #3 Cadillac is back to the lane.
We can hope the floor is not damaged on that car. They are missing the lower floor and so the #3 Cadillac will be backed into the garage on the dollies. Scott Dixon is suited and booted and ready to go. So, the #2 Cadillac is now the most competitive of the three. The World Endurance Championship regular. If we do get safety cars, the cars can come back if they are a handful of laps down. The #38 Jota Porsche 963 have caught the Hyper Car pack. Toyota are not a fan of the wave by rules. But this is running a lot more like the Rolex 24 or the 12 Hours of Sebring in IMSA. You do have to work through the traffic.
Action Express #311 and Ganassi Racing #3, they need to continue to have hope. It is a learning process for Cadillac. They will learn, go through the motions, and can come back at it. Antonio Felix Da Costa passes Laurens Vanthoor! Customer Porsche on factory Porsche. Jota have excelled in LMP2 and could do the same with the Porsche in Hyper Car. Laurens Vanthoor is hanging onto it. Every single piece of aerodynamics on the Hyper Cars, line up the tolerances in the right direction, you can go for it. Jota manage the drivers and the strategy. The #3 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac of Scott Dixon is back on track, and I don't think they've lost a full lap and now, the safety crews are fixing the Armco and have yet to recover the #13 Oreca for Tower Motorsports.
Scott Dixon running on full tanks now. The race is raging. Maintain tire temperature and work the brake against the accelerator. Pietro Fittipaldi third in LMP2. Good battle for third in GTE Am with a Porsche 1, 2, 3, 4. Matteo Cairoli leading in "Rexy", the #56 and Benjamin Barker would inherit the lead.
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