After a lengthy break for both the FIA World Endurance Championship and myself (a lovely 2 week holiday in the Netherlands, if you’re wondering) and just one week before I head over to Silverstone for my first ever in person sportscar race we have the sixth round of the action packed series. With Aston Martin the big shock of the weekend so far can they continue their promising run here? And can Cadillac go back to back by taking a second win on home soil? 6 Hours will settle it.

Following the collision with Tom Gamble’s #007 Aston, the #36 Alpine immediately went into its garage, the crew having a sizeable repair job ahead of them. The only silver lining was the safety car that they’d partly caused. Despite the damage looking significant, the turnaround was certainly quick as despite the huge crash they were only one lap down. As the stop had been taken under emergency service protocol they would have to pit again once green flag racing resumed.

And it did with 3 and 3 quarter hours remaining in the race as the two leading Ferraris led the field once again, with the top 5 running as they had at the last restart while the LMGT3 field pitted to swap out their Bronze drivers, for whom the minimum driving time had elapsed. The #46 received a 5 second stop and go penalty for an infringement during its stop. And with the green flag running came a drop in lap time across the board in both classes, with Earl Bamber the quickest on track and the first to set a sub 2:07 lap time. Further back, Simon Mann spun the struggling #21 Ferrari at the hairpin.

But Hanson was being placed under considerable pressure by James Calado in the #51, who closed right up and hounded the #83 for the lead. And this was quite a crucial moment, as the two cars were separated by 11 points heading into the weekend. Eventually the pressure proved too much and a few costly moments of oversteer saw an opportunity open up for Calado, who took the lead of the race from Hanson.

Meanwhile in LMGT3 having started on the last row of the grid the #85 Iron Dames Porsche was now up to fourth in class, with Celia Martin on a charge as she split the two McLaren pair of Sean Geleal and Sebastian Baud, of the #95 and #59 respectively. Before long she was up to second after the pit stops.

In what was turning out to be a middling weekend for Toyota, Brendon Hartley became the latest driver to have a high speed spin at the esses, in an almost identical move to the earlier one from the #36 Alpine.

Proton meanwhile had been running confidently in fifth pretty much all race so far, until Nico Varrone, who scored the car’s best qualifying result all year on Saturday, spun the car in sector three and beached the privateer Porsche #99 in the gravel. A full course yellow was brought out, before long upgrading to a full safety car. The car would rejoin the track albeit a lap down.

During this period the Hypercars came in for tyre stops while the Proton was returned to the track, while driver changes also took place. Amongst the leaders, Phil Hanson handed his #83 over to Ye Yifei, the #50 and #51 were now in the hands of Antonio Fuoco and Antonio Giovinazzi.

The #83 though lost considerable time after being forced into a nose-in pitstop and thanks to poor organisation from the mechanics dropped to 5th in class. Both Penske Porsches, the #5 of Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell’s #6, went ahead. So too did the #50 of Fuoco.

So as the teams went back to green the running order was #51, #6, #50, #5, #83 and rounding out the top six was Sebastian Bourdais in the #38 Cadillac. LMGT3 was led by Ben Tuck’s #88 Ford Mustang, ahead of Rahel Fry’s #85 Iron Dames Porsche and the #46 WRT BMW of Valentino Rossi. Then came the two McLarens, #59 ahead of #95 with Ricardo Pera’s #92 title defending Porsche in sixth.

Giovinazzi set about establishing a firm lead over Matt Campbell’s chasing Porsche, heading the field by 1.5 seconds after the first lap. Ryo Hirawaka spun the #8 Toyota for the second time this race after contact with the #33 Corvette of Johnny Edgar. The #46 WRT BMW was handed a drive through penalty for a breach of VSC procedure, it’s second of the race. Another spin came, this time Sebastian Bourdais aquaplaned into a 720 degree spin on the back straight, just after Jose Maria Lopez did pretty much the same a couple of corners earlier. At this point a large portion of the Hypercars were struggling to keep themselves on track, as Raffaele Marciello also spun.

From 3rd on the road Mathieu Jaminet then spun his #5 three times round, dropping him behind the #50. Jose Maria Lopez was coming back into the Toyota Hypercar squad for the first time since Le Mans last year, and just before 4 hours had elapsed spun twice in two laps, on the second incident beaching his Toyota in the gravel. A virtual safety car would close out the hour as the #33 Corvette also stopped on track with fuel pressure issues. Heading into the final third of proceedings, the order in Hypercar was:

#51, #6, #50, #83, #94.

LMGT3 was as follows:

#77, #95, #59, #60, #54.

United Autosports, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons