The Grand Prix of Endurance is back, the City of Le Mans preparing to become motorsport’s ultimate battleground for the 94th time. Having defeated the defacto Kings of Le Mans and banished Porsche to the USA, Ferrari seek a fourth consecutive crown for the first time since 1964. Yet with the field having closed the performance gap and arriving hungrier than ever, it will be no easy task for the Scuderia – but it never has. Who will emerge from the Porsche curves at 4.00pm on Sunday? It’s time for the oldest endurance test of them all to begin… 

Hypercar

Cadillac lead at half distance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with the #12 holding a slim lead over the chasing Toyota #8 with BMW’s #20 slowly creeping back into things after another full course yellow.

Cadillac stayed in control into the fourteenth hour, with #38 ahead of #12 and Toyota #8 still third. Now in fourth though after a brilliant stint from Mathieu Jaminet was the #19 Genesis, leading the BMW #20 that sat fifth ahead of the #7.

Brendan Hartley however continued to challenge after struggling on the soft tires for the last hour or so, and passed the #12 with thirteen and-a-half hours left to run was now splitting the two JOTA Cadillacs, with a sixteen second gap to Jack Aitken in the #38.

BMW’s #20 meanwhile was slowly re-entering the fray, with the next round of pitstops commencing – which saw Brendan Hartley’s triple-stint end in favor of Ryo Hirakawa back in the #8 – was only 17sec back and with Sheldon Van Der Linde in the car was closing on the #12 for the race lead.

Held by Louis Deletraz aboard the JOTA-run Cadillac, it was looking a very strong race for GM as a whole, with the Wayne Taylor #101 down in fifth ahead of the recovering #7 Toyota with Ferrari’s sole challenger #51 defending hard against the #17.

Moments after the full course yellow, Genesis finally came unstuck on the Mulsanne and brought the field back under FCY conditions as the Paul-Loup Chatin sat stationary on the Mulsanne for a couple of minutes, before managing to find drive and having lost a lap kept the car in the race.

Meanwhile, Ferrari had now got their cars to eighth and ninth with the #83 running inside the top ten ahead of the #51, with Victor Martins’ #36 Alpine in tenth.

With Kamui Kobayashi installed in the #7 on his outlap he was as low as eighth, having just engaged in a brilliant duel with the #101 Cadillac, involving one of the best moves of the race, a committed divebomb on the brakes into Mulsanne corner. Even at half distance the top ten were all still on the lead lap, with the top five separated by just under two minutes.

LMP2

Meanwhile in LMP2 little has changed, with Nico Muller leading both the class itself and the Pro/Am subclass in the #343, ahead of Doriane Pin’s #30 and the sister #43 of Tom Dillmann with Vladislav Lombo fourth for Vector Sport’s #26.

The order remained unchanged for some time, with the #343 of Nico Muller holding a narrow lead ahead of Richard Verschoor’s #30 and the Proton #9 of Jonas Reid.

Drama then hit the #25 of Enzo Trulli, who locked up at Mulsanne corner and hit the barriers head-on, beaching himself in the gravel and forcing a full course yellow.

Without the ability to recover the car himself, the Algarve Pro Racing entry would be lifted back onto the track by a recovery vehicle, losing two laps and dropping the car to sixteenth in class.

Ryan Cullen was fourth, with all those cars separated by barely 10sec ahead of Jakub Schmiechowski in fifth, 26sec back from the leading battle pack.

LMGT3

Lexus are back in the lead in LMGT3 meanwhile, as Jose Maria Lopez holds a 25sec advantage over Nicky Catsburg’s #33 TF Sport Corvette, with Dennis Marschall’s #74 Ferrari in third as the class remains a completely open affair.

Corvette’s momentum continued, and they led LMGT3 with thirteen and-a-half hours to go after an incredible fightback, now ahead of the #87 and #78 Lexus pairing, before the pit stops saw it drop back, crucially emerging ahead of both after the next round of pit stops.

Zacharie Robichon went a lap longer, with Kessel Racing’s #74 also running strong behind the leading Aston with Charlie Eastwood’s now #34 of Racing Team Turkey up to third of those going a lap longer.

With another round of pit stops done, the Akkodis ASP Lexuses still sandwiched the Corvette, with Jack Hawksworth abord the #78 with an advantage of 8sec over the #34 Racing Team Turkey Corvette of Charlie Eastwood, with Jose Maria Lopez’s #87 in third. The surviving Mercedes of Julien Hanses’s Qatar Racing Team #62 was up to fifth on strategy with the #27 Aston Martin up to fourth.

All of the Ferraris were now inside the top ten, with the #74 Kessel Racing running ninth behind the seventh, sixth and fifth placed #57, #150 and #21 with the #33 Corvette back up to third again.

image credit: T GOUREAU, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons