Ferrari’s No. 83 Car Leads Toyota at Halfway

The No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari led the Lone Star Le Mans round of the FIA World Endurance Championship at the halfway mark, as Yifei Ye held the advantage ahead of Mike Conway in the best of the Toyota GR010 Hybrids.

Ferrari held a 1-2-3 at the head of the field in the early stages of the race, as poleman Antonio Giovinazzi maintained the early advantage in the No. 51 car ahead of Robert Kubica’s No. 83 machine as Miguel Molina jumped from fifth to third at Turn 1.

Kubica took over the lead in what appeared to be an orchestrated change of position midway through the opening hour, and extended his lead over Giovinazzi until the No. 51 car hit trouble while lapping one of the Peugeot 9X8s.

Giovinazzi spun at the Turn 11 left-hander trying to clear Stoffel Vandoorne’s No. 94 car, and then proceeded to limp back to the pits on electrical power only.

Successfully making it back to the pits, the No. 51 car became stranded on pit road and had to be wheeled back to its garage, where it was declared a retirement.

That left Kubica leading Molina, but during the second round of stops the No. 7 Toyota climbed the order with rapid pitwork as Nyck de Vries made way for Conway.

With three hours down, Ye led Conway by around nine seconds, with the Cadillac of Earl Bamber running third, a further five seconds behind after undercutting the No. 50 car during the same round of stops.

Nicklas Nielsen had the sole surviving works Ferrari in fourth ahead of the leading BMW M Hybrid V8, the No. 20 car of Robin Frijns.

The two BMWs had been running astern in fourth and fifth places early on, but the No. 15 machine lost ground when Marco Wittmann spun, which put the car off-sequence relative to its rivals.

Ryo Hirakawa ran sixth in the second of the Toyotas ahead of Charles Milesi in the No. 35 Alpine A424 that had started fourth but picked up an early penalty when Ferdinand Habsburg made contact with Bamber’s Cadillac at Turn 12.

Both Penske Porsche 963s had been running inside the points before making their third stops shortly before the three-hour mark.

Andre Lotterer was up to sixth in the recovering No. 6 Porsche until dropping to 11th with his stop.

The No. 5 factory Porsche had to pit on the opening lap to remove a cone on the pitot tube that measures airflow, and was running 15th in the hands of Michael Christensen.

JOTA’s No. 12 Porsche was struck by an electrical issue that forced Norman Nato to complete a lap on electrical power, dropping that car to the tail of the order.

In LMGT3, the polewinning Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo maintained its lead, albeit coming under increasing pressure from the championship-leading Manthey PureRxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R.

Ian James built up a lead from pole over Sarah Bovy in the Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 before handing over to Daniel Mancinelli.

Rahel Frey took over Bovy’s Lamborghini at the second round of stops but became embroiled in battle with the No. 81 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Rui Andrade, with the pair making contact at Turn 15.

While Frey brought the Iron Dames car into the pits for repairs, Andrade was able to keep the Corvette out on track with superficial front-left damage.

However, Andrade lost out in the fight for second to the No. 92 Manthey Porsche of Joel Sturm, who was 17 seconds behind the Aston of Mancinelli at the halfway mark.

Gregoire Saucy had the best of the United Autosports McLaren 720s GT3 Evos, the No. 59 car, up to fourth ahead of Valentino Rossi in the No. 46 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3.