Front-Running Keating Ferrari Drops Back; Two Hours to Go

Image: ACO

Keating Motorsports has dropped back from the GTE-Am lead battle after Ben Keating beached the Risi Competizione-run Ferrari 488 GTE in the 22nd hour.

The American driver was running second in class after Luca Stolz had closed the lead gap to 20 seconds behind Dempsey-Proton Racing.

Stolz handed the car over to Keating who initially held onto the strong position in the 13-car class, running behind the No. 77 Porsche 911 RSR which has led for most of the last 20 hours.

The Ferrari dropped back to third, one lap down on the class leader, while Spirit of Race moved into the runner-up position.

Francesco Castellacci is in the No. 54 AF Corse-run Ferrari, just under a lap behind Matt Campbell in the Proton entry.

Toyota Gazoo Racing’s pair of cars are 90 seconds apart with Kazuki Nakajima and Kamui Kobayashi currently in the Nos. 8 and 7 cars respectively.

G-Drive Racing’s Roman Rusinov has a two-lap advantage in LMP2 over Andre Negrao’s Signatech Alpine Matmut entry while United Autosports’ No. 32 car is the best-placed Ligier JS P217 Gibson.

Porsche is back with a 1-2 lead in GTE-Pro after a battle between Frederic Makowiecki and Sebastien Bourdais for second.

While the Porsche driver did appear to push Bourdais’ Ford GT to the edge of the track, no action was taken after an investigation into his driving behavior.

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.