No. 83 Ferrari Gets Heavy Penalty After BMW Crash

Toyota took the lead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the ninth hour after the No. 83 Ferrari of race leader Robert Kubica was handed a 30-second stop-and-hold penalty.

Kubica was ordered into the pits following his earlier collision with the No. 15 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Dries Vanthoor, which was eliminated from the race as a result.

The Polish driver made contact with Vanthoor by moving to the right along the Mulsanne straight while trying to lap both the Belgian driver at the Manthey PureRxcing LMGT3 car.

Kubica was leading by around five seconds from the No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid of Ryo Hirakawa at the time of the penalty, with Hirakawa taking the lead as a result.

The Japanese driver led by 25 seconds from the No. 6 Penske Porsche 963 of Laurens Vanthoor at the time of Kubica’s penalty.

Nyck de Vries had the sister No. 7 Toyota up to third, 35 seconds off the lead, while Antonio Fuoco’s No. 50 Ferrari and Alex Lynn’s No. 2 Cadillac followed in fourth and fifth.

Following Vanthoor’s crash, the first safety car period of the race was called, with the intervention lasting over 90 minutes.

Rain began to fall again at the Circuit de la Sarthe just before the race resumed, prompting almost all of the Hypercar field to come in for wet tires.

The two frontrunners to brave it out on slicks were the No. 5 Penske Porsche of Frederic Makowiecki and the No. 311 Action Express Cadillac of Pipo Derani, which promoted those cars into the top two positions.

But Makowiecki was lapping some 30 seconds off the pace and soon surrendered the lead to Kubica before dropping towards the foot of the top 10.

Malthe Jakobsen leads LMP2 in the No. 37 Cool Racing Oreca 07 Gibson, while Klaus Bachler recovered from a spin at the restart to lead in LMGT3 in the No. 92 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R.