No. 83 Ferrari Leads Into Final Three Hours

Ferrari remained in control of the 24 Hours of Le Mans heading into the final three hours of the race, but a setback for the No. 51 crew promoted the satellite No. 83 AF Corse car into the lead at the 21-hour mark.

Drama occurred at the start of the 20th hour following the seventh full-course yellow of the race, which was triggered by Finn Gehrsitz suffering a crash in the No. 78 Lexus RC F GT3 at the Porsche Curves, which forced the race-leading No. 51 Ferrari of Alessandro Pier Guidi into an emergency stop.

On the next lap, when Pier Guidi was obliged to come in for his full service stop, the Italian attacked the pit entry and spun into the gravel, although he was able to get moving again, losing approximately 50 seconds in the process.

That promoted the No. 83 Ferrari, which had been running second, into the lead with Yifei Ye at the wheel, ahead of the other works Ferrari, the No. 50 car.

Although Ye had led by more than 30 seconds at one stage, after he handed over to Robert Kubica the gap to the No. 50 car of Nicklas Nielsen was down to 11.6 seconds at the 21-hour mark.

The two works Ferraris swapped places twice in the 21st hour, with James Calado briefly getting ahead of the Nielsen before allowing his teammate back through into second, receiving an instruction from his team to sit in the No. 50 car’s tow.

Following closely behind the two Ferraris was Laurens Vanthoor in the No. 6 Porsche 963, just 2.6 seconds behind Calado in fourth.

Any Toyota hopes of challenging Ferrari’s dominance crumbled when Ryo Hirakawa’s No. 8 car suffered a front-left wheelnut failure shortly after leaving the pits, forcing the Japanese driver to limp back to the pits at a crawl.

By the time Hirakawa had rejoined the action, the car had lost seven laps after a trip to the garage.

The remaining cars on the lead lap were the No. 12 Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac of Norman Nato in fifth and Nyck de Vries in the No. 7 Toyota in sixth, with BMW’s lead challenger the No. 20 car, a lap behind in seventh.

Inter Europol Competition maintained the advantage in LMP2 with Tom Dillmann installed aboard the No. 43 Oreca 07 Gibson, with a 13-second advantage over the Panis VDS car in which Oliver Gray took over from Esteban Masson late in Hour 21.

There was drama when Job van Uitert lost his right-rear wheel and spun into the gravel at the Forest Esses, an incident that brought the No. 28 IDEC Sport Oreca’s race to a premature end.

That promoted the Pro-Am No. 199 AO by TF car of Dane Cameron to third overall in LMP2 ahead of Reshad de Gerus in the No. 9 Iron Lynx – Proton car.

Manthey continued to control the LMGT3 class, with Richard Lietz coming in for a routine stop at the top of the 21st hour in the No. 92 Porsche 911 GT3 R.

Simon Mann ran second in the No. 21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3, with Zacharie Robichon up to third in the Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo.