Porsche Leads at Halfway After Toyota Dramas

Porsche Penske Motorsport’s No. 5 car held the lead of the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo at the halfway point following a rare issue for the long-time race-leading No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid.

With three hours down, Michael Christensen held a lead of 19.6 seconds in the No. 5 Porsche 963 as Ryo Hirakawa brought in the No. 8 Toyota from the lead for a scheduled stop immediately before the halfway mark.

Hirakawa took over from Brendon Hartley in the second hour significantly ahead of schedule as Hartley appeared to struggle during his second stint, having not changed tires at the first round of pit stops.

Hartley’s lack of pace was laid bare when race leader Mike Conway was given a drive-through penalty for a Full Course Yellow infraction aboard the No. 7 car, only for the Briton to retake the lead within a matter of laps.

However, when Conway brought in the No. 7 Toyota just after the two-hour mark to hand over to Nyck de Vries, the mechanics removed a right-side panel on the car to repair a control unit, resulting in a lengthy 3:27 stop.

That handed the advantage back to the No. 8 car of Hirakawa, with the off-sequence No. 6 Porsche of Andre Lotterer moving up into second ahead of the sister No. 5 car, which Christensen took over from Frederic Makowiecki.

Christensen passed Lotterer for second on-track before the No. 6 car pitted with just 10 minutes shy of the three-hour mark, before Hirakawa’s stop promoted Christensen into the lead, albeit with a stop to make soon.

James Calado ran second in the No. 51 Ferrari 499P, albeit he was nearly a minute down on the lead prior to Hirakawa’s pit stop following an earlier drive-through penalty for a FCY infraction.

Yifei Ye had been running fourth in the third-string No. 83 AF Corse machine before he too served a penalty shortly before the halfway mark for earlier contact with the No. 20 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Robin Frijns.

That allowed the No. 93 Peugeot 9X8 of Mikkel Jensen to run fourth ahead of Miguel Molina in the No. 50 Ferrari, in which Nicklas Nielsen reportedly stopped on track early in the third hour.

The No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche ran sixth with Oliver Rasmussen at the wheel ahead of the solo Lamborghini SC63 of Edoardo Mortara and Matthieu Vaxiviere’s No. 36 Alpine A424.

Another Hypercar runner to hit trouble was the No. 2 Cadillac V-Series.R, which dropped virtually to the tail of the field after an unscheduled stop due to “grinding noise from brakes” being reported.

In LMGT3, the No. 92 Manthey PureRxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R of Joel Sturm led by 17.4 seconds ahead of Rahel Frey in the No. 85 Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2.

Sturm’s teammate Alex Malykhin had executed an around-the-outside pass on the Iron Dames car, then in the hands of Sarah Bovy, before the pair made their second stops to hand over to Sturm and Frey respectively.

Frey had been within four seconds of Sturm at the start of their stints but the German driver was able to open the gap significantly in the third hour.

The Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo was third with Daniel Mancinelli at the wheel, followed by Nico Pino in the No. 95 United Autosports McLaren 720S GT3 Evo and Jose Maria Lopez’s No. 87 Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F GT3.