Safety Car Propels Toyota Back Into Lead at Hour 9

A safety car propelled Toyota back into the lead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the nine-hour mark, with Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA’s two cars running second and third.

The battle for Hypercar honors had gradually been whittled down to four cars as the sun set over the Circuit de la Sarthe, with the strategic advantage appearing to shift between Toyota, Cadillac and BMW in a three-way fight at the front.

Cadillac appeared to steal a march on its rivals when it put all three of its V-Series.Rs on Soft tires, with Earl Bamber setting the fastest lap of the race not long after.

However, in the eighth hour an off for the No. 54 Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo at Tertre Rouge, triggered by contact with the No. 88 Ford Mustang GT3 EVO, triggered the first safety car period of the race and bunched the field back together.

The No. 38 Cadillac had led the race at this stage and together with the sister No. 12 car pitted shortly before the safety car was called, and both cars returned to the pits during the intervention along with the No. 8 Toyota and the No. 20 BMW M Hybrid V8.

Amid the reshuffle, the No. 8 Toyota gained the advantage at this juncture, Sebastien Buemi inheriting a 19-second advantage over Rene Rast in the No. 20 BMW.

However, Rast was soon passed for second and third by the two Cadillacs, firstly Will Stevens in the No. 12 and then Bamber in the No. 38, and after a further round of stops just shy of 1 a.m. local time Buemi led Stevens by 10.4 seconds.

Bamber was third, just behind Stevens, with Rast having slipped more than 20 seconds off the lead in fourth place.

Mathieu Jaminet had the No. 19 Genesis GMR-001 as high as fifth, albeit due a pit stop imminently, followed by the No. 101 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac of Filipe Albuquerque and the best of the Ferrari 499Ps, the No. 51 of Antonio Giovinazzi.

After the No. 15 BMW’s woes, another big hitter in Hypercar dropped out of the running as the No. 50 Ferrari was taken into the garage due to a problem with the fire extinguisher, causing a delay of around half an hour that dropped the car eight laps down.

Duqueine Team continued its domination of the LMP2 class despite the safety car intervention.

Julien Andlauer had extended the No. 30 Oreca 07 Gibson’s advantage to such an extent that it didn’t surrender the lead after pitting, enjoying a lead of 15 seconds over the off-sequence No. 343 Inter Europol Competition entry prior to the safety car.

Andlauer handed over to Richard Verschoor as the car pitted just after the restart, temporarily dropping the Dutchman to fourth, but he cycled back into the lead by the end of the hour as the remainder of the pit stop cycle played out.

Amid a major reordering of the class, the No. 26 Vector Sport Oreca of Pietro Fittipaldi jumped to second ahead of Harry King in the No. 9 Seven x Seven Racing-backed Proton Competition car, with Bijoy Garg slipping to fourth in the No. 343 car.

The No. 29 Forestier Racing by Panis Oreca that had been among the lead contenders appeared to lose significant ground with a pit stop under the safety car, similarly to the No. 37 CLX Motorsport Oreca that had run second at one point.

In LMGT3, it was the pole-sitting No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo that led in the hands of Mattia Drudi after nine hours, just 1.3 seconds over the No. 33 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Jonny Edgar.

The No. 74 Kessel Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo sat third in the hands of Dennis Marschall.

Prior to the safety car, the two Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F GT3s appeared to be in a strong position, but the No. 87 driven by Clemens Schmid that had led was down to fourth place ahead of the No. 91 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo of Timur Boguslavskiy.