Vanthoor Leads With Six Hours to Go; Crashes for Nasr, Mancinelli

Laurens Vanthoor led the 24 Hours of Le Mans for Porsche Penske Motorsport with six hours remaining, although the German squad lost one of its cars in the first of two separate accidents at Indianapolis on Sunday morning.

Vanthoor, piloting the No. 6 Porsche 963, sat in front of the No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid of Ryo Hirakawa and Earl Bamber’s No. 2 Cadillac V-Series.R under the third safety car neutralization of the race.

That intervention was triggered when Daniel Mancinelli crashed the No. 27 The Heart of Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo at Indianapolis, sliding off the track and rolling over after an impact with the tire barriers.

The Italian driver was able to escape the car and walk away from the crash site unaided.

Mancinelli’s Indianapolis impact came not long after the No. 4 Porsche went off at the same corner with Felipe Nasr at the wheel.

That incident, which triggered a slow zone, resulted in a strategical advantage for its sister No. 6 machine as it came in the middle of a period in which the Hypercar runners made pitstops to switch from wet to slick tires.

Hirakawa, who had led Vanthoor ever since the race got back underway following the four-hour safety car for heavy rainfall, pitted first and prior to Nasr’s crash.

When Vanthoor then pitted later while the slow zone was active, the Belgian was able to save a significant amount of time and leapfrog Hirakawa to take the lead.

In LMP2, the No. 183 AF Corse Oreca 07 Gibson of Ben Barnicoat returned to the class lead ahead of the No. 22 United Autosports machine driven by Oliver Jarvis, with Vector Sport in third place.

Iron Dames led the LMGT3 category, although due a pitstop with its No. 85 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2, and ran ahead of the No. 59 United Autosport McLaren 720S GT3 Evo, the No. 87 Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F GT3 and No. 91 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R.