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Peugeot leads amid Spa chaos

Peugeot leads the Spa 1000km after a frantic action-packed first hour in a race that has already featured two safety car periods

At the turn of the hour the French squad occupied the top three positions with Franck Montagny's #2 car leading from Marc Gene's #1 and Pedro Lamy's #3.

With the track wet from a pre-race shower, Montagny inherited the lead at La Source when Lamy spun the pole-winning sister 908 HDi FAP, allowing all the frontrunners through.

Up the hill through Eau Rouge, Olivier Panis pursued the factory cars in his ORECA Peugeot and Allan McNish pulled an audacious move on Audi team-mate Timo Bernhard for third on the exit of Radaillon.

Further back havoc ensued as Filippo Francioni comprehensively wrecked his LMP2 Racing Box Lola. Cue the first safety car period.

Already the #9 Audi was in the pits, Andre Lotterer having spun the car into the Les Combes wall on the formation lap.

The race had barely restarted after four laps when Jean-Christophe Boullion, who had fought up to third in the Rebellion Lola, tried to pass Panis at Eau Rouge. The move failed and the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix winner was sent spinning into the wall, making heavy contact. He climbed from the wrecked 908, angry but unscathed.

Though this incident did not cause a safety car it did block the pit exit, which meant Lotterer's repaired Audi could not rejoin the race.

As the leading two Peugeots pulled clear, the Rebellion Lolas made the most of the conditions. Boullion ran third with McNish having to defend heavily from Neel Jani.

When the track dried out though McNish, the recovering Lamy and Bernhard all moved back ahead. This led to a cracking side-by-side battle between the leading Audi and the Portuguese driver, who banged panels as they ran down to La Source. McNish finally yielded third position on the entry to Eau Rouge.

The race had just settled into a pattern with the three Peugeots pulling clear of the two Audis when the safety car was brought out following an accident between the Bruichladdich Ginetta of Thor-Christian Ebbesvik and Darren Turner's GT2 Aston Martin. The race remained in this state at the turn of the hour.

The Oak Racing Pescarolo of Matthieu Lahaye inherited the lead of LMP2 when Olivier Pla pitted at the end of the hour in the Quifel Ginetta - the Frenchman having led through the hour.

The Strakka Racing Acura is a lap down currently a lap down after failing to make it to the grid in time following its morning warm-up shunt.

In GT1 Bas Leinders led the way in the Ford GT, while GT2 provided its usual enthralling antics.

Marc Lieb's Porsche passed Jaime Melo's Ferrari for the lead of the class 40 minutes into the race as the pair circulated in tandem through the traffic. Behind them the two CRS Ferraris of Tim Mullen and Pierre Kaffer were in a race of their own for third.

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