Minute-by-minute updates for the 2023 Le Mans 24 Hours.
The eagerly-anticipated centenary edition of the Le Mans 24 Hours is the first in which cars built to the new-for-2023 LMDh ruleset have been eligible to compete.
Toyota is seeking a sixth consecutive victory at the world's most famous endurance race, while Ferrari on its first factory effort in the top class in half a century and fellow returnee Porsche are gunning for their 10th and 20th victories respectively.
A field of 62 cars, including the Garage 56 NASCAR entry and 21 GTE Am machines on the category's Le Mans swansong, will take the start at the Circuit de la Sarthe at 4pm local time and race through the night.
Join us here for live updates throughout the race.
The InterEuropol LMP2 team was the only one to start with a bronze, and its gamble hasn't paid off with Mark Kvamme in the gravel. He's stuck firmly which appears to be another factor behind the safety car.
So, amid this pause let's have a quick rundown of the order and it's the #8 Toyota leading the #50 Ferrari with the #7 Toyota getting ahead of Calado int he second Ferrari. Next up is the #75 Porsche before the best of the Cadillacs, the #2, is sixth.
From pole in GTE Am, Nicky Catsburg retains the lead in the Corvette C8.R ahead of a trio of rapid Ferrari drivers. Davide Rigon is second in the #54 AF Corse entry, Daniel Serra third in the #57 Kessel example and Alessio Rovera fourth in the #83 AF with Richard Mille 488 GTE.
Kvamme's ORECA is being recovered from the gravel at the first Mulsanne Chicane after skating straight off the road, and we also seem to have lost the TF Aston that Charlie Eastwood started from second in GTE Am.
Replays of the start show just how aggressive Buemi was in the Toyota into the first chicane before backing out of a move on the Ferrari just in time. Waiting until further around the lap clearly paid dividends.
We're now getting pictures of the barrier repair work under way on the Mulsanne following that hit from Aitken's Cadillac with plenty of marshals frantically working away.
Both of the Toyotas and the #93 Peugeot are on soft tyres, with the other Hypercar machines on mediums. So that perhaps explains why the Toyotas were looking so racy against the Ferraris at the start.
More pitstops now in the LMP2 pack. Beche was the leading LMP2 pro-am car, and he's followed in by Scherer, Gelael, Nato and Martin - whose DKR car has the rear deck off as its mechanics seek to diagnose those earlier issues that left the 2020 GTE Pro winner briefly stranded on the grid.
The struggling Glickenhaus we mentioned before the start has indeed now made it out on track and is only the one lap behind the leaders after that suspected gearbox strife.
And a truckload of GTE Am pitstops too. The leading Corvette is followed in by the GR Porsche, Walkenhorst Ferrari, Iron Dames Porsche, #74 Kessel Ferrari, D'station Aston, #72 TF Aston, #16 Proton Porsche, GMB Aston and the #25 TF Aston.
The significance of those safety cars was that some leading LMP2 pro-am runners have inserted their bronzes. Rodrigo Sales is now aboard the Nielsen car started by Beche, while Francois Perrodo took over from Norman Nato at AF Corse. Jakub Smiechowski, the silver in InterEuropol's full-season roster, also took over from Fabio Scherer. Coigny is also freshly in for Nico Lapierre.
We're now into the grouping stage of the new safety-car procedure introduced at Le Mans. The cars run around behind three SCs while the incident is cleaned up (the barriers repaired in this case) before the concertina up behind a single SC.
We're now into the drop-back stage of the SC procedure in order for the cars to arrange themselves in class groupings behind the SC. No pass around this time because there are no cars ahead of their respective class leaders.
The GTE Am pitstops means Rigon now leads Serra, Rovera and Mann in an all-Ferrari top four. Picariello is the lead Porsche in fifth, ahead of Cairoli's Project 1 911 with that distinctive T-Rex livery.
For those of you just joining, we're still under a safety car here at Le Mans following an opening lap crash for Aitken in the #311 Cadillac that has caused fairly extensive barrier damage and the V-Series.R is still in the pits for major repairs.
The new SC system was given another try-out twice during the Le Mans Test Day last Sunday. They lasted 25 and 32 minutes respectively. The convoluted wave-by/pass around only begins when the incident is cleared and takes about 17 minutes.
The imminent resumption of hostilities means those LMP2 and GTE Am teams who plugged their bronze drivers in under that safety car won't gain perhaps as much benefit as hoped. But still, that some of their six-hour drive time droning around behind the safety car without losing any time to their rivals is no bad thing from a strategy point of view.
We've not seen it on the TV, but Kvyat has lost two spots on the restart with Kubica and Reshad de Gerus bumping the Prema driver back to fourth in LMP2.
We've got some side-by-side action now and it's the second of the Toyotas with Conway in the #7 passing the lead Ferrari approaching Indianapolis. So it's now a Toyota 1-2 after Ferrari had locked out the top spots in qualifying.
We all knew it was coming, and now finally the race director has issued the instruction for the #13 TDS-run Tower ORECA to serve a three-minute stop-go penalty. Steven Thomas incurred the sanction when he ploughed into Casper Stevenson's crashed D'station Aston under double yellow flags in FP1, you may recall. Ricky Taylor is 14th in the pack, but won't be for much longer.
We complete our first full lap of green-flag racing and the lead Toyota of Buemi now has a 1.3-second lead over the sister car but the two Ferraris are still right on its tail.
That really wasn't a great restart lap for Kvyat. He started it second in LMP2 and ended it in eighth, having also dropped behind Jota driver Piero Fittipaldi, Panis's Job van Uitert, Gabriel Aubry for Vector and the #23 United ORECA of Filipe Albuquerque.
Silver-graded Simon Mann's hold on fourth in GTE Am was a brief one as he's been shuffled back to ninth in class. Cairoli is up to fourth ahead of Picariello, while Tincknell is now sixth in the #88 Proton car which has already topped off with fuel.
Two of the Porsche 963s battle at the first Mulsanne chicane and Vanthoor dives ahead of Christensen for seventh, which in turn allows the lead Peugeot of Paul di Resta to get a run. But the 9X8 can't quite relegate Christensen a further place as the Porsche pulls clear on the straight.
