Le Mans 24 Hours Live Commentary and Updates
Minute-by-minute updates for the 2025 Le Mans 24 Hours
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Porsche's Estre is now under nine seconds away from the lead in the #6 car, after lapping some three seconds faster than both lead Ferraris on the latest tour.
Calado is closing in on leader Hanson with the gap down to 1.1s, but so far the Ferraris have avoided unnecessarily battling one another.
And a lap later Bamber takes the fastest lap time outright with a 3m27.534s - showing that car has pace, just as we saw in quali, but it is missing supreme race pace to challenge at the sharp end.
Bamber in the #38 Jota Caddy posts its fastest lap of the race, 3m27.981s, to fractionally miss out on the fastest lap of the race overall which is a 3m27.936s currently held by the #15 BMW. The Kiwi is at the end of his current stint so low on fuel and with some relatively new mediums tyres and in cooling conditions.
Today was mostly overcast, but here's a pretty sunset picture for you.
#51 Ferrari AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi
Photo by: Emanuele Clivati | AG Photo
Estre is pulling away from the Ferraris – 2.5s faster than Calado on the latest lap. That won't be enough to emerge from his pitstop in the lead, but he might be closer then.
Tiredness is setting in here at the Autosport/motorsport.com camp. We're gone into silly hour. With Rossi's BMW out front, we were talking about his love for Brands Hatch - and in particular 'Dingly Dell'. Which took us straight to the corruption of the name by another Italian who is here this weekend. Touring car legend Gabriele Tarquini, who was named as sporting director for the new-for-2026 Genesis Hypercar squad on Friday, once described the corner as 'Ding-a-Dong-a-Dell'!
All three Ferraris have now pitted, and Hanson's yellow #83 is back ahead of Calado's #51 machine, with a four-second advantage. Estre's Porsche is back in the lead – for now.
In the battle for LMGT3 honours, the gap has been decreasing significantly, as platinum-rated Richard Lietz, in Manthey's #92 Porsche, brings the gap to bronze-rated Ahmad Al Harthy (Team WRT's #46 BMW) down to 25 seconds. On their latest lap, Lietz was 5.7s faster.
The #51 Ferrari pits from the lead and gets some more fuel, with Calado staying in.
It's also time to discuss sleeping strategies, with all of us hoping to get a couple of well-deserved hours of sleep in a real bed.
Autosport editor Haydn Cobb sadly isn't here this year, but has experience covering Le Mans on site... and sometimes sleeping in his hire car. "Once I woke up and couldn't hear any cars on track so had a real fright," he recalled. "Turned out it was just a safety car period, with a really big gap between safety car trains."
It's time for the now-traditional midnight fireworks at Le Mans.
The #83 Ferrari has had an off at Mulsanne! Just a harmless trip through the gravel for Hanson, but Calado's #51 car is now in the lead.
A small chance of rain has been reported for the next hour, but don't get your hopes up.
Happy Sunday! Unlike Mother's Day, which is on different dates in the USA, the UK and France, today is Father's Day in all three countries. So happy Father's Day to all fathers, including mine, who definitely won't read this given he doesn't speak English and doesn't like motorsport (how dare he?).
The #20 BMW, currently driven by Robin Frijns, has just been awarded a 15-second stop-go penalty for pitlane speeding. It's running in 10th, 2m09s away from the lead.
As we wait for the Briton to launch an attack on compatriot Hanson, let's talk about LMP2. VDS Panis Racing's #48 entry is still going strong with Esteban Masson; it's enjoying a comfortable 59-second gap on the Inter Europol Competition #43 car, now driven by Jakub Smechowski. IDEC Sport is third with a 90-second deficit for the #28 car in the hands of Job van Uitert.
Calado is now under a second behind the lead Ferrari.
Based on the expected pecking order, the #94 Peugeot may be the good surprise of the race so far. The 9X8 has been one of the slowest two Hypercars this week, but it's 11th out of 21 thanks to its savvy tyre and fuel strategy. Malthe Jakobsen is currently driving it.
Are we all set for a fight for the lead? Calado is just 2.4s behind Hanson now. Porsche's Estre is just 10 further seconds in arrears.
The #20 BMW driven by Rene Rast has taken fourth place from Nicklas Nielsen (#50 Ferrari). They're both 33 seconds away from the lead Ferrari – which is set to lead the race again as the #6 Porsche pits.
Calado is closing the gap to Hanson, currently 3.5 seconds behind, but has been flagged for a track-limits infringement in sector 2 (the Mulsanne straight). Cheeky James, cheeky.
All three Ferraris have now completed their 10th pitstop. Hanson (#83) leads Calado (#51) by 4.5 seconds, with Nielsen (#50) 26 seconds away from the latter. Porsche's Estre temporarily leads again wth a 55-second gap.
It has been a weird day weather-wise. It was 20°C at 9am, 22°C at 4pm. Right now, just after 11:30pm, it's still 19°C. The temperature normally shifts much more than that throughout the day – as it did earlier this week, with some of the warmest temperatures there has been for Le Mans 24 Hours track action in the last decade.
Calado has pitted from second, with the other two Ferraris expected to follow through shortly.
Estre's ability to edge away from Nielsen is very interesting. It's worth pointing out that in the couple of hours before it got back into the podium positions it lost virtually nothing to the Ferraris ahead of it.
Second-placed James Calado has brought the gap to Phil Hanson's leading #83 Ferrari under 10s in the sister #51 car... but that didn't last long.
Estre has overtaken Nielsen for third position, with the #6 Porsche now pulling away from the #50 Ferrari.
The record number of finishers at Le Mans is 53, back in 2022. So far, we've lost three out of 62 in seven hours and a half, so we're on 59. The record could be beaten.
In GT3, it's business as usual. Team WRT's Van der Linde keeps ekeing the gap to Manthey's Hardwick in a BMW vs Porsche long-distance battle, with his advantage now up to 48s.
Following its collision with the #94 Peugeot at Mulsanne corner, the #35 Alpine got a drive-through penalty.
Meanwhile, the #50 Ferrari has executed its drive-through penalty and did emerge in third, but only just ahead of the #6 Porsche.
Here's a thing. Everyone talks about the distance record at Le Mans never being beaten - the 397 laps completed by the winning Audi R18-plus TDI in 2010. Well, we're averaging somewhere just over 16 laps an hour - and it was 17 laps for each of the first three hours. We only need to complete 16.6 an hour and the record will fall. Only two FCYs so far - and no safety cars. No rain forecast. Could it happen? Yes, but don't bet the farm on it. There will surely be enough yellow flag running to put it out of reach.
It's 11:14pm, so still time to wish a happy birthday to our WEC correspondent Gary Watkins, who's sat opposite me and celebrated with an unreasonable amount of candy throughout the day. He has spent most of his life's birthdays here in Le Mans.
The #50 Ferrari, the #311 Cadillac and the #93 Peugeot get drive-through penalties for yellow-flag infringements. That might drop the red car out of the top three.
Well, Aitken found a way past while I was writing this, so I didn't see how it happened. But it did! The Whelen Cadillac is up in 11th, 97 seconds from the lead.
There's an interesting battle for 11th between Duval's #94 Peugeot, Aitken's #311 Cadillac and Andlauer's #5 Porsche. Let's see how this one goes.
There's a full service for the #6 Porsche, which was briefly leading again as it's out of sync compared to the three Ferraris. Kevin Estre has taken the wheel after Matt Campbell's stint. It's now 31 seconds down, just seven seconds ahead of the #12 Cadillac Jota car driven by Norman Nato.
"I think we are missing some pace from the damage from the first stint when Ricky got hit at the start," Jordan Taylor said. "Yeah, we lost a bit of ground at the beginning with the tire issue. We are just trying to make up ground and hopefully get through the night cleanly and go racing tomorrow."
The #101 Cadillac is in 15th with a 3m29s deficit for Wayne Taylor Racing's first Le Mans outing.
The #83 Ferrari now leads the #50 and #51 cars by six and 14 seconds respectively. What used to be a close fight is now a bit more spread out.
By: Autosport staff
