Skip to main content

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe
Live text
WEC 24 Hours of Le Mans

Le Mans 24 Hours race day

Live Text

Sort by
Oldest first
Lopez is beaten out of the pitlane by the #11 SMP BR1, which will likely delay him a little more.
Problems for Jani, whose door comes open on his first lap out on track! Menezes goes past him in the sister car and takes third.
Jani is now 9s behind Menezes. A glance out of the press room window suggests his door is now shut at least.
After the problems for IDEC, we've got an intriguing battle in prospect for the final podium position in LMP2, as Vincent Capillaire (#39 Graff-So24 ORECA) attempts to hold off the challenge of Juan-Pablo Montoya. The #28 TDS ORECA could yet have a part to play in this too, although Matthieu Vaxiviere and Loic Duval will have a bit of time to make up in the remaining two and three-quarter hours.
After all that GTE Pro fun a short while ago, Makowiecki's Porsche has now pulled away to the tune of 20 seconds over Hand's Ford.
Lafargue has tumbled back to 10th in the IDEC car, but it doesn't look like that will be out again due to a cracked gearbox casing. A real shame for that team, which has been quick throughout the race, but spent too much time in the pits.
Here is the Rebellion door that has proved troublesome this morning

Here is the Rebellion door that has proved troublesome this morning

Jani is back in - he only got into the car 20 minutes ago. He takes new tyres, and the mechanics make sure the right-hand door is pressed firmly shut while the car is refuelled.

It's not a hideous stop, but he's no the best part of 1m30s off the sister #3 car. With two and a half hours remaining, might that be game over for the #1's podium hopes?
Jonathan Hirschi has now taken over the reigns of the #39 Graff-So24 ORECA, but cannot shake off Montoya, who is just 11 seconds down. It's been a cracking effort from the Colombian, who could still get a podium on his Le Mans debut.
Well not much is going to live up to that GTE Pro battle we had recently, is it?

We're scanning the gaps to try and find you a similar battle, but it's to no avail. Sorry.

Vanthoor isn't helping our case, he leads the class by 2m18.745s.
We have a yellow flag for Ben Keating, who's buried the second-place GTE Am Ferrari into the gravel at Mulsanne Corner.
And Lietz is now in the second-placed Porsche. The gap between the two is 2m06s.
The #97 Aston is going slowly at the second Mulsanne chicane.
We haven't forgotten about GTE Am, it's just that the Dempsey-Proton Racing #77 Porsche, driven by Campbell currently, has been so impressive it's beating several GTE Pro cars and is 5ms up the road from the GTE Am #54 Ferrari.
Menezes has stopped again, and is now 20s clear of the #1 Rebellion. That's definitely close enough still for things to get interesting in the next couple of hours, assuming the #1 can work its way back onto a similar sort of sequence after Jani's unscheduled stop.
Right, Alonso pits from the lead. That's the end of his run in the car, as he hands over to Nakajima. Brilliant, brilliant effort - especially in the night to haul the car back into contention.
Alonso walks across from the garage over to the Toyota pitwall, offering fans in the grandstands a quick wave.
Keating has got the #84 Ferrari out of the gravel, but has lost second position to the #54 Ferrari of Francesco Castellacci. Edigio Perftetti is now only half a minute behind in the #56 Project 1 Porsche and could yet spoil Risi's podium party.
We've found a close-ish battle to mention in GTE Pro again!

Joey Hand's 1.8s off Andy Priaulx's Ford. We may be clutching at straws, but that gives you an idea of how close GTE has been this year.
Lopez has pitted to hand over to Kobayashi. So that's both frontrunners in the car now until the finish.
Montoya has fallen back to 22s behind Hirschi in the battle for third - the Colombian's tyres are coming to the end of their usable life and he last pitted on lap 320, so expect him in soon.
That video is interesting. It shows the wheels of the #8 Toyota spinning before it's down off its jacks - something the #6 Manor-Ginetta was penalised for in the early stages of the race.
Alonso's been speaking about his latest stint: "Definitely not easy – we are in a 24 hour race and we are separated by 60 seconds or something like that.

"That shows how much we push and how close it is.

We recovered those 2 minutes at night, that is where we felt we could do it, and we should do it, if we were interested in being in the race. We pushed there.

"And now, it’s about bringing the car home with hopefully no reliability issues, no mistakes. It will be long hours until the end."
We haven't mentioned it very much, but the #37 Jota Sport-run DC ORECA is due a shoutout having climbed it's way quietly to sixth in LMP2. If you remember, that was the car which had a mechanical problem on lap two which put it to the back of the field, and was precariously facing the wrong way at the Porsche Curves in the early hours of the morning.
It's been a while since we checked in on the gap between the lead pair, but that's mostly down to the fact that there's not too much to report. Nakajima has a 1m36.219s buffer at the moment.
Behind, though, Jani has got his deficit to the #3 Rebellion down to 16.2s. That was helped by a 3m28.180s for Menezes the last time round, compared to Jani's 3m22.601s.
That's a hefty penalty handed down to the #52 Ferrari for overspeeding in a slow zone. Antonio Giovinazzi has been hit with a two minute stop/go - which follows a one minute stop/go in the early hours for the same offence.
Jani has stopped again, so he's 1m25s behind Menezes - who has picked his pace up since that 3m28s lap.
We're in a holding pattern as we enter the last two hours with Toyota well in front. But recent history shows we shouldn't take too much stock in that as it seeks its first Le Mans win.

By: Matt Beer

Published: