Le Mans 24 Hours: Porsche back in GTE lead, Lopez pulls away

LMP1 - #7 Toyota over a minute clear

The #7 Toyota continued to extend its lead in the Le Mans 24 Hours with Jose Maria Lopez at the wheel through hour 16.

The Argentinian started the hour just over a minute up on the sister TS050 HYBRID of Fernando Alonso and gained a handful of seconds while the double Formula 1 world champion remained in the car.

He then gained another chunk of time when Kazuki Nakajima took over the #8 car during the 22nd round of stops for the Toyotas.

The lead for #7 stood at 1m17s after a full course yellow period and had edged up to 1m20s as the race hit the two thirds mark.

LMP2 - G-Drive maintains its cushion

Job van Uitert managed G-Drive's LMP2 class lead through the 16th hour, having now taken over from Formula E champion Jean-Eric Vergne.

Van Uitert initially lost time to the Signatech-Alpine driven by Nicolas Lapierre, but the gap then stabilised.

Following a late full-course yellow, the LMP2 class lead grew to just under 1m30s.

Lapierre completed his stint within the hour and handed the Signatech over to Andre Negrao.

Negrao is starting to come under pressure from the fourth-placed DragonSpeed ORECA of Pastor Maldonado as the gap slimmed to just over 20s.

Maldonado took the first pitstop of his stint inside the last five minutes of the hour, which exaggerated the gap to 1m40s, and he momentarily dropped behind the Jackie Chan DC Racing entry of Gabriel Aubry.

TDS Racing's Mathieu Vaxiviere is matching the DragonSpeed on strategy, but it is over a minute behind Maldonado in fifth place.

GTE - Porsche back ahead

Ferrari surrendered its lead in GTE Pro through the last pitstop cycle, as James Calado stopped to hand over the #51 AF Corse Ferrari to Daniel Serra.

That meant Porsche retook the advantage with Richard Lietz at the wheel of the #91 car, six seconds ahead of Jan Magnussen's #63 Corvette and Patrick Pilet in the #93 Porsche.

Serra rejoined fourth, 29s down on Lietz at the top of the hour, and 35s up on the best-placed Ford GT, the #68 machine of Joey Hand.

The Keating Motorsports Ford continued to hold a lap's advantage over the rest in GTE Am in the hands of owner-driver Ben Keating, with Patrick Lindsey keeping the Project 1 Porsche a lapped second and Jeff Segal holding third in the JMW Motorsports Ferrari.

Positions after 16 hours