Hour 1: Boullion Leads

The Jim Gainer International Dome hybrid had its moment of glory when it took the lead while the Pescarolos made their first pit stops, later returning to the third place it had claimed after starting fourth when Ryo Michigami got the jump on Pirro's Champion Racing Audi and then kept his Dunlop-shod Dome hybrid ahead of the Italian's R8 and the closely-chasing ORECA Audi of Franck Montagny. However, its first pit stop was longer than expected as the paddleshift mechanism was playing up, and a lap was lost as it was checked over.

Pirro remains in third place, just 4s or so clear of the R8 from the rival ORECA Audi camp with Montagny still at the wheel.

While their sister car was hit by engine troubles, just managing to beat the deadline to go out for the first time before the one-hour mark and thus avoiding being disqualified, Rollcentre Racing's Dallara-Judd moved up to fifth overall in Joao Barbosa's hands, keeping it ahead of JJ Lehto in the second of the Champion Racing Audis. For poor Michael Krumm, though, the hampered Nissan turbo-engined Dallara was started in gear and limped around to the pits.

The Creation Autosportif DBA4 is sevenmth with Nicolas Minassian at the wheel, with Jonathan Cochet eighth in the fasterv of the two works Courages, leading his sister car by nearly half a minute, with Haruki Kurosawa completing the top 10 in the Team Jota Zytek.

Jan Lammers endured a problem on the grid and was forced to come in for a stop-go penalty that dropped the Racing for Holland down the order, but Lammers has brought it back through to 11th place overall with a typical charge.

With the lapping of slower cars having commenced, the trio of Audis are facing up to their worst fear: having to overtake cars from the lower classes despite struggling to match them for straightline speed. They have superior cornering ability, but overtaking in the braking zone is undoubtedly a risky business and this will keep the drivers of the three R8s even more on their toes in the hours ahead.

Sam Hancock was soon into the lead in LMP2 for Intersport Racing and held sway ahead of Didier Andre in the first of the Paul Belmondo Racing Courages. However, Liz Halliday started losing time after taking over from Hancock. With a flurry of pitstops right on the hour, the Kruse Motorsport Courage is now in the class lead, with Phil Bennett at the wheel.

Trouble hit the highly-fancied RML Lola very early on and its first unscheduled pitstop to attend to an overheating engine was followed by a second as early as lap 3, with Tommy Erdos the frustrated pilot.

The GT1 class was all-Aston Martin in the early laps, but class leader Darren Turner had to bring his DBR9 ahead of schedule, being called in for a stop-and-go penalty for running two wheels over a white line that dropped him to 17th. This left him third in class behind team-mate Peter Kox and Corvette Racing's C6.R. Kox found himself being chased down by Gavin and the English driver was right on his tail as they came in for their first pit stops together, emerging just ahead to put the American car into the class lead.

The works Panoz team had taken control of GT2 courtesy of Bill Auberlen, and Robin Liddell has just taken over the Esperante GTLM and resumed in the lead of the class at the end of the first hour ahead of Marc Lieb in the Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT3-RSR.

So, that's how they stand, with just 23 hours still to run...