Hour 16: Kristensen Consolidates
The battle for the 2005 Le Mans 24 Hours looked to be a two-car race as Tom Kristensen and Jean-Christophe Boullion pushed their cars as hard as possible in pursuit of victory at the end of the 16th hour
Kristensen held a two-lap advantage over the Pescarolo Sport of Boullion, the Frenchman lapping approximately five seconds faster than Kristensen when traffic allowed. Boullion was pushing so hard he got within a couple of tenths of the car's qualifying performance.
Kristensen was pushing so hard he made a mistake at the second Mulsanne chicane, losing time after running over the grass.
The #2 Audi R8 finished the hour in third, having got going again in the hands of Frank Biela. The Champion Racing team made repairs following Allan McNish's trip into the tyre wall during the 15th hour. The team lost more than 20 minutes due to the incident, McNish revealing to Autosport-Atlas that a tyre delamination resulted in the accident.
Michael Krumm suffered a puncture on his Rollcentre Dallara Nissan in the latest incident to affect the #8 car and limped back to the pits.
The GT1 battle remained the closest battle of the race with Pedro Lamy's Aston Martin holding station, more than two minutes ahead of the number #64 Corvette C6-R.
In LMP2 Tommy Erdos moved up to second in the MG Lola, however the Brazilian remained less than two laps behind the leading class car of #36 of Claude Yves Gosselin.
The drama in GT2 was provided by the number #91 T2M. Their Porsche 911 retired after an accident with Xavier Pompidou at the wheel. The Frenchman was taken away from the scene in the medical car, however he did not appear to be seriously injured. The #71 Alex Job Porsche of Mike Rockenfeller remained in the lead.
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