Hour 18: Lehto Leads

The Pescarolo team is pushing hard and there is still the chance that the Judd-powered French car can catch the Audi on pace alone. Comas has stated that the team needs the lead Audi to break, as the higher temperatures will favour the 3.6 litre V8-powered Audi over the 5-litre V10 Judd and so are making the most of the cooler weather.

Sebastien Loeb had a minor off at Indianapolis, the Frenchman taking to the escape road and escaping with minimal loss of time and no damage to the Pescarolo. Not so lucky was the Creation DBA of Jamie Campbell-Walter, who slid off at the first chicane and hit the retaining wall. The Briton brought the car back to the pits for the Creation team to undertake repairs to the front of the car and it slipped away down the order.

The GT1 battle for fifth place, the best of the rest behind the Aston Martins and the Chevrolet Corvettes, narrowed when the Larbre Competition Ferrari 550 Maranello suffered a left-rear puncture. However, the Russian Age Racing Ferrari could make little difference to the order having lost time earlier this morning with a broken front right damper.

The RML Lola of Tommy Erdos, Warren Hughes and Mike Newton has lost the lead of the LM2 class thanks to a broken gearbox casing. The car dropped to third in the class having spent more than half an hour in the pits by the top of the hour. Didier Andre, Paul Belmondo and Rick Sutherland, the crew which started from pole position in the class, again took the lead of the class, ahead of the sister Courage of Karim Ojjeh, Claude-Yves Gosselin and Adam Sharpe.

Mike Rockenfeller continues to lead Timo Bernhard, the margin of the lead just 1m23s, though Rockenfeller is lapping three seconds per lap quicker than his adversary. Seth Nieman holds third in the Flying Lizard entry.