Hour 21: Pescarolo not Giving Up

This isn't the sort of dice between two cars of equal ability, rather one in which a considerably faster car is going flat-out to make up for lost ground. The gap between them has been coming down by between five and six seconds per lap.

Pundits trying to guess whether this will be enough have pointed out that it claws back a lap every four hours. Perhaps concerned by the rate with which Collard and then Boullion were hauling in Werner, Kristensen was put back into the car at 12:30 and may run all the way to the finish.

The other two Audis continue to run in third and fourth places, with Allan McNish holding an advantage of more than two laps over Stephane Ortelli's Oreca-entered example.

Running fifth at 13:00, the little-fancied Team Jota could never have dreamed of being so well placed at such a late stage in the race. John Stack has covered the lion's share of the driving of their Zytek, and was delighted to be promoted to fifth place when Soheil Ayari's accident in the number 17 Pescarolo took it out of the equation.

With a deficit of nine laps to the fourth-placed Oreca Audi and a lap's advantage over the best of the GT1 cars, he and Haruki Kurosawa have stuck to their agreed pace and been steady and constant in an attempt to ensure that nothing breaks over the final eighth of the race.

Corvette Racing continue to hold the lead in GT1 through their number 634 C6.R of Olivier Beretta, Oliver Gavin and Jan Magnussen, but David Brabham is chipping away in the number 59 Aston Martin. Whether shaving off a couple of seconds per lap will be sufficient remains to be seen, but the gap is down to 53 seconds.

The Creation Autosportif DBA4 continues to be in the wars, with Jamie Campbell-Walter picking up a puncture to add to the woes of the previous few hours that included his bodywork-shedding accident. The blue metallic prototype has now dropped to 19th.

Paul Belmondo Racing is also looking safe in LMP2, with Didier Andre holding an advantage of six laps over Warren Hughes in the RML Lola. However, so parlous has been the reliability of the cars in this class that they can't be assured of success. Especially as Hughes has been slashing more than 12s per lap off their advantage, with the second Paul Belmondo Racing Courage disappearing from his wake.

The battle for glory in GT2 is constant, with pre-race joint favourites Alex Job Racing and White Lightning Racing gaining a little here, losing a little there. With the end of the race in sight, Marc Lieb has an advantage of 2m42s over Timo Bernhard, with the third American Porsche lying third in class. This is the Flying Lizard's entry of Johannes van Overbeek, Lonnie Pechnik and Seth Neiman.