Hour 23: encore une fois

Jean Marc Gounon is driving the wheels off the Courage Judd to hang on to sixth, but Jan Lammers has other ideas, 1m43s behind and closing. The Lammers hurry-up has forced Gounon up the road and resulted in the gap to the fifth placed Panoz closing to 49, then 48 and now 47-seconds, so the race is still very much on in parts.

There isn't much that can be done to catch anyone elsewhere, however, and foremost in many minds will be a classified finish. Apart from the deserved laurels up front, medals the size of the Le Mans town hall clock should go to Kox, Enge and Davies for keeping all of GTS-dom behind them, seemingly forever, and to the Dutch Spyker operation, in last place on the timesheets, for overcoming all kinds of normally terminal woes to finish (including a brush with the pitlane marshals).

Unfortunately, the rules state that that a minimum of 70 percent of the leader's race distance must be completed to be classified, which means that the Spyker team and half a dozen others will not ultimately be credited.

One hour to go!

Kristensen/Capello/Smith Bentley 361 laps
Brabham/Herbert/Blundell Bentley 359 laps
Pirro/Lehto/Johansson Audi 356 laps
Ara/Magnussen/Werner Audi 354 laps
Beretta/Jeannette/Papis Panoz 344 laps
Cochet/Gounon/Gregoire Courage-Judd 343 laps
Lammers/Bosch/Wallace Dome-Judd 343 laps
Boullion/Lagorce/Sarrazin Courage-Peugeot 340 laps
Helary/Ayari/Minassian Courage-Peugeot 327 laps
Kox/Enge/Davies Ferrari 550 327 laps*

* GTS class

Kox/Enge/Davies Ferrari 550 327 laps
Gavin/Pilgrim/Collins Corvette 311 laps
Fellows/O Connell/Freon Corvette 311 laps

Andre/Maury-Laribiere/Pillon Reynard-Lehmann 307 laps
Nielsen/Shimoda/Elgaard DBA-Zytek 273 laps
Terada/Porta/Pickering WR 220 laps

Luhr/Maassen/Collard Porsche 305 laps
Hindery/Baron/Lieb Porsche 300 laps
Neugarten/Smith/Khan Porsche 290 laps