Hour 3: Audi Takes Top 3

The number two Champion Audi racing car of Emanuele Pirro led the other Champion Racing entry of Marco Werner and the Team Oreca car of Stephane Ortelli.

Erik Comas' Pescarolo Sport had looked comfortable in the lead, however he came into the pits after 40 laps with gear selection problems. The Pescarolo mechanics took the bodywork off and started working on the transmission.

The number 16 car briefly got out again before losing drive on the Mulsanne Straight. Comas managed to find enough drive to get it back to the pits for further work but the car ended the hour in 13th.

The hour ended calmly behind the safety car, after race organisers chose to clear up oil dropped by the number 39 Chamberlain-Synergy Lola, with Peter Owen driving.

Martin Short's number 18 Rollcentre Dallara Judd was still running strongly in fourth, while the sister Nissan-powered car was still only completing enough laps to keep it in the race while the engineers worked on firing the engine up to racing performance.

In LMP2 the Krusse Motorsport Courage of Ian Mitchell continued to dominate, a lap ahead of Paul Belmondo's number 37 Courage.

Elsewhere in the category, Juan Barazi outbraked himself at the top of the hour, damaging the LMP2 front body-work by out-braking himself into Arnage. The car continued to fall down the order as repair work was done in the pits.

The DBA Creation managed to get going again after losing 25 minutes due to having to change the waterpump, after Jamie Campbell-Walter noticed the temperature going through the roof.

Aston Martin led the GT1 category with the number 58 car driven by Tomas Enge ahead of the number 63 Corvette driven by Johnny O'Connell.

The sister Aston Martin DBR9 continued to have problems. After Darren Turner had been given two pitlane stop-go penalties for cutting sections of the circuit in the first two hours, the problems were compounded when Stephane Sarrizin was forced to come into the pits to repair the front splitter.

Oliver Beretta suffered the number 64 Corvette's second puncture, on the GT1 car's left-right hand corner. Unfortunately the team suffered the puncture at the same corner of the car, at the same corner on the track, an hour earlier.

The White Lightening Porsche of Jorg Bergmeister led GT2.

The biggest action in the category occurred for Anthony Reid, who spun his GT2 Ferrari 360 Modena at the Mulsanne Corner into the tyre wall, but despite what looked like a fierce trip through the gravel, the Scot continued without a trip into the pits. Tom Coronel also spun the number 85 Spyker.