Hour 7: Aston Back in Class Lead

Kristensen remained among the fastest drivers on the circuit as darkness fell around the track, setting 3:42s to 3:44s laps, to maintain his advantage.

Ryo Michigami has been setting some startlingly quick lap times in the Jim Gainer International Dome, the Japanese driver taking full advantage of the slightly cooler temperatures and grasping the last of the light to set the car's fastest lap, a 3:39.853 to consolidate the car's third position overall. Michigami stopped at the bottom of the hour to hand over to last year's winner Seiji Ara, the car's seventh pit stop of the race, one fewer than the two Audis ahead of him.

The ORECA Audi runs fourth, its nine pit stops including the extra trip down pit road due to a broken suspension, which was causing the right rear wheel to move under braking. The team changed the suspension as the Frenchman denied making a mistake. "I did not make a mistake, I did not hit anything," said Ortelli. "I must have run over the debris when the number 13 Courage had the accident."

Martin Short's fantastic early performance came to an end when the car was pushed into the garage to repair the power steering. "The power steering problem that was going on me has now gone," said team owner and driver Martin Short. "The car was very difficult to drive, it was getting worse and worse, so we had to do something about it. We can't do another 18 hours like this. We had our glory."

In the GT1 class, the Aston Martin against Corvette battle continued, with Peter Kox moving ahead of Ron Fellows's Corvette to lead in the British Racing Green car, and put in some solid laps, running below the four minute barrier.

Kox's pace allowed him to open out a 15 second lead over Fellows, whose pace was decidedly slow, 4s off that of Kox, and 5s slower than his teammate Oliver Gavin who was closing in third. Aston Martin's Darren Turner was looking to make up for some of his earlier indiscretions in fourth position, and was running at a quicker pace than all of the cars in his class ahead of him.

Both of the BMS Scuderia Italia Ferraris were retired, Fabrizio Gollin having crashed his car late in the sixth hour, shortly after Toni Seiler had suffered a cut tyre in his 550 Maranello and also crashed heavily.

The LM2 class was headed by the Intersport Racing Lola of Liz Halliday, the American enjoying her first experience of Le Mans in a prototype in the car she shares with Gregor Fisken and Sam Hancock. Hancock emerged from the cockpit after a triple stint, claiming that he was driving "like a taxi driver, though not a French one obviously! We had quite a deficit to make up, but we ran without lighting up the red lights on the rev counter." The car leads the class by two laps.

The Alex Job Racing Porsche continues to lead the GT2 class by little more than a minute from the White Lightning Racing Porsche, although owes a pit stop to the second-placed car. Donny Crevels had a frightening end to his Le Mans 24-hours in the Spyker when he spun off at the Porsche Curves on fire.

That brought out the safety car just short of the hour, with a fast section of the circuit coated in oil. The safety car came as Kristensen led by a lap over Biela and two laps over Ara and Gounon. Kox had extended his lead over the Corvette of Fellows to 22s, with Gavin 6s down on his teammate.