Le Mans 24 Hours: #7 Toyota edges clear in lead battle after safety car

Mike Conway increased the #7 TS050 HYBRID's advantage to 14 seconds over the sister #8 car of Sebastien Buemi in the early part of the hour, but that gap was increased artificially when the two cars were split into two safety-car trains when Marco Sorensen went off at the kink approaching Indianapolis and skated straight over the gravel and into the barrier.

Buemi stayed out for an extra lap as the safety-car period continued, but came in as soon as racing resumed for his pitstop.

Conway pitted two laps later, in keeping with the #7's pattern compared to the #8, and returned to the track with a healthy advantage of more than a minute - one that he retained at the end of the hour - despite Buemi clawing back some ground.

Egor Orudzhev is third in the #17 SMP BR Engineering BR1 and was matching the times of the pursuing #3 Rebellion before Gustavo Menezes.

The safety car helped Menezes jump the #11 SMP of Vitaly Petrov, although the American dropped to the back of the fight for the final podium spot by stopping late on in the hour.

LMP2 - G-Drive escapes as safety car intervenes

G-Drive Racing finally took control of the race in the tenth hour, as leader Job Van Uitert and the pursuing Signatech-Alpine of Pierre Thiriet were split by different safety cars.

Van Uitert held a 13 second lead over Thiriet after the Frenchman took over from Nicolas Lapierre, but this had swelled to 1m20s by the end of the hour after the intervention of the safety car, which disrupted a battle that had been raging for eight hours.

Gabriel Aubry had consolidated third place in the #38 Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA at the close of the hour after DragonSpeed's Roberto Gonzalez completed a triple stint.

Gonzalez's team-mate Pastor Maldonado was 13 seconds behind Aubry when he joined the fray, after 21-year-old Aubry had replaced Stephane Richelmi 10 laps previously.

The #37 DC Racing ORECA driven by David Heinemeier-Hansson is the first car one lap down, and was eight seconds behind Maldonado at the hour mark.

He in turn had an advantage of almost two minutes over Loic Duval in the pole-sitting #28 TDS Racing ORECA, in which Bronze-graded gentleman driver Francois Perrodo has completed two double stints.

GTE - Astons crash as starring Calado leads for Ferrari

GTE James Calado kept the #51 AF Corse Ferrari at the head of the GTE Pro order for a second hour in a row, although the 10th hour of the race was dominated by a pair of crashes for Astons contenders.

Prior to Sorensen's impact, Alex Lynn spun at the Porsche Curves and bent the spoiler on his Vantage, with a slow zone deployed while the car returned to the pits and so subsequent barrier checks could be completed.

Sorensen's car was taken away from the track, but Lynn did get the #97 car back to the pits, and Jonny Adam returned to the track half an hour later.

Michael Christensen had reclaimed the Pro lead from Calado during hour 10, but the Ferrari got back ahead in the final quarter of an hour.

Christensen's #92 Porsche remained second but now effectively has a pitstop advantage over the similar #93 car, as the GTE Pro battle was also affected by the intervention of the safety cars.

In the Am class, the Keating Ford continued to lead by over two minutes in the hands of Jeroen Bleekemolen, with Patrick Lindsey aboard the pursuing #56 Project 1 Porsche.

Six cars remain on the lead lap, with Toni Vilander's #62 WeatherTech Ferrari running just ahead of Bleekemolen on the road and putting pressure on the sole Aston Martin left in contention, the #90 Vantage driven by Euan Hankey.

Positions after 10 hours