Le Mans 24 Hours H13: Late slow zone gives Lopez Alonso reprieve

Alonso is on a quadruple stint to Lopez's three and radioed Toyota to ask if it wanted him to do a fifth stint, having grown comfortable with night running.

He consistently took several seconds out of Lopez per lap approaching the 13th hour, notably taking a five second cut out of Lopez in the closing minutes.

But a late slow zone ballooned the lead out to almost two minutes, although it is expected to dramatically reduce after the slow zone ends.

The Rebellion Racing R-13s swapped positions after Gustavo Menezes's comfortable third place was blighted by what appeared to be an engine problem, with smoke pouring from the engine.

Menezes spent 11 minutes in the garage, meaning the sister Rebellion #1 machine took third in LMP1 thanks to Bruno Senna and his replacement Neel Jani.

Fifth in class belongs to the DragonSpeed BR1 of Renger van der Zande, who has made little ground up in the LMP2 pack and is down in 22nd overall.

Charlie Robertson is now at the wheel of the sixth-placed #5 Manor-Ginetta, with the #11 SMP Racing BR1 of Vitaly Petrov still 12 places further back but running seventh in LMP1.

G-Drive still LMP2's dominant force

Jean-Eric Vergne re-asserted G-Drive Racing's one-lap lead in LMP2 after Nicolas Lapierre had briefly unlapped himself in the #36 Signatech-Alpine.

Vergne took over the #26 ORECA from Roman Rusinov on lap 191 and made his most recent stop shortly before the hour mark on lap 201.

Timothe Buret was second in the Panis-Barthez Competition Ligier, but was nearing the end of a treble stint and had yet to come in for the car's 20th stop.

Two-time class winner Lapierre exited the Signatech-Alpine on lap 199 with Andre Negrao returning to the cockpit, 1m33s behind Buret.

Paul-Loup Chatin continued to hold fourth for IDEC Sport, with Loic Duval (TDS Racing) fifth and Tristan Gommendy sixth in the #39 Graff-So24 ORECA.

The best battle on track for much of the hour was for seventh in LMP2 between the #40 Graff-entered G-Drive ORECA of Jose Gutierrez and Phil Hanson's #22 United Autosport Ligier, with the two cars separated by little more than a second until Gutierrez crashed at the Porsche Curves, putting the car out on the spot.

Thankfully the Mexican emerged from the wreckage unaided.

Porsche keeps GTE Pro one-two

Michael Christensen maintained the #92 Porsche's lead in GTE-Pro over the sister #91 of Gianmaria Bruni.

The two Manthey cars cycled through their 13th pitstops without incident, the gap rising above two minutes.

The pursuing #68 Ford of 2016 winner Dirk Muller was unable to make any inroads into the deficit and remains an isolated third, 45s behind Bruni.

Toni Vilander remains the final car on the lead lap in the #52 Ferrari, with Andy Priaulx and Ryan Briscoe the first cars one lap down running line astern in the #67 and #69 Fords.

In GTE-Am, Julien Andlauer continues to lead the Risi Ferrari of Jeroen Bleekmolen, while three-time Grand Prix winner Giancarlo Fisichella took third from Patrick Lindsay's Project 1 Porsche shortly after Liam Griffin pitted the JMW Ferrari.

Positions after 13 hours