Le Mans hour 11: Alonso chasing race-leading #7 Toyota

After Alonso's team-mate Sebastien Buemi was caught out by a mixture of slow zones and given a stop/go penalty for speeding under one, the Spaniard climbed aboard the #8 car halfway through the hour.

In his opening laps, he carved 8s out of Conway's to remain on target to lower his lead below the two minutes mark and he continues to lap several seconds faster than the long-running driver stint Conway has had - although times were converging as the hour ended.

Rebellion Racing's largely trouble-free run means it is comfortably the leading LMP1 privateer ranks with Mateos Beche in third and one lap ahead of Bruno Senna, who has taken over the #1 machine.

Ben Hanley has continued DragonSpeed's recovery from Renger van der Zande's Dunlop Chicane off earlier in the race and is close to clearing the GTE Pro field in 25th overall.

But the Manor-Ginettas are way down the order once again after Oliver Rowland did not return to the track having stopped at Tertre Rouge over an hour ago.

That means Leo Roussel is ahead of the sister car in 49th place.

Rowland and Manor-Ginetta's struggles mean that Vitaly Petrov is closing on them, having been solidly last while Jenson Button and Mikhail Aleshin aided the recovery drive earlier in the race.

G-Drive leads by a lap in LMP2

Roman Rusinov has put a lap on the field for the first time in the 11th hour as the #26 G-Drive ORECA continued to dominate in LMP2.

The Russian was consistently two seconds or more per lap faster than Pierre Thiriet's pursuing Signatech-Alpine and had put a lap on him by the 165th tour.

However, Thiriet was on a par with Julien Canal's third-placed Panis-Barthez Ligier, and was managing the gap at around 9.5s prior to their 17th stops as the hour mark approached.

Memo Rojas had a marginal grip on fourth in the IDEC Sport ORECA as the hour mark approached, with TDS Racing's Matthieu Vaxiviere just 7.5s behind and closing.

After losing a place to Vaxiviere's team-mate Loic Duval during the previous round of stops in the tenth hour, Jonathan Hirschi had slipped over half a minute back in sixth place in the #39 Graff-So24 ORECA.

Holding station in GTE

GTE Pro remains largely unchanged as Kevin Estre continues to hold a lead of over 90 seconds to the sister #91 car of Richard Lietz.

Joey Hand continues to lap the #68 Ford GT in third, with Antonio Giovinazzi's #51 Ferrari ahead of the #69 and #67 Fords driven by Scott Dixon and Harry Tincknell.

GTE Am is also in status quo, with the Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche of Matt Campbell still over 90s clear of the JMW Motorsport Ferrari driven by Cooper MacNeil.

Positions after 11 hours