Nakajima reclaims Le Mans 24 Hours lead in #8 at two-third distance

Kazuki Nakajima overtook fellow countryman Kamui Kobayashi in the sister Toyota TS050 HYBRID 26 minutes into the hour with a clean move at Mulsanne Corner.

The two Japanese cars continued nose to tail until their next round of pitstops.

A slow zone in force while the Toyota's pitted gave Sebastien Buemi - who swapped in for Nakajima - an 18-second advantage after the stops were complete.

The Swiss driver then set a series of blistering laps close to his early-race pace to ease the gap out to more than half a minute.

The two Rebellion-Gibson R-13s were separated by less than a lap.

The #1 car shared Neel Jani, Andre Lotterer and Bruno Senna mover closer to the sister entry after Thomas Laurent lost time in the pits.

G-Drive adds to LMP2 advantage

Andrea Pizzitola kept G-Drive in command in LMP2, extending the #26 ORECA 07-Gibson's lead in the class.

The G-Drive car already has an advantage of a lap over the Panis Barthez Ligier - which was handed over to Julien Canal by Will Stevens in the 16th hour - but Pizzitola was between two and four seconds a lap faster before handing over to Roman Rusinov as the hour came to an end.

Nicolas Lapierre has taken over the Signatech Alpine but is 1m44s behind Canal and lapping around a second slower than the Ligier.

The polesitting IDEC Sport ORECA is fourth but a lap further back, one minute clear of the second Ligier - the #22 United Autosports car, which is currently being driven by Filipe Albuquerque.

No change in GTE as Porsches continue to lead

Porsche's #92 car continued to hold a healthy advantage over its GTE opposition at the 16-hour mark after Kevin Estre took over the 'Pink Pig' machine from Michael Christensen.

Estre stretched the car's advantage out by around 10 seconds over the course of the hour, holding a 2m27s buffer over Richard Lietz after the Austrian replaced Frederic Makowiecki at the wheel of the #91 Rothmans-liveried car.

Lead Ford driver Joey Hand was a further 22s back in third, having taken over the #68 machine from Sebastien Bourdais, with Tony Kanaan running fourth in the #67.

Antonio Giovinazzi ran fifth in the #52 Ferrari following team-mate Pipo Derani's penalty in the previous hour, and is 13s adrift of Kanaan.

BMW was forced to retire the #82 car after Alexander Sims spun and rear-ended the tyre barriers at the Porsche Curves, although the Briton had been running outside the top 10.

GTE Am continues to be dominated by the #77 Dempsey-Porsche of Matt Campbell, who held a near two-minute advantage over Ben Keating in the #85 Ferrari.

The #54 Spirit of Race Ferrari was third in class, a further 35 seconds down.

Positions after 16 hours