Toyota led Porsche as the Bahrain round of the World Endurance Championship reached its midway point.
The third hour ended under full course yellow conditions, after Kamui Kobayashi’s third-placed Toyota came to blows with the second-placed GTE-Pro Porsche at the turn two left-hander.
Kazuki Nakajima led the field as the race moved into its second half, following the completion of the fourth set of stops for the LMP1 field.
The Japanese driver held a 22s advantage over Jose Maria Lopez in the sister Toyota TS050 before the pit calls, during which Lopez dropped behind Nick Tandy’s Porsche.
Kobayashi assumed the controls of the Toyota and was set to regain second at the next stop before his incident.
The #7 elected to run a different strategy to the other two LMP1 contenders by taking new rubber at its first stop, while the #1 Porsche and #8 Toyota double-stinted their opening sets of tyres.
However, the third-hour clash effectively eliminated the #7 car from contention.
Porsche’s second 919 Hybrid lost time at the start after a bollard became wedged underneath the car’s bodywork.
Nakajima overtook Brendon Hartley during the third hour to put the championship-winning machine a lap down, before the Kobayashi incident promoted the Porsche to third.
RESULTS: Classification after three hours
In LMP2, Jackie Chan DC Racing led the pack and, as things stand, will win the class championship if the order maintains itself.
Thomas Laurent, Ho-Pin Tung and Oliver Jarvis ended the first half narrowly ahead of the Vaillante Rebellion crew of Bruno Senna, Julien Canal and Nicolas Prost, which served a 5s penalty for contact with the #24 Manor ORECA.
Senna and Canal lead the Jota-run Jackie Chan crew in the standings by four points.
The #66 Ford GT led at the three-hour mark in GTE-Pro, although the order had been shuffled considerably following a dash to the pits in the wake of Christensen’s incident.
Ferrari’s Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado ran second in their Ferrari, while the #67 Ford of Andy Priaulx and Harry Tincknell sat third.
Tincknell moved up to second at the start with an overtake on the #97 Aston Martin, before Priaulx closed in on pole-sitter Sam Bird during the next stint.
The Ford took the lead when Priaulx made a smart overtake at turn one during the second hour, but lost the lead himself shortly after when Kevin Estre snuck past in the now-damaged Porsche 911 RSR.
Christensen dropped to second at the next round of driver changes, before the Dane’s contact with the Kobayashi Toyota.
The leader at halfway in GTE-Am was the #98 Pedro Lamy/Paul Dalla Lana/Mathias Lauda Aston Martin.
