With 4 hours to go at Le Mans, Norman Nato leads for Cadillac but the two Toyotas, with Ryo Hirakawa and Kamui Kobayashi at the wheel of the #8 and #7 cars in second and third, are hunting the Frenchman down.
With just under 6 hours to go, the safety cars were deployed as Ayhancan Guven crashed heavily at the first chicane in the #91 Manthey Porsche. It later transpired the car’s steering had broken, which made sense as to why Given had gone straight on when exiting the chicane.
With barrier repairs to be made, the safety car was out for an hour. The order at this point was Robin Frijns in the #20 BMW, followed by the #12 Cadillac of Nato, then Kobayashi, and Hirakawa in 4th.
When the safety car came in, Nato stayed hot on the heels of Frijns, but the Toyotas turned up the wick and started catching Nato for second.
Soon enough, Kobayashi was on Nato’s gearbox. Frijns soon pitted, promoting Nato to the lead, but Kobayashi was behind him. The 3 pitted a lap later, but a slightly slow stop for Frijns meant he fell to fourth, at the back of the leading queue, around 10s off Nato with Hirakawa second and Kobayashi third.
In LMP2, the #30 Duqueine, with Porsche factory star Julien Andlauer currently at the wheel, is leading Le Mans with a 1.5s gap to Reshad de Gerus in the #343 Inter Europol. Third, less than a second back, is the sister #43 Inter Europol of Nick Yelloly.
Nicky Catsburg leads in the #33 TF Sport Corvette . Eduardo Barrichello, in the #23 Heart of Racing Aston Martin is 3 seconds back, with Jack Hawksworth in the #78 Akkodis ASP Lexus a further 7 seconds or so back.
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