The race so far has been a battle between Ferrari and Porsche. Both possess the crucial highest top speeds amongst the eight Hypercar manufacturers. This is key at Le Mans because of the long straights.
Will Stevens led from pole in the #12 JOTA Cadillac, but Julien Andlauer, onboard the #5 Porsche, had other ideas. The Frenchman, who started third, took the lead off the Briton early on the first lap, Porsche immediately showing the 963’s straight line speed advantage over the Cadillacs.
But in the opening hours, it was the story of Ferrari. They gravitated towards the front in the first couple of race stints, with the #6 Porsche in between them for some of the time.
By the fifth hour, the three Italian cars led 1-2-3 with Miguel Molina in the #50 leading, Alessandro Pier Guidi in the #51 second, and Yifei Ye in the #83 customer or private AF Corse Ferrari.
The #6 Porsche was still lurking, though, in or around the top 5. Porsche were running 13 lap stints, while initially Ferrari were running 12-lap stints. The Italian manufacturer later switched to match Porsche.
After his triple stint in the #50, in which he led for a considerable period of time, Molina said: “First stint from my side done, trying to recover some laps on strategy. Managing a bit the tyres and everything. Still long to go, car doesn’t feel so bad. Just need to take hour by hour and keep going until the end.”
In the second quarter of the race this trend largely continued. In the day time Ferrari had the pace and the legs on the vast majority of the field, and was able to build up a large gap at times of around a minute to the #6 Porsche.
Darkness changes race pictures
But, as darkness fell and temperatures dropped, the race swung towards Porsche.
The first safety car of the race was called almost half way in, for the crashed #24 Nielsen Racing Oreca 07-Gibson LMP2 of Cem Bolukbasi had crashed near Tertre Rouge.
This neutralised the race and essentially turned it into a race of two equal halves. #6 Porsche, now with Laurens Vanthoor at the wheel, had its lead cut from just over 30 seconds to almost nothing, while it helped the two factory Ferraris.
In the previous few hours the two scarlet cars had received multiple penalties, for pit lane speeding, full course yellow procedures, and contact with other cars. The Ferrari challenge had looked to be unravelling, with the only unaffected Ferrari the #83, but the safety car bunching the field up brought the two factory cars back into the game.
So, the order: #6 L. Vanthoor leads from #8 Toyota’s Ryo Hirakawa, with a gap of around 5 seconds. A further 2.5 seconds back is Yifei Ye in the #83 Ferrari, while Raffaele Marciello is fourth in the #15 BMW.
The two factory Ferraris are fifth and sixth, Pier Guidi in the #51 ahead of the #50, with Molina at the wheel.
Smiechowski and Pera lead LMP2 and LMGT3
In LMP2, 20-year-old Le Mans debutant Ollie Gray leads in the #48 VDS Pabis Oreca. The car has led the race in LMP2 for the last few hours, and looks in control out in front. Second is the #9 Iron Lynx-Proton Oreca of Reshad de Gerus, around 4 seconds off Gray in the lead.
In third is the #43 Inter Europol Oreca of Jakub Smiechowski, a further 4 seconds off.
Ricardo Pera leads LMGT3 in the #92 Manthey 1st Phorm Porsche 911 GT3 R. The car has been at or near the front for the vast majority of the race, and was engaged in a battle with the #46 WRT BMW for a long time.
However, the #46, with fantastic race-leading stints from Valentino Rossi and bronze-rated Ahmad Al Harthy, has retired. Kelvin van der Linde went into the gravel at the first part of Porsche Curves. It was later revealed that the car had an electrical issue which affected the power steering, and had to retire from the race with the issue unable to be fixed.
Second in LMGT3 is the #78 Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F Gt3 of Finn Gehrsitz, while third is Simon Mann in #21 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3.
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