Le Mans: The rain has messed up all the cards

During the first three hours of the anniversary marathon at Le Mans, cars from Ferrari, Toyota, Cadillac, Porsche took the lead, and when the clouds finally gathered over the Sarte ring road and the long-promised downpour came from there, the Peugeot 9X8 four-wheel drive hypercar of the factory team of the French concern emerged.

This happened as early as the fourth hour of the marathon and the race was led by crew No. 94 on Gustavo Menezes’ shift.

“During the Spa stage on a wet track, we saw that our car can handle such conditions very well,” said his teammate Loic Duvall. – There both of our cars were in the top three. And now it is important to act clearly and thoughtfully, avoid mistakes and continue the race calmly.

On a dry track, of course, we lack the speed, but we are not that much behind the leaders and it is of course nice that we took the lead, although we were quite far behind in the first hours. However, the race will go on for a long time.”

The downpour came not entirely unexpectedly, but immediately with such a torrential downpour that some parts of the track were completely flooded, although the cars were still on slicks. Aquaplaning surprised one of the Cadillacs when it was driven by Scott Dixon, a Glickenhaus SCG 007, which was then driven by Esteban Gutiérrez, the LMP2 sports prototype of Ferdinand Habsburg’s WRT team. Allen, as well as the most experienced Jan Magnussen, who pirouetted on the track, ended up on the sidelines, lost several positions, but were able to continue. Admittedly, the father of the Haas F1 racer, who competes at Le Mans for the Polish team Europol, which fielded two cars in the LMP2 class, was forced to return to the pits.

All these numerous incidents resulted in yellow flags, but at the end of the fourth hour, when the rain stopped and there was clearly less water on the sidewalk, the second Peugout team decided to give it a shot. Car #93 was driven by Jean-Eric Vergne at the time – he took to the track on slicks and it all ended with a crash in the gravel. How can anyone not remember the words of his partner, Loic Duvall, that now the most important thing is to avoid mistakes.

To evacuate the stuck hypercar, a safety car had to take to the track.

Before the restart, Menezes remained in the lead, followed by Porsche driver Kevin Estre, third place was taken by the No. 7 Toyota crew – the car was driven by Jose Maria Lopez, followed by his partner Brandon Hartley, who drove the No. 7 Toyota car. 8. and another Porsche hypercar rounded out the top five.

The best of the Ferraris was the #50 crew with Miguel Molina at the wheel, running in 8th place.

In the LMP2 category, two teams from the Alpine Elf Team, Renault’s works team, took the lead, while in the LMGTE Am class, the women’s team from the Aron Dames team in a Porsche 911 RSR-19 led the way on this stage of the race.