Le Mans: Ferrari leads, but the battle continues

There are still seven hours to go to the finish of the anniversary race at Le Mans and the battle for leadership is far from over. The late-night incidents we spoke of led to the retirement of one of the favourites, but as morning broke, the Ferrari #51 hypercar driven by James Calado was once again leading the race.

However, Ryo Hirakawa, a Toyota factory team driver, was chasing him and was less than 20 seconds behind. Both cars completed 230 laps, made 20 pit stops and it was clear that the fundamental confrontation would continue.

Alex Lynn’s No. 2 Cadillac occupied third position in absolute terms, but he already lost more than three minutes to this duet and so far this squad has pitted one less than the leaders, so their lead should, in theory, still be to rise.

Fourth place on this stage of the race was taken by another hypercar from the Cadillac factory team driven by Sebastien Bourdais, and only fifth was the Peugeot #93 hypercar driven by Mikkel Jensen, but he was already two years old. laps on. behind the leader.

Interestingly, the best of the Porsche teams, car number 5, was only eighth and even inferior to two American Glickenhaus hypercars with conventional atmospheric engines, and not with hybrid power plants, ie these machines are slower by definition and less fuel efficient.

But for the victory in the LMP2 class, there was a fierce battle between two Polish riders from different teams. In 12th position in the absolute standings, the sports prototype of the Europol team with Jakub Smichovsky at the wheel was attacked with all his might by Robert Kubica in a Team WRT car! After 215 laps they were only fractions of a second apart and Robert was finally able to get ahead of his opponent. Admittedly, when Kubica went to the next pit stop, the yellow-green Europol car moved into first position, but the battle will continue, there is no doubt about that.

Unfortunately, Daniil Kvyat crashed the Prema team’s car during the night and flew off the track in Porsche’s corners. The Russian racer was not injured, but the car was very badly damaged, leading to an immediate retirement.

In the LMGTE Am class, the Iron Dames women’s squad led at the start of the hour, but Swiss racer Rachel Frey was closely followed by Matteo Cairoli in the same Project-1 Porsche sports car and on lap 208 he managed to in charge.

But behind them was the NASCAR car of Jenson Button’s crew, driven in the morning by Mike Rockenfeller, and this could be considered a successful confirmation of the experiment conducted by the Hendrick Motorsports team. The Chevrolet Camaro ZL-1 was ahead of the Corvette sports cars, which managed to win more than once at Le Mans in their class. But crew No. 24 is participating in the marathon off the standings, so there are no sports tasks ahead and all other goals can be considered accomplished if this car makes it to the finish line.