With just over five hours to go before the finish of the Le Mans marathon, important events were taking place on the Sarte circuit, and the stage was not only the track, but also the pit lane.
The #51 Ferrari hypercar was more than a minute ahead when it was time to pit again. Toyota No. 8 also turned into the pit lane, but during the pit stop with the Italian team’s red sports prototype, some obscure problems arose and the pit stop was delayed, resulting in the Japanese car entering the track first.
The colossal work done by the Ferrari drivers and their team in the previous long hours of the race was in jeopardy, but the cars made at Maranello won the Le Mans qualification for a reason: they really are faster than all other hypercars.
Therefore, Alessandro Pierre Guidi first overtook Sebastien Buemi and after a few laps he had a rather nice and daring overtaking maneuver. This is not to say that the Swiss driver Toyota did not resist, but Ferrari was faster anyway.
At that moment, the broadcast director showed what was happening in the Ferrari pits: of course, there was cheering, and John Elkann, the president of the Italian company, rejoiced with everyone.
In the following laps, Guidi gradually started to increase the advantage, but there is still more than one pit stop ahead and Ferrari naturally hopes that the problem will be avoided next time in the pits.
The second hypercar 499P is currently in seventh place.
In the LMP2 class, the crew of the Europol team remains in the lead and made fewer pit stops than Team WRT, which is represented by Robert Kubica, but the Polish team’s advantage is already more than a minute and a half.
There is a change of leader in the LMGTE Am category, go ahead. the ORT team’s Aston Martin sportscar came out, driven by Irishman Charlie Eastwood, but in 30 seconds Ben Keating’s Corvette is behind him and going slightly faster.
Jenson Button’s NASCAR car was ahead of all sports cars for some time, but after another series of pit stops fell back to 8th place in this category, although it does not lose much to the leaders. Now it’s Jenson’s turn and he manages to complete circles faster than his rivals, but it should be remembered that this car is competing at Le Mans outside the main classification in the so-called “innovative” category.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
