The safety car returned to the pits only at the beginning of the ninth hour of the race at Le Mans, at which time it was raining quite heavily, so many cars immediately ran to the pit lane, where real pandemonium began.
However, not everyone went to buy rain tires; some still wondered if it was worth wasting time on this, especially since the rain was forecast to stop soon. However, the hypercars that stayed on slicks completed the laps almost 20 seconds slower than the more sensible hypercars and switched to tires better suited to such conditions.
Robert Kubica only lost the lead for a while, but soon returned to first position and drove quite confidently even on the rainy track. In second place, eight or nine seconds behind, was Rio Hirakawa, a Toyota driver.
And then the verdict of the race stewards was announced: for the incident that led to the departure of BMW No. 15 from the circuit, Kubica was given a 30-second Stop & Go penalty, and this is a very severe penalty.
Once again yellow flags appeared on the track, this time due to the fact that the sports prototype of the LMP2 class of the French Duqueine team started smoking heavily and stopped at the side of the road. And at that moment Kubica turned into the pits of AF Corse to serve his fine.
He returned to the track in sixth place, having lost almost a minute to the leader, who was now Hirakawa. However, the race is long, it will still be possible to win back, at least to some extent…
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.