Le Mans: The rain eases as the race finally resumes

Closer to sunrise, as the Le Mans race approached the equator, heavy rain began again and the safety car had to be deployed on the track. This time, however, the precipitation continued, after which the peloton drove for more than three hours behind the safety car.

As Tom Christensen, nine-time winner of the Sarthe Circuit, said: “This is the real Le Mans!”

At least in the sense that surprises are still possible during the course of this race, including this one.

There were less than eight hours to go before the finish, but the battle on track was still neutralized and in first position remained the Toyota hypercar No. 8, driven by Rio Hirakawa, followed by the Porsche 963 of the Porsche Penske factory team with Laurent Vanthour behind the wheel, and Ferrari rounded out Niklas Nielsen’s top three.

Toyota No. 7 was next, now replacing Nick de Vries, and fifth place, as at the beginning of the night, was still occupied by Robert Kubica, driving the Ferrari 499P of the AF Corse team.

When the clock showed there were 7 hours and 48 minutes to go until the finish, the safety car finally returned to the pit lane and the battle on track resumed. Almost immediately, De Vries also went to the pits, whose car had a very specific problem: he could not see at all, as the film had flaked off the windscreen of his Toyota, but remained on the glass.

In fact, the mechanics simply removed it and Nick continued, only to return to the track in eleventh place. On the radio, the team advised him not to forget to turn on the windshield defogger and heater – then everything should be fine.

Meanwhile, Kubica moved up to 4th position and Alex Lynn’s Cadillac to 5th.

An interesting battle unfolded for 6th place: this position was occupied by Jenson Button, driving a Porsche from the private Jota team, but Matt Campbell from the factory Porsche team was not competing for it, but Jenson did not want to give up. Still, Campbell eventually overtook while braking for the second chicane.

In the LMP2 class, the leader at this stage of the race is the sports prototype of the AF Corse team with the British Ben Barnicoat at the wheel (20th place overall), in LMGT3 the car of the German team Manthey EMA is ahead of everyone – this is a Porsche 911, driven by the Austrian Richard Lietz.