With just over five hours to go before the finish of the Le Mans Marathon, Antonio Fuoco overtook Porsche driver Frederik Makowiecki in the battle for the lead and took first position – much to the delight of the Ferrari team and its fans. At the same time, Robert Schwartzman was in third place in the same Ferrari 499P hypercar, and when the American entered the pit lane he rose to second place.
But Robert was closely followed by Sebastien Buemi in a Toyota, and it was clear that endurance racing’s most experienced master had the most serious intentions and was preparing an attack.
After some time, both went for a planned pit stop, but returned to the track in the same order. Their cars were separated by less than a second and the fight continued.
As Fuoco entered the Ferrari pits, Earl Bamber took the lead in the No. 2 Cadillac Hypercar, but Antonio was eleven seconds behind and it was clear things could still change. He returned to first position when Bamber pitted, and the race was now once again led by the Ferrari hypercar duo, with Fuoco in the lead, less than five seconds ahead of Robert Schwartzman in AF Corse’s 499P hypercar.
But Buemi continued to chase Schwartzman, staying close behind his yellow Ferrari for more than a dozen laps.
Fourth place was taken by Porsche driver Kevin Estre, who started from pole position, but lost about ten seconds to the first three. The top five was completed by James Calado in the #51 Ferrari.
So just over four hours before the end of the race, all the teams mentioned had very real chances of winning: Ferrari, AF Corse, Toyota and Porsche.
When the yellow flags reappeared on the track and the fight was neutralized, Buemi likely drew up a plan for further action. He understood that Schwartzman’s experience in the WEC was incomparably less, and that at the restart it would be more difficult for him to repel a decisive attack.
And so it happened: on the straight, the four-time world endurance champion was ahead of his opponent, but only stayed in front for a short time as he quickly turned into the pit lane.
And furthermore there were two Ferrari cars again – red No. 50 and yellow No. 83. But of course things can still change more than once…
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.
