24 Hours of Le Mans 2021 - 🇬🇧 RACE REPLAY part 1

as the grid then takes shape we are about half an hour away from the start of the race and it is a much wetter road now than we had just 30 minutes ago and it's been dry all the way up to this point so no wet running thus far from the teams and as you can see temperatures are not exactly on the positive side either so it's a chilly day relative to what we've experienced in the course of the week and it's as i say a very wet circuit indeed for this fourth round of the fia world endurance championship with double points on offer for the teams and with 33 nationalities represented across 188 drivers on the grid we are looking forward still to a fantastic race david addison graham goodwin adam nish track side as we get set for the start and alan first of all for everybody involved at this point it's going to be a real step into the unknown because it's this very wet track surface yeah very very wet and increasingly puddly as well as we see the nissan from the 90s taking the winners trophy back down past all of the teams and the drivers when they actually do start will be venturing into the unknown especially up into that first corner and dunlop chicane the first lap into the chicanes on the mulsanne strait and mark arnage they're going to be i would say very gentle at the beginning and the question is whether they actually will start this behind the safety car we had a pretty chilly warm-up this morning graham and we had lots of lmp2 cars in strife going off the road as they were trying to get tar temperature up well now completely different situation soaking wet circuit yeah tyrone brake temperature i think there's been a problem for them it's going to be very interesting indeed to see just how they tackle this the trophy comes home ready for the next recipient uh trophy is our recall alan um you keep for a year unless you win it three times in a row correct uh it's kept for a year and then gets returned to le mans if you win it three times consecutively then you get to keep it and uh there's basically two main three main manufacturers that have achieved that being porsche uh being toyota and being audi and so the toyota from the 90s brings the trophy back toyota of the current generation the new hypercar as you see the grand marshal which is derrick bell and uh the trophy returned to the aco it is of course a toyota lockout at the front of the grid but the new hyper cars yes they're expected to win the race but each time they turn a lap they're gaining data aren't they they're learning all the time absolutely plenty of laps around for all of these teams throughout this week test day of course last sunday with plenty of running then and free practicing qualifying but two cars in particular very short on time uh and that's because they've got effectively brand new cars today inception races number 71 car and the 92 porsche both of which had accidents uh and the qualifying day this is the tractor allen and very familiar indeed to you yeah there's three main sectors of the circuit the first sector is a lot of twists and turns just as you lead on to the long straights down to sector two to the multi corner the far end of the track then leading back through a combination of straights and very fast corners at porsche before you get to the forge again directly in front of our commentary box to lead on to another 13.6 kilometers eight and a half miles and there is the grid with the cars all in the echelon formation of course for the purposes of a rolling start which we may or may not get to it may be a safety car start we're waiting to have confirmation from race control but they would get themselves in that two by two order and the driver is being presented to what is a limited crowd graham but a crowd nonetheless it most certainly is and i think the crowd well into the tens of thousands here [Music] hmm [Music] so the french national anthem is responded to in the appropriate fashion by the fans and goodwin was saying it is a limited number but the enthusiasm is undimmed absolutely we know we're here now with the muscles and those tones it's always glorious to hear it's in the world's greatest endurance race you know you're home don't you true enough true enough now what about the hyper cars next because yes toyota comes here as the favorite but they are still new and this is with the longest race that they have done now it's not out of the question that an lmp2 car could given circumstances be a realistic challenge without doubt i mean we we're in a race of potential attrition for the first time in many years uh with the hypercars just five of them here of course as well and four of them brand new this year lots of well-proven lmp2 cars as we see the now traditional it's been some years now um where we've had this helicopter wake me up at five o'clock in the morning so this is how they're going to deliver the tricolor for the starts and it is spectacular this this helicopter will be coming down to the right roof top height just opposite her us in our country position just on the inside of the ford chicane just waiting to see it appearing from stage left and here she comes just hope that the uh serviceman from the french military does not drop his phone as he did a few years ago on the grid it's very good to see this happening because it's not exactly the ideal weather for a helicopter but tradition dictates so the tricolor arrives to add to the buildup to this 89th lamar 24 hours and on instruction down he will come just about to the complication not only is there the rain but also the wind has picked up a little bit of lake but here we go rock steady that helicopter down come the servicemen and now the ground prepared the aco organizers they know how to do tradition they know how to do the heritage of the event don't they absolutely the pageantry is a big part of this the anthems the flags and the pride in this event it is a world-class event here comes the flag mirror and with the the air that the helicopter above us is creating blowing all the water from the road towards us you can suddenly start to appreciate just how much rain has fallen in the last half an hour from where we're based at the moment it's just half an hour as well yeah it was it was bright blue skies this morning uh clouding over for the earlier uh races support races now down come two more members of the team one of them carrying the precious flag now we're told it's going to stop raining by 10 minutes to four just in time for the start but it will still be a wet road indeed and this is the first challenge that the race control team led by the race director eduardo freitas needs to overcome and decide how they're going to start the race and they won't even have a chance to cite this so they're going to be going into the unknown which could be interesting yeah it certainly is interesting but uh they have to basically announce it in about seven minutes 15 minutes before the start of the race so that all the teams and drivers know exactly what's going to happen i would suspect though from a safety point of view that they will start behind the safety car and at least get the initial part of this race moving without incident because certainly you don't want to lose anybody at the beginning as you see the flag now being prepared well the race is declared wet that much is obvious and as i say the forecast that the teams are being given is that the end of the raid will be at uh 1550 so now as the build up continues we're about 20 minutes away from the start of the race and all part of this build-up is the arrival of the french national flag helicopter pulls backwards and away will now perform a low pass over the full grid spectacular camera angle this one david it is indeed it gives you an idea of first of all how many cars are on that grid 61 of them in total and as the helicopter whistles overhead turns right and clears the grid 62 we started the weekend with we're down to 61 because edex sport just had too much damage it was a traumatic lead up to this race medic sport and the era motorsport run car with it exports i'm afraid well they gave up after their best efforts to mighty accidents and finally i think uh decided discretion the better part of valor so let's enjoy this moment this will be the starting flag and it's going to be john elking the president of ferrari isn't it who is the wave of the starting clan this year there is the trophy that we've seen arrive already john elkins bringing ferrari back to le mans in 2023 not to race in gt but to race in the top class in the hyper car class and that i think is a statement of intent that's been talked about for 10 years 10 12 years about ferrari coming in but now they are definitely coming back and it's going to be elkin waves the flag the flag presented to him and he now stands for the photographs as the teams bring more tire trolleys onto the grid absolutely rain's still falling steadily but as we look from the direction which the rain has been coming we've got bluer and lighter skies coming i think you're right spot on in fact david with the forecast this rain is going to stop and it's going to stop pretty soon now let's have a quick look at some of the key cars on the grid because 56 for example uh third in gte am the idiopathi ricotta pera and mattie carolli it's going to be matthew caroline that will uh start 41st on the grid in the team project 1 porsche and that is going to be a very competitive car isn't it especially with kairo behind the wheel because we know how quick he is then you go forward one spot for the uh gr racing team 86 porsche ben barker is going to be the start driver michael wainwright and tom campbell to join him and julian and lauer will start this pole position car in gte am with don bastian and lance david arnold who despite his reputation for going around the nurburgring for 24 hours has never done them all absolutely and julian and laura will come to this race i mean just won uh in the michelin cup and didn't even make the podium because it was a required on uh duty in raise control for the meeting with eduardo freitas into gta pro david yeah now this is 92 which is the new chassis for the kevin estrada neil yani michael christensen car because kevin stacked it during hyper pole so it's a story in itself this it's going to be as a result of that off uh down sixth in the class because he didn't get a time but it got a lot of damage but kevin ester will start it and he's gonna be a man to watch that is for sure he's gonna be in a big big hurry absolutely right ran on the airfield just briefly last night just to shake down at the car one of those two cars that were in strife overnight you'll see the other one later the 71 inception racing car they've got that car running again with a new chassis this is a 64 corvette quick with the two throughout the week so far and this car that that car and the 63 car have got a weight break seven kilos as the new version of the h24 technology demonstrator car takes off david this car based on lmp3 chassis it's hydrogen electric drive this basically the preface for something that's now coming in 2025 with a new set of regulations designed to give fuel cell technology the operation of the opportunity to compete for the overall win at le mans in remarkably short order just four years time this is the latest version of that technology demonstrator and we're hoping to see this car at some point racing in the mission turn our attention away from this for a moment uh louise beckett down on the grid can talk to us louise what news well i'm just over at toyota to find out rob lupin what happens in this situation that the teams are taking both inters and wets out when is it decided what you're going to go on three minutes before the call so we have to decide then if you go on interest on full vets or on slick likely they will not be slick but prediction says that it will stop reyes stop raining quite soon and yeah important decision already at the start of the race do you know if it's a safety car start we don't know yet we expect one but it depends a bit on the weather so it will be short call from the race director okay thank you you're welcome thank you thanks louise yeah i think there um there's a time limit when you need to have the tires on so therefore that's uh the point that rob's referring to when he says three minutes and at that point they will make a decision i would suspect by the fact that it stopped raining now the helicopter's done its job by taking away a lot of the water in the start finish but if you look at it now you've got to say that uh it's coming into the chicane there's a lot of puddles there so normally i think you would probably look at uh it's still raining on the other side of the circuit so i think it's going to be wet because as much as optimum tire maybe intermediates in sort of 10 or 15 minutes there is a point that with those puddles you can still easily get caught out and have aquaplaning and aqua planing here at 200 miles per hour i can tell you from personal experience it's not a lot of fun and the teams desperately want to get through the first few laps hassle-free and try and get into a rhythm as uh there is the grand marshal derrick bell making his way off the grid and he will do a lap of the circuit james winslow and john corbett there john the australian driver with uh british driver james winslow who's done much of his racing in asia and in australia they're getting themselves ready for the very fierce lmp2 fight i should say it's stefan mckelmey who's an mp2 race winner here is aboard the h-24 car and uh it is very wet out there um not quite it's it has can't the rainfall has come out hasn't quite stopped yet but those guys are growing brighter by the moment yeah they are but there's still rain falling as you can see in the far side of the circle there's still big puddles in there and i think uh then we will end up with a safety car start and pretty much everybody behind that could think about it actually if it's a safety car start i would start on intermediates if i was uh running a team okay 72 car this is the hob auto racing car the surprise package in hyper bowl the first ever asian entered gt pro car at the le mans 24 hours dries van tour it was that took pole position maxine martin known as something of a rainmeister you've taken away it's going to start the race yes you and i have both seen in many many races him do marvelous things in all sorts of gt3 machinery derek bell suiting up booting up and about to helmet up for leading this field around the third driver of that porsche alvaro parent as well that you don't often see in porsche's so it's going to be interesting to see how he goes in that but yes maxine martin to start dressvan did a mega job in the qualifying session and fernando alonso is here as well he earlier on in the day with uh esteban ocon did some laps around the circuit hitting the formula one car estimate in the lmp2 machinery and we'll get to lmp2 on this grid in a few moments time as uh still the debate goes on about tarzan he's definitely getting brighter overhead but that isn't to suggest it's going to be a dry circuit any time soon canal multiple class champion here at lewan in both gt1 and gte machinery in the am class back in the day it must be really delighted to meet another hyper car manufacturer because there's the opposition for two years time yeah but it's also someone that he basically aspired to follow into motorsport because it was ferrari that actually led jim glickenhaus to the sport and also to build road cars now toyota were being told are onto wet tyres but there's always going to be a discretion better part of valor element to the first stint well there's a point for them there's there's basically in my view it depends how long if there's a safety car if there's a safety car then you can look at a gamble to go on to intermediates and if you look at that it depends how long the safety car is going to be the last time we did have a safety guard start it was quite long and by the time it was released to come into the pits then it was actually intermediate level conditions and so from that perspective if they've got more information on the safety car start or how long roughly they think it's going to be than we do but certainly for toyota one two in the grid i don't think they'll be wanting to take too many risks no indeed now there as you look down onto the grid within the lmp2 ranks is the g drive entry and uh there is john elkin ready to uh make the announcement for the startup [Music] three minutes prior to that you need to basically commit on your tires indeed so intermediate seems to be the way to go in lmp2 from what reeds are telling us from the grip it's going to make for a really interesting first few laps once the cars are released as their for the hypercard class is 709 which lines up fifth on the grid it is richard westbrook who is going to start in the car that he shares with ryan briscoe and roman dumas the 709 michelangelo shod glickenhaus yeah that's on full wets as well you can see the the big deep grooves on the front tires as the camera was scanning around barely raining now here at the four and chicane as alan says it's uh it's still going to be reading the other side of the circuit for a little while now now had a quick look there at the number 28 jota entry which has got sean gallard at the wheel of it and 708 fourth on the grid was going to be started by olivier platt that's on wets as well so fifth and fourth as you work down the grid are the uh houses toyota at the front there so you can see now the grid cleared one engineer stays to get the engines fired up at the one minute mark and then the cars will set off and we are just about 15 seconds away from that one minute board being shown to the teams nicola lapierre will start the alpine and graham there's a bit of a story attached to this in terms of how it's become a hypercar it is this is in fact uh as we would watch it this is a grandfathered lmp1 car what does that mean it means it's been adjusted to be within the performance parameters of the new hypercar class but what it is is a very proven package you see it's got the lemon aero kit on what is essentially a reworked rebellion r13 how good is that car it for the second overall here at le mans uh [Applause] overhead that's a circuit driers jumping around that was the french air force absolutely so wake everybody up to help drive the circuit absolutely and to stop graham absolutely in his tracks oh my certainly did totally expecting that um but uh the red bull r13 is that away they go it's a pair of rafales i think the strike fighter from the french air force uh but uh back to the plot yes indeed should be reliable should be quick the downside for alpine is they can't go quite as far on a load of fuel which means over a long race like this additional pit stops green flagger green flag you see pull away [Music] see everybody's pretty much on the wets on the on the hyper car class [Music] and 709's got a small issue but he's on his way now [Music] lmp2 making it through joe to sport taking that pole position with antonio felix de costa wrt starting with robert kubica in second huge race huge race for some of these other p2 teams lots on the line beyond just the one just the lemon 24 hours big points raised to the wec and battles people there but beyond that catching the eyes of a number of people who are watching this with well a cultured view about what might happen in the future and uh they're on the car but they're still on the channel yeah oh dear that's going to be a penalty isn't it because the car is not on the ground at the three million and the wheels are spinning as well yeah it's still on the central jack you see at the back so that is number two that's the high-class racing car that was off the road twice in the warm-up session this morning and life isn't getting a whole lot better that car is due to be started by dennis anderson 25th on the grid and he's going to have to wait now to start at the back of the field isn't it well he's going to have to wait because there's not one mechanic on there to actually then jack the whole car up to get the to get the jollies to get the the jack out the the actual thing that's keeping it in the arrow that's not gonna do dennis anderson's dropping but he's gotta he's got to actually put it into neutral stop spinning the rear wheel so so the grid's scrolling through at the moment you can see the front of the grid is mike conway and sebastian boy meet nicola napier shares row two with olivier rogue three is richard westbrook antonio and antonio felix acosta row four of them kubisa and will stevens in row five nick devries lines up alongside nico jamal for united auto sports ua come next with alex lin at the wheel sean delisle is going to line up 12th on the grid and you can see the spray hanging in the air as the seventh row of the grid is norman natto and simon trummer again out of the p2 class the next rather great patrick pilay you normally associate him in terms of gt cars but again for the second lamar in a row he's in prototypes he's got robin friends lining up alongside ahead of philippe albuquerque and then ben hanley who goes from 18th on the grid 19th is where oliver jarvis starts and 20th on the grid for the duken team is memo rocas lining up 21st is the ever spectacular giro van der kada and it is alex brundle now regarded as an lmp2 stalwart alongside him ahead of exchange pre-driver roberto marie and ex-grand prix driver kevin magnussen who shares the car with his father 25th on the grid would have been dennis anderson but it's still stranded 26 oliver webb for arc bratislava miraculous squad then you've got tatiana calderon in one of the two all-female entries and the innovative car of matthew lahaye more of which are none as danny sanderson gets going now arnold robert starts 29 from the grid and 30th will be tom kurt just ahead of maxine martin who goes from pole in gte pro amigo molina lines up alongside 32nd on this 61 strong grid tommy milner shares the next row the 17th row with james collado the 18th row of the grid jamboree bruni and then teammate kevin est both of those are going to be in a big big hurry to get through the field no time for extra because he was off the road and laurence van thor is next on the grid with antonio garcia for company and the start procedure of number 20 is under investigation gosh what a scoop uh julian angler is on pole from 39th on the grid in gte am and uh lining up alongside him is ben barker ahead of matteo cairoli and antonio fuoco it's a stellar entry this as you roll through it isn't it bembani goes in a hastily put together replacement inception racing ferrari lining up alongside the tf aston a felipe fraga ahead of iron links is mattia crossoni and factory driver michael jensen for kessel racing in the number 57 ferrari harry tinkle parachuted into the proton porsche he will start uh from 47th alongside giancarlo fissy keller then nicholas nielsen spa 24 winner and christian reed porsche veteran 50th on the grid 51st is where you find marco siefried for the asian team absolute racing and euro blinkermolon for rinaldi racing comes next ahead of ross gunner tf sport and nikki team for aston martin racing again one of the am gt entries that he's in the second all-girl car this one from iron links is michelle gatting to go first and iron links investor claudius will start alongside ahead of andrew watson and then porsche champion an igtc champion as well dennis olsen from 58th on the grid 59th is where you find matt griffin and one of the many rookies on the grid next jody fanning with the final cut robert renault for how about motorsport and dennis anderson i would imagine he's going to have to slot in at the very back it looks that way just as dennis anderson were pulling away i may have been mistaken i thought there was some debris on the grid to be drivers left as he pulled away something uh on the grid now that didn't look to come from his car if i didn't if i believe my own eyes um i wonder because it did look like the gt cars got away quite slowly i sincerely hope we've not had contact okay well we'll uh if there's any team radio telling this it'll be monitored and you can see the drivers trying to find the grip level apply the power there yeah this is the one chance that we know of to assess where the grip is and where it isn't yes and it's also a point that i haven't seen any message or any information to suggest that the safety car is going to stay out and it looks like it's going to be a green flag start a standard start at four o'clock when they pass the line in front of us and then it will be definitely a venture of discovery into the first corner will it ever will it ever so uh yellow flags on standby i suspect because it's not only the grip alan it's the spray as well it's the visibility yeah it's a it's a lot of things you know it looks like there's massive fog and that's not fog at all that's just because of the spray that's coming up in in that but let's listen to see what it's like from number eight who's been started by sebastian boyemi can you feedback on the conditions uh tell us about the conditions please there is standing water there was stunning water certainly on the exit of miles and corner we saw that with one of the factory porsches fishtailing away from uh the turn and i tend to agree with him it's significantly worse at the back of the circuit than it is in front of us here at the fourth uk and i suspect what we can't see is what the track service is like but this is a place part of the circuit that does tend to keep wet extra formation lap just like onto the screen so they're gonna give them one more lap but that i would imagine we'll count within the 24 hours yes it should uh when they pass the line then uh they will start the race officially and so the clock will start to start counting down from 24 hours and then it will be if it's one more lap then it will be green racing after that just to try and give everybody a little bit more feel now normally you would think yeah more fuel also get more temperature on the tire actually it's going the other direction because it'll reduce temperature in the tire but eduardo freitas is the race director and let's hear what he says information to the pit lane information to the pit lane there will be an extra formation lap there will be an extra formation lap the flag will be waived on the line but there will be an extra formation lab and better somebody says to eduardo why did you then why didn't you give them another formation lap yeah just for clarity the flag is actually officially the start of the race and that's going to be waved on the line to say the race has started the clock will count down but the formation lap will continue for one more so this is the view from on board leader van der carder's racing team netherland uh aurica and this is probably the better side of the circuit now in fact the cloud breaking a little bit of blue sky overhead it's quite bright uh where we are now at the very end of the lap but uh it's gonna take a little wee while for that surface water yeah but you saw the cars up ahead there he's only one third of the way down the grid so there's two thirds of the grid behind him and so the spray would be pretty immense going down in towards the chicanes now the latest update on the rain is a few drops possible at times after two minutes past four so uh once we get to the start of the race proper if you like the first proper green flag lap then the rain should be just about going away from the circuit and that first stint is therefore going to be fascinating not only in terms of what it's like to begin with as they all try and assess the grit but how the road dries out and how they manage that up to the first round of pit stops yeah for showing the pit stop should roughly come at about 45 50 minutes but now you're going to see the clock and the left start to count down as they officially will cross the line to start the le mans 24 hours 2001. indeed so out of the 4k the 2021 le mans 24 hours the 89th running of the event comes then up towards the timing line the porsche pace car as it is we'll break the beam in a moment and as the cars go through now so the clock ticks and we are officially underway although it is an extra lap behind the pace car and as the cars turn their way up through the first right hand of the dunlop curve up towards the s's then they have to run still in the grid or they can't overtake but that hopefully will not be too far away as the safety car procedure that we're under for the moment continues at least for one more lap cars coming through in grid order no dramas so far to be spotted [Music] so it's mike conway who leads the pack sebastian bouemi second nicolas olivier player richard westbrook and then sixth the rest of the lmp2 carls on the bridge the joe trantry of antonio felix de costa and their number 72 porsche going through that being your gte poll uh car that is the maxine martin porsche he must be reveling in these conditions brad i think so too just to confirm as well by the way dennis anderson has joined the train at the very back of this grid after that i think leaving the car up on the air jacks on the grid i mean that sort of mistake shouldn't happen should it at this level oh never ever that's uh that's very basic the car needs to be on the ground to be able to power itself to go around the circuit indeed and leaving over the rear wasn't even on the jacks it was actually on the rear support the trolley wheel as well so it needed uh it was quite a couple of little incidents that happened there it could argue that the one positive is that by starting at the back he's behind any incidents on the first lap but that's small consolation yeah in the dry yes i would agree with that but the other thing is that uh all the incidents are directly in front and when you're approaching incidents at 200 miles per hour they approach pretty quickly and in the spray as well yeah it doesn't help i guess so the order as you see it on the screen is the grid order because that is how they have to be apart from those that would have been behind dennis anderson so there is a shuffle already courtesy of his poc start indeed there is and uh go around now gets another chance just to see where the problems might come particularly the cars we heard was intermediates for the p2 cars intermediates for the p2 except the pr the hyper cars are predominantly on west they've got a different tyre remember different manufacturer of tyre as well as obviously a different design etc and in that way it's uh it's definitely i would say class specific and what we've historically seen as well is that the gt cars tend to lean towards the intermediates let's just have a quick uh listening to sebastian boy be with the team again oh it should be okay okay some slight rain expected still but after that no more which is a relief i'm sure for a driver to hear it is certainly getting much much brighter calls for much more optimism on this side of the circuit and we are hopeful that the safety car as it effectively is now is going to peel in this time but we can get the cars at a proper race pace up towards the first corner yep so the rain has completely stopped here and it is getting brighter by the moment there are a few darker clouds up on up on the horizon but doesn't look like it's going to be anything like the dump of rain that we had uh just what 40 minutes ago after no rain at all at le mans for the past week what's that saying again david it always rains at the moment uh something like that it's about i think it's spa isn't it so the team's now thinking okay this is going to be a challenging first stint that is for sure but they've got to try and keep out of stride for the first lap or two first corner or two uh but uh we will go racing one hopes for good at the uh end of this lap and the speed is quickening as the cars then make the run now down towards the end of the first lap of the race 92 porsche we understand from gte pro has gone on to full wets which would make sense given what the track state is like over here where the spray just hangs in the air doesn't it well it hangs in there partly because of the trees on either side so basically it gets thrown up by the downforce and then it sort of sticks within the trees and then just comes straight back down again so that those areas of the circuit dry significantly slower than the open areas that you'll see through porsche curves that they're going to come up to in a in about a minute minute and a half and then also the start finish straight dunlop etcetera so through indianapolis towards our nage then comes mike callaway as the race leader this is who's leading the classes it's all based on that grid order of course so mike conway on the pole position car for toyota gazoo racing out of hyper car uh it is antonio phoenix de costa and lmp2 it's maxie martin and julian antler in the porsches uh in the two gte classes for my memory significantly more of the star drivers in gtam are starting this race than we would normally have uh i think a fair proportion of them got the really quick guys in the car for the start of this race well i think you know it's a big race uh there is obviously tricky conditions no they nominated the drivers in advance and uh ultimately i think that championship battle as we said needs to get off to a good start and uh so therefore i think there is an element of strategy that's definitely gone into that absolutely certainly top five are uh circulating start this race with the drivers that actually qualified in hyper pole very technical there michael jensen who will be a poor uh peugeot driver next season carla fissy keller nicholas nielsen another ferrari factory driver the young gun that is your own blinker mullen now in his 45th year at the uh the 124 hours that wiper on blamey's car working overtime yes being decidedly floppy as well which doesn't necessarily bode well i mean they actually work at speed right better faster the speed then the better they stick to the surface so down towards the pit lane comes the porsche and it's going to stay out by the look of this unless it makes a very very late call into the pits because there's another access point a little bit later but let's just see we've still got extra formation in that legend on the screen but it's going to do another lap yep so at least one more now i think i'm correct that both the total leading card to increase the speed i'm going to ask the leading card to increase the speed you have the race director say he's going to get the leading car to increase the speed and therefore quicken the pace of the cars behind the pack well roughly that was about two minutes quicker than it had been on the normal safety car lap and so he is increasing the speed and that's to try to generate some tire temperature the reality is that uh however fast that porsche is able to go as a safety car there is no way that uh it is fast enough for the for the lmp cars especially to try to generate tire temperatures but it's the best they can do and so from that perspective you know it's correct of eduardo freitas to announce that i think you're right and saying i believe both toyota and glickenhaus the teams with the new cars here have both tested in wet conditions right i don't think they were planning to but i think they did so that should help when there was some of the basics and basics for instance uh are is the cockpit sealed for wet weather we know that bentley in their first appearance here in the modern era caught foul with that never tested the wet and the car was just leaking water like a sieve i don't think the glickenhaus or the tota teams are going to be in that situation i think they've got data of these cars running in wet conditions and it could be that we've had the rain now because it's getting brighter and there's no more forecast only a few drops possible at times in the next five minutes so maybe that was just for everybody come at the wrong time but that could be all we get now let's have a quick listen to toyota number seven mike conway's now and the radio should be at the end of this lap so confirming there that uh they're expecting safety car in at the end of this lap that they the issue i guess i'm looking for is misting of these screens it's getting warmer uh pretty rapidly and uh with an unproven car in these conditions we have seen that be a major issue and of course you can't reach that screen can you alan no i don't know the driver certainly can't um there's no question about it but they do have heaters and so you can stick the screen heater on which is a section of the the screen it's not the complete screen but a section of it um i think they have most of the certainly the ones at the front in terms of the hyper car should be okay for that well that was the view heading down the straight of the rain falling from kevin madison's high class rating orica so it is kevin and jan magnusson plus anders fjord back which i think should well be a podium contender in that class you'd have thought i mean anders a very good silver driver indeed jan oh he's been here a few times and has won a few times too kevin all bit as a rookie his talents are extreme yes uh it's got to be uh well let's hope the high class racing team can bounce back from what's not been a a starring role in the start of this race or but not with that car no indeed the dennis anderson car as you say but uh yeah that's the perhaps this is the one where all the effort is being focused actually for obvious reasons with a star driving lineup so riding on board now with nikola lapierre in the alpene things are looking a little bit better on this side of the circuit and we are hopeful to go racing this time around as they come out of malls and corner then the speed being increased all the time as uh was making the point to get the tar temperatures and pressures up and therefore it's safer when the cars are released rather than letting them loose on on cooler rubber at least and then the battles will continue but do not be surprised if there isn't another big shout of drama on their first proper racing lap yep drama surely awaits whether or not that's racing drama or incident well we'll know in about what three or four minutes time so so far the tippy toe approach is working for everybody [Music] so the first casualty is such was dennis anderson who falls to the back of the pack he drops to 61st position as the cars come down now towards indianapolis great shot this isn't looking down on that section of the series shows just how quickly they're coming into a really challenging technical part of the circuit look back from toyota number eight then sebastian boehme at the wheel of it and the toyota fans looking forward to another win they think it took toyota so so long to finally do it and ever since they've been racking them up and they've been loyal to this this race in this championship through many many years and i think with the we we perhaps lack the benefit of rather the lesson of hindsight that they came so close so so many times but you're right i mean we did touch on this in in one of the practice sessions that having won it they could have said right mission accomplished absolutely we're off now i haven't done that but no they've stuck at it and invested in the future absolutely tso50 that's has left the scene now replaced by the jar 010 hypercar and a long term program and looks like they'll add races to this program with the news that uh this formula is going to converge with the ms weathertech sports car championship made it very clear they are looking and evaluating some of the major races of the united states as well with toyota that's great news race direction asking the uh teams to tell their drivers to close the gaps to get the field bunched up so that's suggesting that we're getting closer to a proper start because we've had effectively now eleven and a half minutes uh under safety car conditions no overtaking permissible we're coming through the lead cars at the end of the porsche corners at carting car is actually only in indy so it's probably two three kilometers behind and he wants now eduardo freitas all the cars in grid position exiting marshall's post 33 so here we go then they get themselves in that noah's ark two by two formation with mike conway in the pole position car on the outside of the circuit as it will be as they come up towards the timing line alongside him sebastian boehme who will have the inside line but it's the grippier racing line on the outside which is why pole position is there the second row nicola lapierre in the alpine and to line up alongside him olivier play the third row the second clicking house of richard westbrook and antonio felix de costa should be there as well and if he's on his toes he might be able to upset the apple cart it might be that he's quite content to let the hyper cars go because they look like they might put themselves in a little bunch here as you look back then from sebastian bremi's car yes you've got the five hyper cars absolutely on their own they have pulled well well clear of the lmp2 division as they come now out of the ford chicane then up towards the line to officially get this 89th lemon 24 hours underway then the cars up towards the line they will be given the signal to go racing now and it is blast off and a good getaway by mike conway but is it good enough to repel sebastian webby who's on the inside line then a good start also by olivier platt who tries to get out the inside and go three wide towards the first quarter it doesn't work gets in the spray around the outside tries to go nickelodeon so it's going to be mike conway that leads lapierre does go second and drama straight away into the side of the turret to number eight goes the clicking house drama and the first corner my goodness that was just a little bit of uh difficult breaking conditions cold breaks tires clicking now slid into the toyota took one of the toyotas out and uh there's nothing he could do but he's now going to sit and wait and hope that it wasn't damaged and gear hit the right uh hit the rear of the car on the rear tire as nowhere with lapierre as he comes down to another spinner as well the 72 porsche is fun and there's a lmp2 in there 48. he's the index sport car that's the gte pro pole sitting car 72 car damage certainly to the front right corner of the clicken house we've not seen what damage yet has been caused to the number eight total so that was patrick pillay and maxine martel spinning two drivers you wouldn't anticipate to be doing that so mike conway has got away with it the incident at marshall's post three is under investigation so it's mike conway leading from nicola lapierre as they come then down through the chicane and of course that's broken up the pack somebody else going deep deep deep there on the escape road that's the other clicking now thick licking houses that went off there's a lot of damage to the one that hit the toyota and that's a nose damage light damage so it'll have to come in and repair that without question and uh there's an lmp2 battle for the lead georgia sports are defending a little bit as everybody's going everywhere in the first game no one has got any feel for where the group is at all 49 car went to the inside so indeed didn't wrt call the 54 they stopped the eight has stopped so that's the answer in parts of the question alan about the damage it's had to stop the word with the team it's got going again but a big big delay it looks like it was olivier plus car that suffered the damage but i think louise will be on a toes down towards the toyota garage because on the very first proper racing lap of the 24 hours big drama for toyota number eight big drama there i think he's obviously he's had to stop for something and then reset and going again he'll just be thinking now try and get the car back to the pits toyota themselves aren't preparing too many bits and pieces on the car so it's not mass panic but definitely as you can see he's now coming out the second chicane and seems to be going at full speed as well yeah team's okay grime doesn't it he's in 60 first position trouble for the 33 car now as they're trying to find where the grip is and isn't and that's that's the edex board car was sliding wide again into the gravel on the turn in there it is in the gravel um so the index sport cart in trouble there another p2 car looks like a jota car in trouble at moulton corner getting away but slowly all of the gt pros struggling for grip at the most corner i think everybody's struggling for a grip out of every corner to be honest with you it looks really treacherous out there for grip for tar temperature for everything as he deck is off and that's at the second again that'll be a slow zone i would assume into that area while they tried to crane that car out but at the lead mike conway's got the best view possible because he's got a clear track ahead of him he also doesn't now have nicola lapierre breathing down his neck quite as much so he can be a little bit more careful as he comes into porsche for the first time and then down through to ford multiple second place finisher here at the 1124 house mike conway he says the best chance he's got a win this has got mayhem written all over it as well hasn't it did you look at the gte battle patrick pelay is the one in 48 that's off the road it was felipe fraga spinning in 33 and alan what are we hearing about toyota number eight and louise has sprinted down to toyota and it was a reset of the systems for the eighth that is the reason he pulled to the side of the circuit did a reset and is now back on his way again we've got multiple p2 cars dropping down the order the 39 so 24 car is dropping down the order it looks like it's a big problem too for the 74 going to the back of the pack and the 32 united supports the back and that's the that's again that's eight again and the 74 they come together that's down at our nash corner so it looks like a bit of confusion i would have said more than actually coming together but his day has gone from bad to worse for sebastian boy the big challenge now is to stay on the lead lap whatever they have to do in the pits he's got to stay on the lead lap somehow and there's a number and that number's not quite known it's somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes beyond that if it stays green and a p2 car stays green and without problems they can't catch them well that's 709. so that's richard westbrook the one that did the hitting was olivier wasn't on the first lap to pick up but he's gone through he's not pitted he's not petted that car you're right now alan talk us through this yeah here we have uh the two clicking houses uh one's attacking which is the olivia plan the insiders we're looking at the lmp2 cars but now as you come into here there's just basically there's not very much grip at all and as you can see he's just slid into the side of the toyota and whacked the left-hand rear wheel of the toyota here we see it again and just the closing speed the fronts are locked up he's got no chance well neither have got any chance once it hit the brakes it'd be interesting to stay with this and see what happened behind with martin and with pilay because that's the first incident you see the debris that's on the road but then of course there was the secondary drama behind and then more around the lap so number eight toyota were anticipating to come in and there's the reaction from the teams watching on in the pit lane as they see the drama unfold on board with the corvette now number 63. just to go ahead and drop back i thought they're [Music] but all of that was because of the big sort out on the opening that carl's scattering so mike conway led at the end of the call for the moment that one the first proper racing that by 1.6 seconds from lapierre olivier in third place and here's our first flow zone this could be a little bit tricky as the deck cars now on its way again being dragged out of the gravel track would be full of gravel and it's made its way back onto the track so dramas galore on these first couple of racing laps and more or less every class as well trouble for 92. kevin ester has had a moment so thankfully he's not dinged it but kevin estra has a spin and gets going so we expected drama but he's coming at every corner for every carver almost he's having some sort of strife this is in a slow zone that's why the pace is so reduced if you do a double take and look at the traffic jam behind the only good news you can report is the track conditions are improving absolutely yeah unfortunately i have to say i don't think if you were in one of these cars you would think they were improving too much but that's just purely the grip that's available for them this is going to be the end of the slow zone so the toyota will come out of here and he'll be able to accelerate you see the green light on the right hand side and that's to say the track is green from this moment on now he can accelerate and the speeds on the left-hand side on the graphic just going up full throttle up through the gears and then towards mulsanne behind him you can see the gap back but you can also see that lapierre is weaving around frantically to try to get some temperature back into the tires back into the system so that he could start again a huge gap to the third place car now uh something like what's up 12 13 seconds dramas in every class we said hypercar well we saw at the very start of the race and then b2 multiple cars in trouble gte pro there is the damage to the house that car did not bit gt pro the 72 and the 92 both off the road yeah and we also need to see a replay if we can of that drama for the number eight toyota down at arnage and to what caused it to go off the road a second time but that is 708 carrying on with the damage but that's not looking good really no i would think they'll want to try to continue as long as possible so they can their hope get to the the pit stop and so not necessary necessitate another stop however i would suggest that they'll probably get dragged in before that yeah the scrutineers will want to look right there to make sure it's safe so well you've got to have legs you've got to have lights on and one of the lights that's the alpine that's gone around as well so nicola lapierre from second place now loses it coming out of indianapolis and the traffic comes flooding past and there's another leading car losing time backs out he had to get across the road somehow but now he's in an even more dangerous place waiting for a gap in the lmp2 fleet comes storming past him right this is just showed you a blappier as he's struggling to see where to be able to do it as we're going to get a replay the toyota comes through indy on the left lapierre just gets on to the throttle no rear tire grip spins around it's a harmless spin on its own but the traffic that's going to come through is going to be the thing that'll drop him right back there and it's a case of now heart in the mouth for the team back at beast because he can't do anything about it so let's see how far that is going to drop him down this is the second racing lap it is lap four of the race and the only car that's not really had too many dramas thus far is number seven toyota mike conway now what's all this done so lapierre's dropped down to 18th at this moment in time so he's got going again as conway crosses the line this is to start the fourth fifth lap look at this conway's got a huge gap 18 seconds back to olivier platt and there's a couple more cars off down at our dennis anderson again he's one of them and that looks like the graph car there's so 24 car okay pretty easy just to tell you who's not going off the road now isn't it so mike conway leads the margin is 18 seconds this is a replay of the start the two toyotas side by side to begin with and it's the card at the back that we need to be watching it's that olivier player it's the the sister car that goes down the inside the 708 that goes down the inside sorry it wasn't it's richard westbrook that's on the outside there and then just slides down and tags the back right on the wheel so toyota by this time we'll know what the shock sensors basically the sensors on all parts of the rear suspension in the gearbox will have told them whether that impact was enough to do any damage however you never know what the resultant effect off again total off again that was a total was it not to the inside replay oh that's the first lap that's what we're waiting for the martin and pillay drama which was behind so as the toyota rejoined that's what was happening there then he had felipe fraga going off and there's pile having his second drama of the opening lap and that was all self-induced wasn't it just skates off into the gravel i think there's a bit of frustration after the first incident and then pushing ahead but now mike conway's got 20 seconds of a gap between himself and the two clicking houses that are sitting in second and third then antonio felix decosta's just sneaking onto the back of the those clicking hoses as well and normally seven is the one with the bad luck isn't it in the toyota stable well you've got to say this is a massive opportunity for number seven is it ever absolutely massive because we know this can be a longer pet stop for one of those two clicking house cars they damage there will not be doable within a standard fuel entire pit stop i need a thought that toyota would also want to have a good look at number eight when they get to the first round of stops as well now 44 battles on within the lmp2 class through the gt traffic there that's all he wear but the wheel of it in gte pro it's a corvette one two at the moment tommy milner is still ahead of antonio garcia and that is dennis anderson off the road the third time at least plus the bad start yeah so go back to watching yep so rejoins and a lot of drivers will be eager to get to the end of this stint so we're on now lap number five and the lead gap as i say going up 21 and a half seconds time to concentrate on gte for a moment where tommy milner is battling with antonio garcia you are riding with garcia now and there is milner just up the road ahead so it's the silver corvette 64 the yellow one is garcia and they are one and two ferrari three four porsche five now where did kevin estras spin drop him to seventh in class and 39th overall so that was another kick for that car and the 72 car with that incident right at the start the race that car down in 47th position from ball position in the class corvette's been well untroubled look with coming going for a formation finish almost there 24 minutes into the race but that ferrari third look in the hands of miguel molina is not far behind so shortly garcia is going to have to go defensive isn't he because the ferrari is getting closer and closer and closer all the time one of the ferraris that one in the car with full lights on the other one was side lights only now you said that you thought there was debris on the grid and tommy milner reports that he was hit from behind by a ferrari leaving the grid now that would have been further back from the dennis anderson car that we saw but even so some contact at the start uh they must have passed him and then hit but we did see the cars were backing up and i did wonder whether or not that was something i've done lot but if it hadn't on the grid that might it might in itself be something that needs to be looked at by race control right this is sebastian buenas view now toyota number eight is currently in 41st place he's on a mission trying to get the places back he's on a mission he knows he's got to try to make his way through but he's also got to do it quite safely that's the thing is because he's been in the wars already and he doesn't want to be in any more of them especially when you look at the number of cars that are going off on their own anyway if he gets collected by another one then that's obviously just not going to be the thing that they need to strategically know so time to catch breath for a moment mike conway has done the fastest lap of the race but it is a four minutes 3.353 as he leads olivier pla despite the damage and the gap is 26.4 seconds third is richard westbrook so it's toyota clicking house clicking house one two and three antonio felix de costa still heading the lmp2 class he goes through in fourth place his fifth should be will stevens and blamey picking his way through the traffic as here you ride on board with 709 that's richard westbrook out of the dunlop asses yeah an olivier planet's up ahead of him uh he we've just heard from louise in the pit lane that is just going to try to make it to the end of this thing before they change the nose not to come in for a specific stop i can understand that from the team's perspective it's whether race direction think that's the acceptable way to deal with this or not that's the question if that car starts to lose bits you can expect that to be uh be required to finish to come in i can confirm by the way seen some track side video that was indeed contact between the corvette and from the rear of the ferrari and the corvette backed up the ferrari clearly the driving driver clearly did not see that was happening and there was briefly firm contact roberts racing but it happens to be robbing racing before the race has even started indeed so now that battle is coming alive because not only is it three for the lead but fourth james collado is closing up as well so the corvettes might be leading but they're not getting away the ferraris if anything they're getting stronger and now look at this because the second in the class antonio garcia is under attack miguel molina is there so this spanish battle of drivers corvette ahead of ferrari james collado fourth in the class getting closer and closer graham this battle pack is building it is indeed gt pro has been stellar in the time we've had this formula at the le mans 24 hours we now know uh we've probably got one more year of this to go and we're going to release every single moment of it corvette such firm servants of this who have a gavin five-time winner here with corvette racing partners broadcast a little later b2 though hasn't been dull either look at this five cars involved and that's the innovative car is that the 84 car this is towards the back of the pack yeah number one is uh tatiana keller the wheel to start going wide coming out of the chicane so there's a queue of what five six there only web at the back of it felipe albuquerque trying to make progress but he's actually having to do a bit more defending at the moment albuquerque's on the back foot here and as you said the 84 the initiative car with matthew lahaye is at the wheel he's the one that's on the attack calderon looks to be pretty safe in her position there but there's a gaggle of cars that are stacking up behind philippe albuquerque at the moment the road starting to look greasy rather than wet at certain places mike conway's lap times done the best one thus far no surprise four minutes three but there's a long way to go to a dry pace and albuquerque they're slow out of the chicane the car looking all crossed up he's trying to get down on the power and he's about to be mugged for a place is he because cars go either side of him so albuquerque versus lahaye and ben hanley there on the outside in the white car and he's going to get the run on both of them and through he goes good move and albuquerque's backed out of it completely he's struggling massively the last lap was nine seconds slower than the leader antonio felix de costa in lmp2 and so albuquerque has got zero grip at this moment he's getting mugged left right and center he's going to be last in the category very soon he's second third last in the category at the moment so he is struggling having not been happy for the bulk of the weekend and alan news about 708 708 as we saw hit the toyota number eight of sebastian vueme who's now overtaking the gt lead battles but uh the 708 is going to have to serve a 10-second penalty added to the next stop so when he comes in before they do any work at all on the car he'll have to sit for 10 seconds in the naughty step and then he'll be able to get on his way again so that was for olivier zelda on the first lap i've got to say that's quite a mild penalty considering the potential consequences for sebastian boehme in number eight and boeing incidentally he's up to 28th now so he is storming through the pack he's clearing his way through the gt cars but it's the gt cars that's the point it's the gt cars the storming way through uh the alpine has made its way back up through probably half the p2s that passed him that was from the spin at indianapolis where he lost it on his own at the restart and uh i had to wait until there was a gaggle of cars went through and uh that's put basically nicola lapierre back out of the top ten but he'll be making his way back into i'm pretty sure in the next one or two laps and now the order is shuffling look within gt because milner is dropping back so garcia has gone to the top and now you've got ferrari second and third so tommy milner who was leading the class but not getting away drops back gives that the lead to garfield and he looks like he's struggling as well because the pace has gone and off the road there look goes the poor shirt so that was laurence van thor running out of road scrabbles back onto the circuit but stays fifth in the class it's a little bit bizarre there why there's been such a split with the two corvettes who are running nose to tail and now it looks very much like milner's got nothing underneath him i'm just wondering um whether they started on intermediate tires on both of them i've got oliver gavin here who certainly knows corvette inside out shaking his head wildly he's saying wet sweats wets being told by united auto sports felipe albuquerque is on enters which we heard from lou was what we believed was the case for most of the cars in that class so if that's the case doesn't explain why he's struggling quite so badly at the back of this pack what is going on with that 22 car so dominant here last year and just has no real pace at all at the moment lmp2 is antonio felix de costa for jota uh and the incident involving number 48 at marshall's post three that was the drama no further action there so it's the costa from stevens from kubisa nick to freeze alex brundle and then simon trummer the top six in lmp2 at the moment totally different look to the sheen of the circuit now so greasy yeah this is that in between it's not kind of drying and it's not really wet and it generally just has got that horrible slippery feel about it and i hated these conditions as drivers you knew you had to get through it but you just knew that everything that you did you were dancing with the steering wheel and on the throttle on the brakes you had to be so so gentle and any any lock-up was a major lock-up because you couldn't release the brake to actually release the tape the wheel to allow you to slow down again it's horrible conditions but it's an area where if you have got that feel you can make up a lot of time well right now the lap times certainly for mike conway coming down pretty much everybody as the road drives and the fuel load comes down are doing better laps we are on lap seven at the moment but of course that's not been seven proper racing laps but the lmp2 fight continues and with good numbers in the class lots of battles that will rage on all the way down the field garcia from monina from collado in gte pro we've not yet touched on am but antonio fuoco for ferrari needs julian handglower now and matthew cairoli running third now this in the sunshine now is what's going on in gt and a change of lead in the class because molina has got a head of garth here here look so the ferrari has managed to get up to the corvettes past the corvettes now is that just a mark that this is beginning to get into a face the race where a different tire is going to make a difference in terms of the lead gaps total lead that damage clicking house uh the olivier black girl by 37 seconds uh but we've still got which richard westbrook not past that card now that was the card with less pace throughout the week they're just going back to gtu pro and looking at that battle earlier on in the weekend we had some porsches in that class where are they they've gone i mean it's at this stage they've absolutely gone and these two cars by the way the ferrari and the corvettes let's have a listen to what's going on the porsche with the 92 car kevin estrada yeah you're doing a good job mate just just hang in here that's all we need at this terms of stage hardy to kevin estrella saying you're doing good job that's what we need at the moment keep out of strife basically yep basically concerns being impressed about the wet tyres i think there that's uh porsche's have just fallen off the back of this like a stone but they're of course of course they took a bit of a power cut with uh bullets performance earlier in the week corvettes were given a weight break uh just yesterday ahead of the lebanon 24 hours and uh they are at the moment the formed cars and they've been the ones with that incident as well and that's been the mark of this first half hour of the 2021 the great race this is kevin ester there you see in the white porsche he's got to be very careful because he's on the back foot a little bit as the ferraris run wide and uh that's allowed the black and orange porsche to come past but esther's got to be super super careful he's battling with cars that are in a different category he's off the back end of uh his category and he needs just to make through and survive through this area and start to fight again we talk about the porsches have dropped off we are only 30 minutes into a 24 hour race there's a lot of stuff to go and a lot of good racing but there's also going to be some struggles for everybody else now is a time for cam and taking a sharp intake of breath and holding it for a few seconds we've had our first sub four minute lap as well now by mike conway he's down a 359.912 as the road dries a little bit and it becomes quicker and he is nearly 40 seconds up the road against olivier pla in the damage to glickenhaus so richard westbrook because graham was making the point still hasn't cleared him in that third place overall information from toyota no bodywork damage on the toyota they've checked and they've checked with photographs too they say no bodywork damage to that car the bodywork we can see the question for me is what's happened in the gearbox because the hit on the wheel puts a shot through the drive shaft which then naturally puts the shock into the gearbox now this battle is third in lmp2 as one goes up the escape road in the background that might have been lapierre again i think it was wasn't it he was up the escape road but here you have got the fight for third in the class which means robert kubis versus nick davis so ex formula one driver versus formula one wannabe nick degrees very accomplished young gun and he's about to make a move he's either dutchman tries to get alongside the pole as they head down the mills are straight but robert cooper has got the line but nick devries keeps on coming around the outside line and he's gonna do it is he yes fantastic well newly crowned world champion formerly just last week and uh nick davis has been very much on foreign p2 in this arrow zero one matched car for g drive racing takes that position moves up to third position that was a good move wasn't it around the outside there in greasy conditions it was he squeezed kubica to the inside i don't think robert really fought it as if it was the last lap of the race to be honest with you but uh it was a nice little move and now defeat is on his way with the gap up ahead i'll be interested to see the pace of the freeze because in reality you you can see the second place carl there which is the pandas racing of will stevens but up ahead of it is the actual race leader which is 15 seconds up ahead the antonio phillips de costa we've had an absolute best in the first sector by sebastian buehme so as he gets through the traffic and finds a clear bit of road occasionally he's doing good sector time so that is albuquerque who is still dropping dropping dropping down the order and the gt field is just flooding past him that's nico shaman that's the other two that's the car that we didn't see what the problem was he had at the early part he's still rooted in amongst the gtm traffic and making his way back up slowly so the 32 car currently just outside the top 40. outside the top 40 is also the united auto sports cars and nicola jaman and he's struggling in there this is the thing that really is amazing me is the complete and utter drop-off of the auto sports at the start of this race i'm not sure why because we heard and understand the tire strategy looks similar between all the cars but he's start struggling to get past gt am cars where he should be miles away and at the same time felipe albuquerque one of the fastest guys in the category struggling down in 22nd sorry in 18th in the in the class i just wonder when you've got one of these b2 cars that's dropped back in amongst the gt traffic the lack of the less punch they've got this year is making that tougher i mean you've got these gt cars in numbers as he clearly does sherman about to uh get by this this batch he is he's just not got the straight line punch to get clear in one single move no you're right but equally shouldn't have dropped back into the middle of this place so that's part of the mystery isn't it as sebastian buehme could be on for the fastest lap of the race here he's done two absolute bests let's have a look at what's been going on in gte pro here as laurence van thor tries to get up past antonio garcia and that's a pretty decent move around the outside and he makes it stick he does get some power down well coming out of the dunlop chicane garcia does give him plenty of room but now garcia is on the wrong line has to break to try and get it stopped and that allows vantour to use the camber of the corner just to run around the outside and get the job done and puts van tour up into third place another move i haven't seen apologies if this has been noted third place overall for a p2 car now for joe to 38 antonio felix de costa is ahead of richard westbrook no we haven't spotted that but you're quite right and he's about to have a go for a second isn't he because he's right on the back now of olivier platt and he's going to go through because par with that damage has to give up the place yeah but just remember we think that uh it was wet tires on the clicking house and it was intermediate on the lmp2s as you rightly said there david earlier on it is getting significantly drier and it's probably just crossed into the point where the greasiness has gone and those enters are starting to really work and you can see that now the clicking house has dropped down so it's jota an lmp2 car that is in second place orbital as the uh 64. 64 comes into the pit so that's one of the corvettes the number 13 already and now antonio felix decosta has done an absolute best of anybody in the first sector so i was getting excited about boy me mike conway has the fastest lap but now graeme goodwin it is antonio felix de costa in if you call it a secondary class car that's a little bit rude but just got an absolute best set to one absolutely moves two in lmp2 the 26 and the 65 now getting stuck in to each other this is for second place and it's racing coming off the back of their first ever win in the european le mans series and held second place i've lost that now will stevens dropped behind nick defrees 44 seconds by the way is the gap between mike conway and antonio phillips decosta also in bit lane as you can see the 91 the factory porsche so from what we were anticipating in terms of gt cars being able to do 14 laps i know that this is down to tyres and they're going onto slings but of course the team strategy that they've already planned has gone out of the window hasn't it because this is coming at a much earlier stage move for the lead here in uh gta pro 52 and 51 side by side miguel molina led the race it changes over 51 james gallardo takes the lead in gt pro moves up to 25th position in this race so that shuffles the order yet further within uh gte because we've seen tommy milner come in so you've got ferrari one two up to third in class lauren's fan thought they're also in is the number 95 aston martin and away goes the 91 porsche from the uh mantis squad the gt team so jimmy broody brought that one in away goes to martin after his spin but now olly gavin's slick seeming the way that the gt cars need to be going yeah absolutely you know these um certainly is drying quickly and so you can see the the ferraris coming off the second chicane here and they'll be slipping and sliding and really burning up those those rain tyres now it is a dry line you know we'll have to see whether this this is uh good for them or whether whether they should have pitted the lap before it's always a little bit of a gamble when the conditions are changing so quickly and also with lemon being such a long lap uh you can have so much of it wet as well as dry and you've got to just try and pick something that really works for your car but you've had time to watch what was going on in those few dramatic laps we were trying to describe it thoughts oh it was it it was very very tricky conditions yeah and uh you know as a as an ex driver you're sitting here going i'm glad i'm not out there trying to deal with that i mean it's it was tough income was the clicking house the 709 car but antonio felix acosta fastest lap of the race a 350.5 as against a 355 of mike conway so antonio felix decosta on the better tires for the conditions is on a mission fantastic stuff that gap comes under 40 seconds will an mp2 car lead lemon in the first hour it looks as if that's possible but two new finished acosta getting into the position at the moment where he's gonna have to pit for fuel any time now now next 709 granted don't forget when 708 makes it stop it's gonna have to serve that extra 10 seconds anyway for the penalty so that's going to drop away a little bit possibly back towards more of the lmp2 traffic 91 has made a stop for slicks we saw a moment ago and this means that the car that was being brought in that first in by jimmy bruni is back on track and it's hard at work yeah he just slid slightly wide here at uh i think s is or didn't keep it at the grab and i think he did but it was just coming out of the pits and it was uh cold tires really cold tires and yeah running through that water is is not going to help his cause anymore but by the time he got down to the second chicane there he was he was going up full speed and just building that tyre temperature again and bruni did stay behind the wheel so graham even though we are having people making these stops the team's keeping that driver in because he's got the track knowledge of the conditions knowledge completely correct and for the drunk i'm unclear at the moment if we had 23 hours or just 45 minutes it's just been incessant every single lap and every class and seemingly every car is two more of our front runners in gta brother 52 the 79 both are coming down bit lane now quick looking gte am here this is a replay and are we about to have a porsche harpoon to buy a flying prototype no yeah uh the oh avoids the marshall's teddy bears um the timing screen at the moment looks like blackpool illuminations it's going blue it's going purple which means personal best in blue absolute best in purple as the road dries out and people on the right tires go quicker and the other thing we're seeing is just cars flying up and down the order yes to do with uh pit stops are going through but also to do with incident we've got gtm cars coming down pit lane now in some numbers the number 80 uh unlinked car is on pit lane and the tf sport guys i think was the 95 is on pick lane let's have a listen to the 29 car what are you doing [Music] you can stop the 21 the dragon speed i think everybody [Music] we just had thinking lmp2 number 30 uh straight back into the pit lane so an outlap only for number 30 which was memo as a driver in these conditions when it's just this this one sort of dry line you are just looking to build that tyre temperature as quickly as you possibly can when you've got the slicks on because the performance gain you're going to make on everyone else who is still out there running around on the wet is going to be a plug that gets up the inside finds lots of rain backs out of it lapierre suddenly is on the attack and then clark gets up the inside boom it's just like is this the first time the flicker house has actually ever run in the rain no it's not tested it looks as if that they've now been claimed the corner that forced the toter out wide he then was not his ideal line had to turn in sharply i just don't think uh looking at plot one was able to or two anticipated the sharpness that approached the turn it was a strange move but then but then we had a number of other incidents with that car that locked up and it ran wide so i think that um yeah the 22 united auto sport will be coming in for a pit stop phil we know that felipe certainly hasn't been happy with the car in the sessions before so what is going on with the 22 oh we have been quite happy actually we've had a lot of pace in the drive but we we opted to go enters because we're expecting the star the race to be on the safety car but we're really surprised when we saw the conditions and the start going ahead um we're now boxing for slicks it drives really quickly we're in the piss now actually um yeah so we're uh oh no that's not us that's the other car but yeah we're going to be hopefully going a lot better now we go to slicks we're struggling quite a lot on the inters where we were and i think a lot of cars around us from the west they add a bit more confidence okay thank you thanks thanks louise so that in part explains some of the problems for united auto sports and it's not just the tarzan i guess it's also the setup of the car for those conditions trouble here before the 92 car runs very wide again runs through the gravel and at that point it's good news that it's wet we've got another penalty coming for number 74 now as well for causing a collision so 74 is the james winslow john corbett tom clerk driven car for causing a collision with 72 of maxine martin yeah that 74 car in the hands of tom clarett so it seems like this is a big challenge when you leave the pit lane on slick tyres and you come down to the esses after dunlop and trying to get the car slowed up through that that series of corners before tetrous a lot of guys are going off and uh hopefully team managers will be reporting that back to to their team cars and uh being warned to just take that extra little bit of caution as they're coming down through that first section of track is still down there yeah the eight total has been into the bits and back out again sir said cebu stays at the wheel of the car so conway's not been in yet has he nora's nick davis and despite his spins nor is nicola lappier or one spin on one trip at the escape route he's just set the fastest lap of the race 349 192 as nick dufrese is now in second place overall antonio phillips de costa stayed behind the wheel of 38 after its pit stop so that's on an out lap right now the pit lane getting very very busy as people get rid of effectively what you might call the wrong tyre absolutely [Music] dare i say it the skies are getting darker well that's it we just now they're all going on to slick we need a bit more rain don't we because that'll go down like a cup of cold sick in most race garages right now as the number seven toyota continues to lead and the margin is a slightly false one at the moment of 53 seconds the market the fact that the cars are on the wrong side of the conditions is we're seeing almost the entire gt field coming in way early on their predicted uh pit stop time well within the first hour and it would be over the first hour because we've had those safety car maps more rain possible in 15 minutes time as into the pit lane comes now the race leader so mike conway is in at the end of ten laps the leader is in so he's seeing now that tommy milner has cycled to the top of the gte pro class so that pit stop that he made that call that they made to go to slicks early has certainly paid off for them it was a quick pit stop as well for the corvette racing team they beat the times for the af corset cars by 10 seconds so they've gained 10 seconds just on the stops that's the well drilled we know very well drilled corvette racing crew it's decades of being shouted out by olly gavin that's make that difference absolute best first sector from ollie webb for arc bratislava so if you're in the in the right car with the right tyres suddenly you can be looking like a star off camera on go slick tony just to make the point these are two-part pit stops do the refueling then you can do anything else absolutely so the guys are orchestrated you know they really are practicing these pit stops they've spent hours and hours days and days going through all of this and it's it's impressive to see how how orchestrated and well drilled they are and for the tires it is uh four mechanics and two tyre guns under the regulation as well right so nicola lapierre is currently the race leader but he has yet to make his first pit stop there it is so uh for the home fans big cheer for the alpine there was before the start of the race the tribute on the grid to the late uh jean-pierre joseph who passed away in july who was a winner of the rags out right in 1978 for alpene renault with gda peroni and right now it is an alpine that leads the way for the first time since 1978 yes indeed which is pretty amazing absolutely amazing stuff there's a long way to go yeah there is a wobble 4708 which is the car that uh olivier player is behind the wheel of and it's been repaired another car running wide and the s is there it's like they leave the pits oh he's had a big moment coming off of corner as well well to hold that yeah and there through the gravel goes the number 18 that's the absolute racing the underducks car and marco seaford is behind the wheel of it graham indeed right double waved yellow at marshall's post 24 so that's not been removed thankfully right i was about to get concerned it was gone panic lot let's move to 91 for a moment so jimmy bruni stayed behind the wheel of this car and he's on to slicks it's fifth in class but he's catching right up onto the back here of lawrence van thor who in turn is on the back of james collado so this is third fourth and fifth in the class it's important actually i feel in the car in these conditions if you could double stint or even triple stand in these conditions it's a big big benefit to your team car because you're going to be able to you know what the conditions are you know what's riding on board with with he's trying to get by lawrence it looks like the the 91 car has got a nice little straight-line speed over the weathertech car just to point out one other thing in terms of restricting the potential damage later in the race for the alpine team they are going to pit after the totals that would not be the case uh you know in normal running which uh indicates yes of course this is forced into it for entire choice but in terms of the way this race plays out at the moment this is good news real quick it is doesn't it brings them into the mix very definitely as you look at the porsche battle laurence van gaal versus jimmy brunet because van thor has to defend he drops off the back of the ferrari there number seven then mike conway getting himself back past the clicking house that he fallen behind briefly but moved back ahead of 709 of richard westbrook now but sebastian boehme is in the mix too now because he's got himself up into eight sorry that's is now well from 41st at the end of the first racing lap he's back in the game and so into fifth place sebastian blamey so despite all the drama on the first proper racing lap he's in the party now fastest lap of the race overall goes to the car that is in 19th position ben hanley in the dragons beat usa car but to the three forty four point one eight two but quiet he's just gone the purple in their first sector so i mean it's just going to keep you know tumbling the times will keep tumbling as we go through this next sort of 20 30 minutes as the circuit fully dries so first time you've sat watching this race for what other where you're not going to get in the car for two decades yeah would you like to be in this mayhem i mean it has looked extremely challenging out there and i've done some challenging le mans but but this was it looks super slick and this part of the track in particular is still very very slippery and you've got to have a lot of caution here you know you don't want to lose any ground but you also don't want to throw it off so bruny is on the attack isn't he as he tries to get up through the traffic but he has fallen off the back of laurence van thor for the moment as you look down from the rolex aerial camera here looking down onto the circuit which is getting drier and drier and drier and there is an investigation still on car 20 but everything else from the chest has now come up with no further action so that we are expecting a penalty to come for dennis anderson because of that car being up on the jacks at the three minute ball which it should not have been later in the pits indeed that's 12 laps done 11 no less than that rating that 10 racing maps so lapierre stays behind the wheel and that's going to put mike conway back into the lead of the race antonio felix de costa for jota ahead of nick davis for g drive in lmp 2 22.3 seconds the margin between those two cars right now will be through to complete what looks like a potential to the quickest lap of the race so far any time now as mike conway betters his time in sector one we briefly had a fastest lap of the race by marco sorenson and the next car through was antonio felix de costa who snatched it away so marco sorenson's fastest lap lasted about as long as a politician's promise and now it is antonio felix de costa 3 41 7 as the fastest snap of the race drops that mark by almost three seconds here comes the number eight card to complete fastest lap and by conway an absolute best in sector one new fastest lap sebastian buena 335 six seconds quicker yeah and it will carry on as ollie makes the point the road dries they're just gonna get fast from faster uh a few raindrops are possible in the next 15 minutes just to jolly things along right now and he's about to take third position overall in this race the moment it's the seven total head of the 38 jota and 26 g drive racing lmp2s but uh the looming shape of the first of three hyper cars that are falling behind so boy me with nicolas three and a half seconds back from the toyota with richard four seconds back from that 34 from the inter inter-europa competition squad in atlanta p2 you're looking at at the moment which muscles its way down through that car right now so alex brandle with robin fry's right up behind him these two currently 9th and 10th in class we've got a yellow at mp5 so 25 25 that would be the pro am entry drive racing the second of the eris or the first numbered it is roberta murray in the car and he's gone off at that spot possibly so he won't be feeling very merry about that but he will hopefully just drag out of the gravel and rejoin as the race currently works 13 league gap 43 seconds car it's likely it will go uh slow zone in that first section to retrieve roberto [Music] that was contact louis becky tells us from the pit lane so there was an incident on track that's why the car came back in so it's delayed them and so rockhouse now is down in 20th in lmp2 yellow flag on track that's predicted [Music] so we're about to nudge the end of the first hour aren't we because we've had 58 minutes and counting as you see the cars turning out of the right-hand remotes on corner nicola lapierre on his out lap back down into fifth place now having briefly led the race in the alpene and across the timing line is about to go the race leading toyota so mike conway getting on with the job trying to build that gap his last lap was a 338 but there was a lot of traffic around him hence it was a fraction slower must be in traffic not quite on the kind of pace we're seeing from the totals at the moment the way this works in terms of the hybrid drive the four-wheel drive system on these zoteros deploys at a higher speed in wet conditions now what are we watching here and it's another car off the track it's out of gt pro which will be a yellow flagship his third place yeah so james collado under a yellow flag should be doing that no uh he may well get a slap on the wrist for that and a telling off and um eduardo would not be impressed so now into the slow zone comes number seven so mike conway as i say leading by uh 41 seconds last time over the timing line there's the green light there's the green flag so he's now back on the power and can accelerate away but that is the scene in the slow zone as the g drive car is being extricated from the gravel trap so roberto marry at the wheel of it and that car hopefully is going to lose too much time i've just emerged from the bits on slicks for the first time 332-280 is the latest uh offering for fastest lap of the race and it's a spin in the pit entry for the 709 there it is so that is richard westbrook who has dropped it coming towards the end of a lap and i don't know whether he was aiming for the pit lane or just spun into it but either way the perspective of brit gets going and rejoins the racetrack he's riding on board but he's carrying back on over the timing line so a spin for richard westbrook just as we get to the end of the first hour and graham it's been a very lively first now that's one word for it um i think if you have to sum up the incident uh through this first 60 minutes of track action all of it and the green flag racing it's affected every class in depth for good and for bad and at the moment remarkably uh ollie we're not a million miles away from seeing it at the front there's no way in this race and you wouldn't have predicted that ten minutes ago i don't know it's pretty amazing here we just think a replay of richard and what happened he just came through that first part of the uh of the ford chicane and he just lost it i think it was a car going by as well yeah it looks like he had backed out of trying to go buy that lmp2 car and then got across the gravel tires but the other thing is as you quite rightly say that with the car ahead if you watch it as it hit the kerbs there is standing water on those curbs the car did look quite nosy as in it seemed like there was an awful lot of pressure on the front tyres and every input that richard put into the wheel was reacting with the rear of the car moving a lot so yeah the rear of the car just came around and richard had just a little spin so the final type of car still all running dramas for all of them i think with the exception of the lead car the number seven car which leads by 44 seconds as the 25 car is recovered to some hard standing where it can rejoin the race in the hands of roberto murray they cover positions one through 14 at the moment those five cars with lots of lmp2 cars in the mix nicely spread out absolutely the jota sport car of antonio felix de costa the 38 car runs second overall at the moment with nick devries in the 26th g drive racing arrest running in fourth position so the top three hyper cars have lmb2s between them it's been an extraordinary start to this race it has been really quite bizarre and and rain does that let's have a little listen into the teams one hour from now one hour light rain expected okay light rain in an hour yeah uh that's that's always good news then so uh so the top five it is hypercar p2 hybrid car p2 hybrid car uh remarkably still as well the uh gt brokers are now all ahead again of the gtms after we have dramas for at least two of the porsches uh with with actually lmp two cars recovering through that order as well um i don't recall and i'm on 24 hours in my memory with this level of drama in 55 minutes yeah you do almost every single race it's always like the formula ford festival representation i say every year is this a 24-minute race or is it a 24-hour race and they do forget and and you know the the passion ollie and and the proximity of all the cars at the start means that accidents are more likely to happen in the first few laps than at any other time and also with the conditions that we had 61 cars you know record grid you know it's tricky conditions we've seen it all week with many cars going off and it just seemed that that that was ramped up to another whole level on the amateur it was on 11 wasn't it indeed it wasn't almost up to 13 i think justina changed for the lead in pro-am again if you haven't been watching world endurance i know you're right because because actually the program leader is a long way ahead change for second in pro-am well let's join louise beckett in the pit lane she's there because it's not raining any longer duncan will go out later when it is raining let's hear from the 92 porsche team louise with neil jarni yeah now johnny you've you've had lots of uh lemon experiences this was crazy wasn't it for the start of this race it was a little too exciting on our side but i think in general it was a very exciting start to watch no uh the porsches don't seem to like the rain from the looks of things in this first hour is that the case i think there were different kind of tires on we went for full wets because we didn't expect the safety car to stay so long out and i think some of that in front of us to go on the semi wet and that helped them in the end because the safety car stayed a little too long but let's hope now with the slick we can catch up it's your first lemon in the gt porsche so did you prefer to watch it you know it's in every category it's it's tight and i've had tight races here in lmp1 i know that in gt you know it gets even tighter because the also with the gtams it's not that easy to pass them so it's a bit more bumper-to-bumper i'm looking forward to my first thing all right thank you i'm going to give this short hand of that the answer that neil was looking for was yes i'm ready to be in the pits if he was in the in the 92 porsche at the start he'd be saying don't go green now don't go green now i can't see a damn thing from the pit lane why is the safety car still out come on how about it you know oh he was in mode philadelphia wasn't he was that oh no this is a replay the pole sitter in the in the pro class and the 92 car going around the 91 car i mean it was very wet indeed that luis saying from the pit lane spots of rain it it spotted for an hour before it properly started to rain but looking out of our window which which needs to clean actually it's still there is still grey sky coming this way but it was contact from the 48 that uh round which i don't think we'd seen before this is still more drama another porsche's unassisted spin on the knight on full wet yes and he got he just got the left front tyre up on that kerb on the left of the first chicane and that just rotated the car around and it's it's it's it's tricky conditions and it's so so now we've got back to a far drier track i think everybody's just getting themselves settled into a rhythm and just trying to run here and actually trying to get to a a do a full tank of fuel yeah and here's your top three in gte pro the 64 corvettes still leading tommy milner at the wheel they took tires as everybody else did in the gt class earlier than you would normally need to come in for a pit stop so that sort of first stop shorter that first inch shorter than anybody else would have anticipated a of course you're in second place miguel molina we chase him now in the weathertech portion this is lawrence van tour who definitely looks like he's done a couple of rounds with mike tyson yeah yeah he's uh he's talked to him yesterday actually he's scheduled to do some 11 stints in the car over this race so that's some 10 and a half 11 hours he's due to be driving for so it's gonna be a tough one showing the progression in the times coming down fastest lap of the race well ten seconds ago was a three thirty two point zero six six from the race leader mike conway it's now a 329.508 the first racing lap would seem from a hypercar racing lap from hobby car under 330. which is sort of the benchmark that they use the aco hope that they won't go much faster than now sebastian wemmy after that first incident in the number eight car when it stopped restarting and so on and so on was a minute and 28 behind yes he is now 57 seconds behind so they have made up half a minute of that minute and a half that they were behind that's very very good bearing in mind he's chasing his sister car which is identical in every way absolutely but even more particularly he's about to take second place back because he's now under three under four seconds behind antonio felix de costa who at the when we got to that point where they the lmp2 towers in its sweet spot drove away from some of those hyper cars now it's coming back uh into the sweet spot for the hyper cars guaymi is about to take second place back and we will be remarkably back to a toyota one two yeah it is it's something that the eight car you know is going to carry the whole race to that contact on that first corner it's just going to be niggling away in that that car's mind the whole time has some little bit of damage been done to the gearbox drivetrain something else just that's going to come back and bite them and of of every team here toyota is the one that knows most of all just how late those things can appear last lap possibly even team wrt in fourth place that's the red white and black car of robert kubica and the panic racing engine with this sort of half-timbered effect that that pale yellowish is in fact a wood grain effect on the vinyl sure it's quite nice but i'm still not quite sure i'm not a hundred percent so anyway but panic racing's will stevens right behind cubits are now two ex-grand prix drivers from sort of different generations if you like really aren't they and uh a really entertaining battle joe to lead in lmp2 the g drive number 26 car is in second racing team netherlands in third gear vandergarde and leading in pro am and this is our battle then for fourth place so we've got a change in pit lane duncan vincent will be on duty for the next period of time so it will rain yeah boy where we hear about it great looking little battle here and ollie we we were talking a little bit beforehand uh before the race started about corvette and their travels with getting heat into the tires and i just actually messaged the team and said look were there problems with thai temperatures at the start of the race when it was wet because of course when you're behind the safety car any heat that was in the tire in the oven by the time your two two corners in there mine's two laps in that's gone absolutely and and they said yes actually that was a little bit of an issue yes it was and it's been really the story of the weekend so far with many cars in many classes you can see drivers having problems and issues going off the track and having just really unusual spins and accidents and it's so much related to tyre temperature and so much related just getting everything switched on and everything going and keeping it in that optimum operating window battle for second place hypercar chasing lmp2 that's antonio felix de costa in the green jota sport car with sebastian buemi looming larger and larger in the mirrors and the battle is slightly uneven because with that hyperdrive with that front-wheel drive the extra hybrid drive that the car has will be able to get off corners a little bit quicker not the slow hairpins but the mid-speed corners he'll be able to use that extra power to help him get closer i remember rightly 120 kilometers an hour in the dry 150 kilometers feel an hour i believe in wet conditions we're seeing it right now we are indeed now he's got the thing wound up and i don't think there's any defense from this this is the performance difference in the real world and it's not much of a performance difference is it he has to work hard to get by the lmp2 car and this was a you know part of the story beforehand if the hyper cars lose a couple of laps do they ever have enough speed to get them back if there's not trouble for the lmp2 cars well you've just seen it that has taken an hour and ten minutes for him to catch back up to second place and he's he's still 56 seconds off the lead and that's against a healthy p2 car you've just seen in the real world what the issue is going to be for an anything but solidly reliable hybrid car and the problem is if you're looking at hyper car they've only got five bullets in their gun how many lmp2 entries have we got 25. i mean pure weight of numbers absolutely they're they're proper in rorke's drift territory you know it's going to be if they can make it to the chequered flag in 22 and three-quarter hours and there's the change will stevens goes by robert kubitsa so change for fourth place the panic racing car up to fourth team wrt down to fifth alex lynn in sixth place in the 23 united auto sport car and we just missed there the change for fourth place overall the alpine going by nick dufrese in the second place lmp2g drive car back on board with the weathertech porsche as our top three in gte pro continue to sort of move away the porsche being dropped by the ferrari as the ferrari reels in tommy milner miguel molina it's just closer and this is relentless isn't it this is this is the gt battle it's it's like being an olympic athlete it's incremental tiny incremental games and that's that's what you have to work out yeah and it's all the time you are trying to execute that perfect line all the time working on building that perfect lap and not giving an inch because you know that if you do your competition is going to be right on you and you just can't ever let up on the pressure and that's what gta pro has been amazing with for up for many many years and we've talked about it for i mean since the chicanes were added to the most arm straight it stops being an endurance race and more of a sprint race but right now especially in gt but i mean especially in gta pro it is qualifying laps every single lap if you leave anything on the table you're not going to win the race and it's always it's everybody's pushing so hard and they're trying to maximize all the resources that you have you know whether that's the tyres or how far you can go on a tank of fuel you know are you saving fuel and if you are saving fuel how much performance do you drop off on that you know trying to do it in a way we're all coached as drivers in the best possible way to save the fuel but keep the speed up you know thinking about how you're using your brakes so you're only going to need to do one brake change you know all of these things and how you manage your tires and again it's all about those resources that you have as a driver and using them correctly and then the right way to get your car as far down the road and in as far in front of all the competition as possible while doing qualifying laps yes you know it's just there's no there's no let up from patting your stomach and patting your head or rubbing your stomach whatever i mean you just you have to be doing all of it all the time yeah and you're being coached somewhat by the by the engineers there's brian hoy there my old crew chief he's just talking to one of the mechanics and i'll be talking brian is there the whole race yes helping to spot for the number 64 car so he'll be keeping tommy informed not that he really needs to you know where molina is yeah but but he'll also be giving the splits and what traffic is coming you know and how far back that next p car is and when he's likely to catch you and of course we're being i'm being facetious here about the you know radio message never but in 12 hours from now when they're separated by darkness half a lap and 30 cars in between them you still need to know that he's catching you very slightly and you need to find a little bit more it it's when they're in visual contact that's the easy bit because you know where he is it's when you're half a lap apart or half a stint apart or a tire change apart or something and you're an old tyres and they're on you and they're catching you you know that's when the spotter is so key because he's telling you don't panic save the tires save the fuel he's got fresh tires you've got you'll have fresh tires next time don't worry yeah you know so all those bits of information is it's managing you know the driver and his expectations his confidence level you know what what is expected from the driver in that stint number of stints and making sure making sure that he is like i say getting getting the most from the car all the time but not using things up and that's going to be an interesting element and graham we'll talk about that later as we get towards the evening the temperatures are not high normally august in in the center of france it should be peeling the tarmac it should be so hot but it's not and that means the window for using the softer nighttime brother is going to be bigger and bigger and bigger and so all of the presupposed strategies i've already gone out the window because the weather's not what everybody thought it would be last week was scorcio next week apparently will be scorchio as well so obviously we've chosen the wrong week naturally but but that's that is all going to play a big part of it as well whether the car and the driver especially can do stints long enough to use the tyre to its full life you know if you can do a trip can you do a triple i'm going to disagree with you profoundly i think we've chosen exactly right this is absolutely awesome there's never a wrong way to come to le mans anybody watching this will be completely gripped by what the next drama is going to be and you know we have had drama an incident and strategy and choice because weather brings choice and a bit of bravery into the mix and it's been a stellar first hour and 20 minutes many twists and turns and we're having another one here with a 39 car just a little moment there but he got away with that yeah he got him pretty deep there into the second chicane there on and managed to save it that's a car that was in early trouble the 39 the graph got the so 24 die rob carr arnold about that car still outside the top 40. so it's not recovered well for marilee uh issues in terms of the gap for the leaders it's around 56 seconds not far short of the length of a pit stop is what we've got in terms of that uh of that lead at the moment they're still doing purple sectors both both the conway car and the bui are doing purple sectors so well they will see their major competition here at this point as being that alpine and nico lapierre is catching uh antonio phillips de costa to get back up to up into third place that gap by the way 17 and a half seconds with the difference in laptops at the moment about three seconds so on that five laps he's there isn't hanging about is he he is really taking the whip to the prancing horse he's really really pushing it through the chicane and graham when we when we think about toyota as we watch this little battle we learn something for the first time about the mindset within toyota gazoo racing if a car is behind its rival and says yeah yeah we're faster we're faster they will tell the other car to go by but then if the if the we're faster car doesn't escape okay yeah we give you a chance to prove it if you're not actually faster you're just having a winch on the radio right son back in your box so i think molina has got a really good run on tommy coming off of that second chicane molina's just giving him a bit of a flash he knows he's there and tommy's just being smart and the whole the whole psychology there is just to try and distract the driver in front by and it only needs to be a fraction if you're a couple of hundreds of a second later on the brakes then you overshoot the corner and he's through yeah that's that that is the general game that's being played there molina has gotten right in his sights and is tommy going to be able to hold him off and i think it seems like the corvette has got a little bit of a straight line speed he's got a pretty good trait straight on speed it's just enough isn't it here now here comes the chance for molina because hoving up in the background is the race leader and that's often you know traffic often it's not slow traffic it's vast traffic that comes in and takes the line away exactly year after year and this is this is exactly what brian will be doing now with tommy he'll be telling him that the a car is coming and tommy will be happy because the a-car is going to go by now on a straight maybe a little bit of aero wash as they come into the first first part of the porsche curves but it shouldn't disturb him too much yeah and that was a good it was a good place actually wasn't leader as the second place guard good place for the number eight toyota to get by out of arnage rather being held up through indianapolis so he didn't lose time but also as you say for tommy milner in the in the silver corvette a great place to be passed because he didn't hold him up higher exactly and the porsche curves are important it's arrows a lot of downforce and a car in front like the toyota is going to grab a lot of air away from you number 30 duquesne car making its third visit to the pits now and that car came in went out came back in again and it's come in for a third time that car that's going to be the chamberlain engineering car of the weekend isn't it where the team just can't make it stay away right down there is duncan vincent duncan this was unexpected the driver come in nobody was ready for that and then the driver started you could see him distinguishing inside the car pointing towards his garage effectively shouting towards the engineer but he's been waved back out so it wasn't tires it wasn't fuel it wasn't for a driver change they didn't fix anything has he come in to wave to them to say that he's got no radio or no dash or something you know it seems ridiculous that a car the driver brings the car into the pits and then they just said they're clear off yeah experience drive it's a double elements champion is this the move yeah this looks like it's a move i've just been watching tommy the last few corners and he is using a little bit more road the car is just not so settled a bit wheel-to-wheel with action here this is fantastic trying to get the side draft molina is he's trying to suck the air off of tommy's car create a little bit of extra drag and this is going all the way down here all the way down to the first chicane and right behind in the weathertech porsche almost metaphorically rubbing his hands as long as fans are gone go on hit him come on hit him and he'll just be sitting there double toe i think you know right up into the back of tommy and hasn't it though because remember a couple of laps back you know he was a long way back yeah molina is uh metaphorically punching the air as well i think and suddenly the weathertech car's right there yeah so so with tommy the way that the car the attitude of the car had been over the previous few corners just looked like he was using a bit more rubber on the on the tire and the tire was maybe slightly overheated and so and that's what gave molina the opportunity and it's the the ferrari's just looked just a little bit more settled on its tyre right now or maybe he's just gonna stretch it away but we'll see long way to go yeah absolutely arc bratislava in the pits now ollie webb has brought the number 44 car in and there has been a report to the stewards of 72 cars continued abuse of track limits that car currently 22 seconds back at the tail of the gte pro field and that is our pole sitter isn't it in gtu pro the hub auto car maxine martin i he knows his way around he knows how to drive he knows what track limits are i sense that car has issues from that first laptop he's got to be pushing to get back onto the tail of the gte crows fastest left with the race so car is a 329 fair 508 last time around uh that same car with the same driver a 329 509 one thousandths of a second outside the fastest lap in the race that he'd set himself but he's on two purple sections at the moment i'm trying to put the team car under pressure trying to draw out an advantage of the commander chaser duncan what's the news at duquesne yes i'm standing here they're going to do a driver change martin but they're also walking around the garage with a spare steering wheel and there appears to be a fault somewhere that could be electrical we don't know it could be a dial on the steering wheel that's not working they have a spare cosworth dash on that steering wheel ready to do a change and it will be within two laps because they still have two laps worth of fuel left some good news for dukane you know when the driver comes in for something it's usually something fairly major and if there's no flames then usually it's some kind of electronic issue in this in the cockpit where he's got no information about something fairly fundamental and when he appears in the box unannounced that's usually well unannounced normally means no radios to me so i think you know they've got a steering wheel ready because he's like waving and and then leaves you know if he's not on the radio i mean presumably they're on the radio to him now because he's been in and woken them up yeah yeah but uh yeah normally you'd be saying i'm coming in i'm coming here box this lap graham goodwin pointing to the screen as it lights up again another fastest race lap for sebastian buemi got down to 51 seconds so he's taking another five seconds out of the number seven toyota that leads and there will be a drive-through penalty for car 20. dennis anderson was at the wheel of that car and powerless because the team had left him on the jacks um at the three-minute board so that is being accomplished with a drive-through penalty i think that's it's fair you have to have a penalty for that and i think it's fair too it's what's up it was a really unusual thing to see whose responsibility it was i've been tasked to do something else last minute and it just wasn't sorted lack of communication yeah it's surprising i mean they've had a rather fraud horrendous weekends yeah i spoke to marco sorensen earlier on and he was just saying it's it's been you know a bit of a journey with the team and just been lots of little issues and it seems like the track and the car have been different almost every time he's got into it but sometimes they were faster sometimes they weren't but here we've got the number 23 alexander lin coming in yeah for a stop united having a pretty tough time aren't they they can't find the pace either with these cars or with their lmp3 cars in the road to the mall races really tough time so are we starting to see the first full race round of stops there's the 34 into europol car also in is a recent competition also in is dragon speed and pr1 matheson so a little clump of cars that were sort of 8 19 11 12 in category are all in together goes alex all right so oh now lawrence van thor is on the tail of tommy milner oh laurence just bumped it up the curb there as it came off the second chicane don't want to be doing that and a nice big strike down the floor and again it's those sort of little things that can add up over time and uh lawrence has lost some grounds to to tommy coming down and says breaks out at uh just really trying to cite your break point might try and keep up that curb on the inside and the right there and then use a little bit of an extra road don't touch that curb on the right but it's massive grip right at the apex pit entry of the number 30 car the last stop is under investigation that is uh that that car came in that mystery stop no radio remember has confirmed by duncan and the bits yeah that's normally the only way you're going to catch them out is is by yeah you know because now when the car goes by if he's waving in like trying to you can't see the drivers can barely see out the side window and you can barely see it and of course he's on the wrong side from the pit wall the other united car has come into the pits as well so there's there's you know no chance they're going to be able to see a hand gesticulation the question is has he got no radio or has he got intermittent radio and did he pit because he thought he got a late call no radio well yeah at least he can't talk to them which is why they didn't know he was coming now he may hear them i'll be going yeah yeah got that got that can you hear me can you hear me so yeah as always just uh just confirmed don't confirm it is no radio so the pit entry under investigation could only really be uh either crossing the white line or bit length speed yeah and if they're changing the steering wheel as well it may have a major electrical issue and have no speed limiter exactly and so and then you're trying to guess on the rpm is this the inception car we're seeing that's just a nice hyper motion shot race leader is in from lmp2 first full race stop for joe to sport and antonio felix de costa another fastest lap of the race to sebastian boeing who's got the hammer right down now yep 966 a warning flag to richard westbrook uh for abusing track minutes in the 709 click now it's 9th and 10th and as you just spotted the rain lights are allowed to be switched off which is actually for a driver that is something that you love when those rain lights get turned off because they flash and they're so bright yeah and they are i mean they're great for illuminating the back of the car in heavy spray but when it's anything else and particularly at night oh they're brutal you know what that also means this is going to rain in the next 20 minutes yes so there is our race through the lmp2 the duquesne car is in behind that's not going to be a quick stop i do feel that that 2k number 30 car is going to be a bit of the problem child really i'm afraid yeah and from now on you know whatever their driver line up whatever their their team whatever their hopes and aspirations were before just getting the damn thing to fall down tomorrow afternoon is going to lots of wavy arrows here at wrt and they're expecting both cars now normally you would try and stagger them at the first stop yes so that the car that's behind maybe would come in a lap earlier than the car that is uh ahead if you have two cars um but because i mean everything is so tight there is the which toyota's in the pits oh that's no that's the wrt car by the toyota in the pit so the toyota gazoo racing z10s are leading from the alpine it's hypercar one two three then lmp2 number 26 jota sport car has a number 26 a g drive car rather now has taken the lead as joker's antonio felix de costa has pitted in the gte pro class ferrari lead from the battle between corvette and the weathertech porsche tommy milner inches ahead of lawrence van tour as they crossed the line the last time and in gte am 35th overall is the leader nicholas nielsen in the 83 af courser car and second dempsey protons julian and lau who's already had one win today in rotoloman and giancarlo fisicella lies in third place in the 54. of course a car so all the money we had on him being the first one into the barriers has uh has yet to yet to uh to find itself uh completely back up from the bookies and the final running car our 61st running car palo roberti in iron links's number 60 car [Music] and he has a page of the timing screen all to himself yes because of the way they're divided up nicely into tens there he goes that's paula bertie the last running car so we are hour and a half in and uh graham goodwin goes off for a while and cup of tea joined by darren turner and darren crazy start to the race and one that i i imagine you're relatively happy that you are standing watching rather than trying to navigate your way through it's a bit like what ollie was saying earlier exactly it's better to be on this side watching the craziness of that first it was good 40 minutes into the race where things were still really trying to settle down and uh enjoyable to watch and excited [Music] it's the sort of conditions that give team managers and team owners absolute heartburn it is just horrible sitting there watching your cars battling and just looking and seeing oh it just run wide and you can see it twitching and then it's moving and then i've lost sight of it and it's just a horrible horrible period but for the two of you if you don't start and honestly this doesn't apply to you obviously because you did start almost every race that you raised here but if you're not the starting driver or you're not driving the car if you're watching it what you know wherever during the race when you know conditions are that touch and go you feel as powerless as the team bosses right because it's just it's just out of your hands there's only one person who's got any hope of controlling the destiny of the car and that's the guy behind the wheel and sometimes they don't have any uh in control of any control either yeah exactly i mean yeah it now looks like uh lawrence is lining tommy up has come down into the s's here and out of there and into tetraroo she's gonna look to line him up as it comes off of off of tetra rouge uh but um yeah tommy does seem like the the tyres have gone away a little bit on the uh on the c8r i'm super impressed with the lap times already really the town ball we had and how green the circuit must be and the racing line isn't completely there all the way around my conway's just set his fastest race lap in the lead just saw him going through uh indianapolis manage a 329.6 and has just opened up another couple of seconds over sebastian webby who did a 331 that lap but again those those gaps you know you you try not to panic if you know you're going quickly if you know you're using all the cars got sometimes you're going to lose in traffic more often than not you're going to lose in traffic and so you don't worry if it goes up a bit down a bit it's the constant progress seven car into the pits so here we go just saw a quick stat for the 31 wrt car as well setting its fastest lap but the race leader is in the pits mike conway at the end of a second stint so that's two uh 211 laps for these guys or 23 actually so yeah he's done a 12 lap must have been a 12 lap stint on that run the first one was an 11 lap one and that was slightly shorter than they would have done because of course the first two racing laps were behind the safety car so a bit more fuel conserved but that was tire driven rather than fuel driven this then should be their normal duration so as you say it's a 12 lap stint and that's what we're expecting the hyper cars to do it's what we're expecting the toyotas to do we're expecting the alpine to do 11 lap stints however it has done the same number hasn't it so it will be lap at the end of its 23rd lap as it comes in number eight is in from second place number seven leaves and when he was facing backwards at the first corner i don't think sebastian when we thought by the time we get an hour and a half in yeah i'll see my teammate yes and even on that lap he had to pull over and stop and do something with that to sight maybe cycle the power reset something who knows but uh yeah it's it's been an impressive recovery from puerto ri and he's staying on board i believe another stint and again it's it's it's maybe this is all part of the strategy that toyota have to be able to just keep those drivers in just while the the conditions just fully stabilize and of course don't forget although this is now a third step for the driver it's only the second stint for the tyre and that's probably why the driver is staying in because the first one was on wets so this is a this is a slicked oh drop of water on that camera lens told you red lights off the sky's open so so that's why the drivers are staying in for what would what is normally a third stiff which they normally would not do so the alpena has not stopped the alpine has gone through and so we're just flashing up on the timing screens here the the number 72 car the hub auto porsche is going to get a drive-through penalty for constant abuse of the track limits and again ollie you know i told you this because you've never seen it in the car in that car the driver information the safety screen eduardo will have sent them a message track limits t11 track limits t4 wherever it is and black and white flag signs and final warning will have come up on the thing as well so it's not that he's not aware it's just he can't keep the thing on the island it's really surprising maxine is is a very experienced driver he's very quick and i'm surprised that they've they've got this problem but it might be that the car is particularly difficult to drive in these conditions and it's he's just being forced to use that little bit of extra rope which is being picked for see the other thing is he's trying to carve his way through the gte and field and those cars are the same spec and they have sort of less limited time allocation as well and that's another part of the gte battle for the pros often you're up against a well-driven am class car with a a a good pro driver in it because it's a pro-am category and he'll have fresher tires than you yeah he might have one stint or two in fresher tires than you and that makes getting buying a you know quote an am car and this can a lot of maxine's frustration is that he's trying to get past them get onto the back of the pro category catch up to kevin estrada who's had a bit of a checkered race as well but kevin's just put in his fastest first sector and see if he can build some some momentum here but he he has a he's had a troubled race so far kevin has with a spin and then another run through the gravel and yeah it's um with maxine if they haven't got the radio working you might be completely unaware that's a good point though no because on the screen it will tell you i'm not sure it will it does does it that's new technology no neither of you have had it it's been there the whole time yeah [Laughter] [Music] that's a possibility that is a possibility however that will need to be fixed because that is absolutely a safety item even more importantly than lights and things like that because it relays all the flag signals and all the messages from the race control so if that's sure that there is a system to check that that is working well because it sends back a message to raise control every time a message is sent whether it's a flag signal whatever it sends a message back gang got it got it got it in comes the 36 alpene number seven by the way had a left rear tyre change because of a puncture warning light on the car so it's had a one tyre change so that would be a a force measure tire that's quite a tricky thing for a driver to go out on just one fresh tire and you've been running all the others for i don't know yeah yeah it's it that can really screw with the balance a little and normally doesn't it i mean even if you have a left side or a right side or something like that you generally the balance is going to completely go but to have one individual tire yeah and if it's new going on the car then it generally makes it a bit more difficult for for the guys just to find that ultimate ultimate performance on the car number eight toyota comes back across the line and ping back up into second place ahead of the stationary alpene nicola at the wheel of the 36 car in the pits just watching the 36 car come into the pit lane he was super aggressive over the curves and i was surprised with how much kirby took nico lapierre a winner in the 36 in the lmp2 category last time out for senior tech and that car was in the alpine demonstration earlier today along with fernando alonso driving an alpine livery former one car not actually a current alpine car they're not allowed to do that mike conway sebastian when we won two for toyota gazoo racing and nikki lapierre rejoins in third place third place in gte pro comes into the pits tommy milner is the first of the pro cars two pits so that's a lap earlier than the others and i wonder whether again well okay so that's jimmy bruni in from fifth position tommy was the first of the gte pro to stop to put slicks on so that would explains the cycle through and so will they uh will they have run that won't be a full tank of fuel will it by now maybe maybe so on board with lapierre just trying to find radio two [Music] thing there he lifted up not sure what that was on the right hand side you see the little reflection of the driver safety screen so they're all there's a one in the cockpit every single car in the race and it is a highly sophisticated sibling system race control can send messages to every car it is super useful for the drivers you know to be able to see that that information come up certainly when it gets with you get to sort of slow zones and next slow and all those sorts of things yellow flags very interesting antenna feelings to cost it in the starting drivers briefing because the starting driver from each class goes to a briefing with eduardo was asking he said there was in free practice when we went from next slow to slow it momentarily went green so okay all right we'll have a look at that and again they can look back they can trawl back in the day so whoa whoops whoops whoops whoops the graph car goes off just a little wide into the first uk no damage done that's a good battle here between ben and [Music] is a traditional question there's alex brundle this is dad yes he is and mum liz is here as well they were in the covid uh queue behind us to get into the circuit ben hanley as you say 10th place alex 11th overall for into europol competition and again here is the team that started out racing in vw a sort of regional um sports car racing series graduated through lmp3 in michigan le mancup through lmp3 in elms lmp2 in elms and now this year lmp2 in world endurance championship so there is proof that if you bait the hook with the chance to come and race at the mom people go right we're doing that we're doing that this it's a small polish team which has sort of grown like topsy but boy they don't lack ambition you know three years ago they made their debut in in uh michelin cup and here they are racing in the world endurance championship it's fantastic to see and they've got you know an absolute star in and also it's great to see him having another opportunity here at le mans yep showing off his talents not too far behind is the next little battle [Music] and where are we on track here this is real team's norman nato the car with the blue nose and the uh black fenders right ahead of the red risi competition car of ollie jarvis again all these cars are orica chassis [Music] must be one of the most successful sports cars ever built probably in terms of number of successes expecting driver changes as well weathertech's earl bamber standing by to take over for blind span tour you can imagine the drivers that took the start of this race are actually relieved to be getting close to the point where they can get out and just relax after the stress of that first uh first 40 minutes or so just take a breath yeah miguel molina into the pit lane and out of second place james collado has the lead in pro and out of third into the pit lane comes laurence van tour meanwhile behind the 33 aston martin which is currently in fourth place in gte am driven by felipe fraga norman nato with how many centimeters do you think of an advantage over ollie jarvis that we have maybe five or six i'm not getting off the corner as well as jarvis ollie's going the long brave way round he's definitely got the inside line now for porsche curves gotta get there first though he's got to go through a couple of left-handers first then he sneaks in front norman nato i think not fighting that early maybe if that was the last hour you'd be uh you'd be giving him a lot more just was uh was held up coming into arnage by the uh the tf sport and aston martin and so that he was flashing he was trying to get by but he got bolt and then ollie just got a great run off and just carried all the way through up into porsche and that's part of how you use traffic darren right if you can see that the car in front is going to have a problem you give yourself a bit of breathing space and then coming off a long run-up and away you go well actually on the run-up to arnard you can see that fragment was defending and you think why are you defending to an lmp but he knows it's going to be the cause of losing a few seconds so he was determined not to have to let that happen so he made sure that the lnp was the one that lost out not himself so ultimately that gave ollie the the run on him on the way down to the uh to the horse girls friar actually was on an in-lap here's 83 this is our gtm class leading ferrari or was as it came in nick nelson in the 83 car giancarlo fisa keller second for af course and 54. felipe fraga third for tf sport in that aston and fourth place kessel racing's michael jensen in the 57 ferrari as well as fifth place ben barca for gr racing all in the pits together so i'm sensing this is a full-on and pit stop central they're all coming in now and so basically as they were on track so they come fresh licks ready to go on the 83 car you can see the guys they're primed ready to go just waiting for the the fuel hose to be pulled off and they can run around with there with the tyre gr racing driver change who was in the car did i say ben barker so with my team manager's hat on ben started in the rain okay well we're hearing it's uh tom gamble going in but i would be thinking right get mike wayne right in middle of the afternoon conditions are decent it's not necessarily going to rain we're not warned about any rain coming get him in and start getting because the the am driver the lowest rated driver has a minimum drive time that you must complete in the car and if you don't start putting him in in daylight in the rain or in the dry rather you may end up having to put him in in darkness in the rain and that's less to be desired well absolutely and that's where again you're looking at trying to manage what you've got to do in the race the team manager will be sitting there thinking about okay we've got to get these drivers through the car make sure that we complete all of the time all of the drive time and we've got to do it at the point where we're going to lose the least lose least that's exactly the two words i was looking right at and joining in with alex brandel being reeled in by olly jarvis norman nato still behind there but jarvis is on a real chart he just got by nato alapago now he's hoved up behind alex brundle it is mike wainwright who's got into the gr racing car i think ollie was almost past alex going into the first chicane and then they've been just nip and tuck all the way through the rest of the lap and i don't think now coming down into indianapolis watching uh battle here in gt yeah that's the second racing ferrari the red car behind the car guys and there's the 80 car the uh iron links cart matteo crossover yet to stop in in this sequence so chrysoni owes us a pit stop the absolutely right about strategy right now if you did fire in the am driver it's a perfect time the tracks nearly back to being completely perfect and get a couple of hours under your belt before darkness falls this is unusual as well isn't it pit stop car 22 so that's one of the united cars i believe again it's under investigation they're just not having a very clean race look a little flustered for some reason jerome blake merlin in the red rinaldi racing ferrari skates by the kessel racing car of michael jensen and the aston martin behind the 98 car well that's part of the dane train nikki team driving that his regular pro factory teammate marco sorenson is here but he's in lmp too not in an aston martin so uh here is the 51 car that came in from the lead of the gte pro class duquesne's number 30 car pits again renee binder took over the car the last time they were in so the driver change steering wheel changed yada yada yada two laps later he's back in so yeah again that car is going to be a real i'm going to stop writing things down about it because i will run out of paper so again the the aston and nikki team gets ahead of the car guy ferrari that car run by kessel racing hugely experienced swiss team and on the get go on the hurry up as well your own blake merlin all over the back of mateo cressoni so again fantastic gt battles pro and am and these are all pretty much pro drivers in the cars yeah jerome's pushing him very hard and i think it was uh chrysoni that made a mistake coming into that uh first chicane on morzan chrysonian third in gte am the former leader by the way is in the background that car has stopped 83 carve nick nielsen through comes our third placed car the blue alpene and it's i mean to me that that run all the way down there to the porsche curves a little like blinkermolin have the inside line and look who's gonna be able to make the pass stick but chrysoni just uh toughed it out around the outside and now nikki teams applying the pressure yeah darren turner the thing with these all these different cars in gt is they've all got different characteristics haven't they and so ollie knows where the strength and weaknesses of the corvette are you know the strength and weaknesses of the of the aston and so when you're driving your own car you've got to try and work out where you're going to get the other guy not just in terms of you know what part of the track but what his weaknesses that you can exploit right it's generally the weakness that you're looking for because you have to give up that that track space when they've got the strength but the aston for instance we know is really good through the porsche curves it's always been a good car medium and high speed quality and generally it struggles a little bit in the braking zone so you're not likely to make a dive into some of the really heavy and slow breaking tones with the aston but that said overall the laptop is always competitive um it's just yeah like you say finding the weak spot of your component and making the most of it with grazoni then when it came out and it's an easy mistake to have into the first chicane fuel fuel tyres just getting up to temperature snatch snatch a break um and that can play for the rest of the stint if you put a big flat spot and that vibration comes through the car it can be very annoying for the next hour because particularly if those tires aren't gonna be on for a double stint or even a triple stint and you've got that flat spot for the next what two and a half three hours that's pretty tough yeah look after these babies because they're going to be looking after you for the next three hours and then that's really important isn't it sean gale for jota and felipe albuquerque for united auto sports no not where felipe is used to being last year's winners in lmp2 here at lamar the world champions as well they won in elms they won pretty much everything they entered with united auto sports cars last year and jota the 28th car 38 still leads in lmp2 we've barely seen antonio felix de costa from the start he leads from nick dufrese and quiero van der garde with will stevenson fourth alex lynn is the top united auto sports car that's fifth position and here the battle again philippe albuquerque really really frustrated by traffic didn't get through into hyper pole didn't get a top six start position didn't get a shot at starting on pole position and the car's just been a little bit awkward yeah look this looks a little edgy they just haven't been able to sort of have that performance on demand like they have at some of the other tracks and some of the other other events and all the way through last year they were just phenomenal weren't they united and of course at the start as we saw on not an optimum tire it basically reversed all the way back down the order until he was struggling to stay ahead of the sort of midfield of gte am you know down in the 40s or 50s almost he was hemorrhaging lap time and positions and it was tough really tough you know like with the setups of the cars in terms of some of the guys would have had a car that was absolutely perfect for the dry conditions and maybe uh in the early part of that race when people on wet tires that other people set up which is just a bit more suitable for that and you just got to nurse it through if it's if your car's not working in those conditions you've just got to nurse it through keep it on the track and then let the race come back to you which is what's happening at the moment 100 100 but he sort of goes on to us something that marco sorenson said to me just yesterday and he was saying how you know the tire on the car on the p2 car in particular is is so susceptible to temperature and trying to keep it in that temperature window that you know from session to session the car can be radically different just depending on how you know that track temperature and what your tyre has done you know where how many still you know how many laps it's done you know what the temperatures has come out the oven have you had gone through a slow zone have you had other issues you've been stuck in traffic got a bit of pick up we saw that on three practices three i think it was where people were just chucking off left right and center and it just we couldn't understand because the conditions looked really good yeah but the ambient temperature was a little bit low um and probably some of these lmp2 cars were struggling to just get the tire turned on and i think quite a lot of would have been better off on the nighttime tyre but it's whether you have them mounted up for free practice or not you know for the race you will exactly right and and so sometimes it's it's a very slow reaction because these things take you know a good hour to bake up to the right temperature before you can use them just riding on board here with a number 91 card it's looking to put a move on tommy milner in the 64. that's richard leitz in the 91 portion he's got tommy milner in his sides tommy's now only in sixth position don't forget he led an hour ago in gte pro he's down in sixth place so 52-51 there's been a change there daniel sarah ahead of alessandro pierre guidi they were the other way around before the pit stops 52 stopped a lap before earl bamber still third for weathertech so they've held their position but antonio garcia for corvette the yellow car is now in third place uh fourth place rather and then the knight recovering 92 is in fifth and in sixth place tommy milner and so now 91 richard leetz behind the recovering 92 car so that's quite bizarre yeah it has flip-flopped hasn't it and uh i'm not sure if that's if that's something that's happened in the pits or something that's happening on the track about last pit stops for corvette tommy milner one minute 50 and every the quick stops were warming at 12 more minute 13. yeah that's it that's a slow stop for them yeah they must have been looking at something or doing something maybe they're looking to actually fix some of the damage that uh tommy got at the start when leaving the leaving the actual grid the ferrari bumped him up the back and it loses like the ferrari driver just wasn't even looking where he was going yeah and that's some done some damage to uh to the diffuser most probably so they were mostly giving that a really good look over and seeing if they could find a way to to actually fix it so richard leeds coming from behind seventh place not quite talent charlie because uh dress van tour in the hub auto car is in eighth place in the category and still down in 47th place at the car that started from pole position in gte pro gtu pro leader is in 28th place so it's 20 places back from where he might have been if he hadn't got cluttered off in the first corner i mean that's that's no way to start the race ollie you know we talked to we were watching in the in the back of the tv uh direction suite at the start of the race number eight toyota getting turned around and i said well either basically their race is over now or they win it that's the way stories happen at le mans seems to be certainly with toyota at least or something in between where yeah where who else knows what's going to happen it was uh a brutal first lap for a lot of people a lot of teams it's now settled the race is now settled into a bit of a rhythm and now we start to see the normal stint lengths now in the drive for a lot of cars and a lot of teams but it's getting darker outside and that's not just because we're coming up to six in the evening because it's august not october so the clouds are are coming and the rain may well come with them wait to see if the wind starts to pick up outside because that will be the real indicator [Music] the porsche team have a habit of turning adversity into some sort of uh profit but right now like the 64 corvette here they are kind of struggling a bit for pace yeah but just certainly when tommy was coming into onto the breaks of the dunlop chicane you could see the rear of the car was just moving on him he just put down a little bit of a strip of of tyre rubber and he just think that's not it's not quite in the window or hooked up uh tommy's fighting it and fighting it trying to get it so that everything just switches on and the car is like driving around sort of on rails that's sort of what you want but he's fighting it somewhat right now it's almost the worst thing when you early in the race and you know you've got a car that's on the knife edge and you you know this is going to be a long long race just to keep it on the track let alone keep the performance in the car we've probably all had that experience yeah but it could well be that as as the track develops so maybe the track is going to be actually at its worst right now it's had some rain it's got a little green but then as it starts to rubber up we get no more rain now that that grip level is going to increase and that does have an effect the way that the car performs and in my experience as the track grips up and gets more rubber on it the car starts to understeer a little bit more so when you turn the wheel the front wheels don't want to work quite so well as the rear wheels you want to go straight on well it looks to me from just outside that tommy has a rather loose car so it could be as the track rubbers up that tommy's balance comes to him in the car really then comes alive tommy well let's hear what's going on at porsche uh duncan vincent is down in the porsche gt team with uh team boss alexander steele alex first of all can you can you give us an update on for now two hours into the race the 92 car had basically a different car it's a rebuild how is it coping with the conditions and what the driver is giving you is feedback [Music] okay alex thank you very much for that thank you all right duncan you might have to give us a little crazy because alex's microphone wasn't faded up in the truck so we didn't get a word of that so he was saying he was saying that they don't feel any difference between the 92 and what they previously had he says it's absolutely perfect the drivers are giving good feedback and ultimately right now two hours into the race he's a very happy man good all right well certainly the recovery is ongoing for the 92 car having been hanging out the back of the field kevin ester is up to fifth position with 22 hours to go we've got a slow zone early in the lap yellow flags are out from the dunlop curve so marshall's post one is the start line so the next slow zone is at 35 which is outside are windy and into the pit lane comes from the high class engines as we look at sean galileo still hanging on from philippe albuquerque and albuquerque has made no inroads whatsoever here has he no it just looks very even between the two cars and they're they're just sort of trading lap times and it just sort of you feel that they're just in this sort of uh hold pattern right now just uh just to get through to the end of the stint get this thing ticked off and see if you can make some gains either in the pit lane or maybe with a different tyre a change of driver and it caught and of course they're not are they i mean they are still leaning the car on the door handles they're giving it everything they got and we talked about this earlier on ollie but darren you know you've every single lap you're in the car you've got to maximize everything you've got you've got to have every fractional iota performance being rung out of it yeah it's not like a an old school endurance race it's a sprint every lap is is a sprint um you've got to find every tenth you possibly can because you're going to try and break break away and get that gap and hopefully a safety card if you're you know looking for that advantage a safety car can intervene and give you a healthy lead here is the inter nissan battle for the lead of gte pro getting the slipstream daniel serra the leader alessandro pierguidi is going by him don't forget coming into the pit stops james collado led in 51 so they've done a double stint and then changed drivers now the tires will only have been one stint old so alessandra pierre guidi who's now taken the lead of the class away from daniel serra will have inherited the tires from his teammate that's quite a lot of trust going on there that normally doesn't happen normally new driver new tyres so you don't change the drivers until you're able to change the tyres so alessandro daniel sarah coming back at him now this is back and forth and not sure that they of course are going to be that thrilled about this and but you know they're they're trying to sort of yeah absolutely i think each each call we try to assert their authority on the situation and sort of sort of saying to the big boss we've got the pace to lead we've got the pace to lead we need to be we need to be allowed to have our chance to give it a crack but they're they're going at it which is what's the italian for have at it boys that's what's going on here and again change back alessandro pierre guidi goes underneath him it's like it's the last lap of the race they're trying to win it wholesale lmp2 stops everyone in lmp2 is in apart from antonio phyllis decosta who's already left g drives nick dufrese has left ghetto van de gada has left sean galileo out of the number 26 uh 28 joe to sport car so there is a change there change it real team racing as well and real team came in with norman nato hot on the heels of alex brundle and ben hanley didn't he and so all of those battles are now being fought out on on pit road so if you're sub woman at 10 in your pit stop then you're making up ground if you're overwhelming at 10 on your pit stop you're losing ground against your rivals in lmp2 so you know you know how long and how hard you have to work in a stint olly to get a second advantage to lose it in the pit lane is really really tough for the team it is it's very very hard and and you know teams really switched on to that you know maybe 10 years or so ago to make sure that that everybody's drilled everybody knows what they've got to be doing you know it really needs to be so well orchestrated for those tire changes to maximize it because you're only allowed to get the two air guns to gun on the wheels and you go along four guys over that line and you're only allowed to do any of that work on the car after the car has been fueled up so it's really getting your procedures right where you run from how you do it and that's what all the best teams have really worked so hard on throughout the year to make sure they get the maximum out of it because it's free time yeah you get it right for the first time number eight toyota is our race leader because the number seven car stopped before it now that's interesting because i thought the number eight had stopped before last time however number eight leads and owes us a pit stop number seven back on its way mike conway remains at the wheel there was no driver change so he's staying on the same tires nick lapierre still third and antonio felix to cost you in fourth place ahead of the clicking house of olivier pla which has yet to stop it's only made two stops now and the lead toyota has made a third let's hear what the number eight car has got to say [Music] stayed in the g drive number 26 car the vandergaard stays in racing team netherlands as well will stephen stays in at panic alex lin stays in at united olly jarvis stays in it reesy mikey o'reilly just awesome boys are having a great battle just keep going all right let's hear now from the number 8 toyota team [Music] okay we're checking pressures everything looks good at the moment now if that was formula e it would be the first two words are always calm seb always responds to any message but yeah that was the graph racing card i know i wondered what it was that was going so slowly there on the on the left-hand side that was all part of that funneling in it was the iron dame's um cheesy am ferrari but that's that's all part of the funding in he suddenly had no room on the left-hand side where he would want to be and he was in the middle of the track which means that his speed is compromised into the braking area and and suddenly the grass cars there as well exactly you're all just squabbling over that same piece of tarmac and and you know the eight car has now had two really decent hits one on either side exactly but maybe even out i mean uh it'll spit both drive shafts on the same lap at least the contact then was uh to will yeah yeah it should have been i mean it looked like a reasonably light touch but when you're behind the wheel and the steering wheel gets kicked out of your hand because of contact suddenly it can feel a lot different like he's really done some damage but he's certainly still uh pushing on and it'll be all the engineers will be now feverishly going through the data trying to see okay is that any of those load cells been pinged i think alan was talking about this earlier on that you know toyota will be running load cells on all kinds of different parts of the suspension and they'll be sitting there trying to oh i think we're going to go back and listen that's okay and you are p1 you are v1 yep it's august 7 it's so let's calm down we'll check the car when you come past all five thank you [Music] now toyota's team photographers have already been called into action to take photos of the car as it goes by to make sure there's no damage at the back after that first happens and you could just see there was a lens sticking out from the wall there again and he swung right over by the pit wall so they've got the mark one human eyeball and a decent camera lens on on a very fast shutter speed to take a series of photos to make sure that the back of the car and the side of the car are as undamaged as as the telemetry suggests they are yes and and that's all of those that message there was to reassure sebastian that they've monitored it they've looked at it everything's all good crack on just just keep calm they're not going to worry repeating the message that's on our timing screen are they contact between cars 8 and 39 mp3 under investigation so they will only worry him about that because he knows that there was contact and he knows he's the faster car and therefore essentially the culprit so he will only be told about that if there is a penalty to be served and then we might have to get the bleep button out for the radio so um unexpected pit stop for mike wainwright in the gr racing porsche he's just been in and been out again that's the third pit stop for the car nobody else in the class i was going to say nobody else in the class has made three stops but in fact af courses 83 car has also made that in fact about half the field now about a third of the field made three stops um so we're also hearing uh change of rear wing for risi competizione on their lmp2 car that could well have been uh a wet setup that they've decided to go with to start the race just a little bit more downforce just getting through those first first hour or so and oh we're just hearing that they can't get the old yeah ollie jarvis is still in the pit lane duncan vincent this is not really what you need when you're trying to do something in a hurry is it no it's not olly jarvis has actually jumped out there was a driver change made there martin they couldn't get the release bolts which are two at the very back either side of the the shark bin the left hand one sees solid it wouldn't move so they've just taken the wing back inside the car has now left it's back on track okay and a change to uh who did we see got in ryan cullen got in okay so he has taken over the recent competition car but they've lost a little bit of ground meanwhile hurrah darren turner hurrah these guys are having a great battle only for argo and nikki and they're one two moved right up i guess yeah as the pit stops are sort of shaking out they're in a great spot they've been pretty close the whole way through for the first sort of uh two and a bit hours um they must be happy with that the way this is playing out and you can see all four cars in shot that's the one two three four as they come down the bridge under the bridge third car that ferrari that's in third place the white aston martin that's in fourth place in gte am so that is how close gtm is after nearly two and a quarter hours the the lead car well this is a couple of laps ago when it was second in class that is your leader in gtm the 33 tf sport car uh ben keating's seventh different ride in seven starts at le mans and he says the best one he's had and they've had a lot of success with this car already this year it's been a very handy machine indeed aston martin amar in second place with nikki team nick nielsen third in the air of course a ferrari could just see its nose there with the red white and blue of france on it and behind him is a is another lmp2 car but right behind that is the white tf sport aston that's currently in fourth place being driven by ross gunn factory aston driver nielsen's in obviously a strong position having just stopped as well uh taking the third stop so as it plays out that's going to pop to the top of the uh to the top of the charts there for the the am class but it's good to see all three uh three astons running strongly at the front in fact the two astons these lead two cars in gtm have just set the cars best first sector of the race so they're not losing much in terms of pace i mean look at the look at the state of them though we're we're two hours in and they already look like they've done 24 hours if you look at the side of the car that's that side exit exhaust just pumps oil smoke down the side of the car doesn't it but also you know those that first hour or so when the track was really wet in those conditions it's always going to be chucking up a load of filth onto the cast but you're right it looks like it has already done 24 hours ross gunn 0.7 of a second behind nicolas nielsen we could be on there's ben keating hey ben we could be on for an aston martin one two three very shortly ross gunn will definitely seize the opportunity here what about then where is he gonna get the run is he gonna have to draft by kind of on the run down to the porsche curves or somewhere you say he's not going to likely to be able to outbreak the ferrari well nelson's already defending so he knows that he's in a weak spot is that because he's now on a second stint with that set of tires so he's already on the back foot and it all depends on how hard he wants to defend at this point of the race isn't it i think they all are though because they will have started on wets and nobody's going to take a set of of slicks well no i suppose they can in am can't they they can't go fresh tires and the last stop for nielsen was only 49 seconds so um i'm presuming that was a fuel only must have been a short stop because every oh stay off the grass wow okay that's the first of this race and it's by no means the first of the day or even the first time we've seen that happen in the big classes so there's been a lot of cars off there and now that grass is wet yeah that that is been it's almost has been a theme here over this weekend people going off yeah on the exit of the yes it's just before tetra rouge and it is you get on that grass and you are in for some fun ride that and the first gravel trap down the hill in this is the big one on the right hand side the alamo nish memorial gravel trap that one has has seen a lot of cars go through it as well when they were rescuing the the car earlier on you can see how many sets of tire tracks they were getting the g drive car was off there wasn't there and then actually i think it was collado in the 51 car yep actually went through the gravel trap just missing the g-drive guys yeah it's it's um it looks very tricky down there and uh i've been i think was that the 20 car that was there it was the 51 yeah that was the 20 car but we also just saw a replay of the 51 car straight line in the chicane at the top of the hill at the uh dunlop chica ins and that's your gte pro leader and actually now by nine seconds despite that sort of little uh straight lining so we saw the 2a of course the cars battling to and fro to and fro to and fro for a lap and a half and now suddenly alessandra pierre guidi has just basically found sixth gear and off he's gone yeah but it's it's actually i think it's just a couple of seconds between puerto ri and and sarah they've got nine seconds or so over real bamboo the weathertech porsche it's uh yeah the the two ferraris af courser ferraris do look very strong right now in pro antonio garcia finding a little bit more pace in the 63 ferrari that's in fourth place he's just set the fastest second set ferrari did you say it's corvette rather yeah i've got ferrari head on 63 corvette fastest second sector of the race he's he found 1.5 seconds on earl bamber in that one sector so he had a good run through there didn't he nice toe i would say [Music] we saw the interior of the united auto sports garage they've got three cars here two from united auto sports one from united sports usa united auto sports usa because uh each team is only allowed a maximum two-car entry so although it's the same group it is a different banner headline wrt 31 and 41 running nose to tail and are they are they knows to tell actually in terms of position or are they no they aren't those to tell this is the battle for sixth robert kubitzer with robin freins right behind him let's see if he goes okay go go go go yeah that's his man uh robert kowitzer in the 41 car robin friends is go go going as well isn't he yes he is and he's got him in the sides he's he's going to get a decent toe now down all the way down to mulsanne corner i know he's quite close enough to put a move on him but he can build just a little bit more momentum as he comes into malls and corners just gets a little bit deeper on the brakes just sneaks up another couple of meters and then really looking to slingshot off the corner he's kind of gained on a little bit and actually quebec just a little bit a little bit as he got on the power so that hopefully would give him a nice little shot off down to indianapolis [Music] robin friends is just creeping ever so stealthily closer and look at the aston of ross gun the white car that's at the tail of this little group he's all over the back of the ferrari but didn't get quite the assistance he wanted from the panis lmp2 car as it went by didn't hold the ferrari up enough i mean obviously for the ferrari driver fantastic it didn't get held up that much but roscon i think was hoping for a little bit more fruit to fall from that particular tree there's nikki team in second in am yeah he's just dropped back a little bit from the tf sport car and again you sort of wonder whether that was forced in traffic where he had to go offline or stay out and and somebody came by him as a driver you know it's going to ebb and flow but it doesn't stop you getting a little bit frustrated about it you know you you're all the time looking at who's where you know where's his car likely to pass you how you can sort of manipulate the situation so that he doesn't pass you in a particular spot because you know that you're going to need a nice clean run through a six section of corners to make sure that you don't lose that much much time and hopefully that faster car can then pass you on a straight that's what you're looking to do potential problem rearing its ugly head for the race leader in gtam that turquoise aston martin tf sport car felipe fraga being investigated for a possible pit stop infringement a one-minute 21 stop compared to 124 of nikki team in the 98 car behind but may well be that just a little quick coming in or that there are too many people working on the car or there was a visor up or there wasn't a fight i mean there are various safety rules that need to be complied with in the pit stops and those can catch you out as well the uh inception ferrari number 71 is slow on track somewhere trying to pick it out on the board oh it's they've had a tough time with that car haven't they uh it is i think he's just coming in the pit he is coming into the pit lane and he's coming down very slowly tired right rear low yep he's got a puncher yep yeah yeah or or not necessarily a puncture puncher but it is a puncher yes slow slow deflation let's take a look here they see oh okay behind the toyota so he's driving off track there he's gonna be out of the way as much as he can on that right rear so i guess as he turned into to the left on the second part of the porsche curves he had a moment good job by ben though you know that yeah you can do so much damage trying to get a car back with you i i i think actually possibly there he was just using all that runoff area to be out of the way in the quick bits of the porsche curves because he doesn't want to get hit from behind and nobody's expecting him to be going that slowly yeah but i think to darren's point you know if you're going quick with a deflated tire and the way that that can all unravel and then starts to whip on the bodywork and it can absolutely wreck your race if if you are too quick and that tyre is unraveling and basically destroying the back of the car so nice job getting it back absolutely driver change as well i mean this is this is now again trying to turn a negative into a positive again with my with my team manager's hat on i'm putting brendan iribe in there there gentleman driver get him in the race it's still daylight the visibility is still good the track's dry it's as good as it's been all day long correct get him in get him get him started on his uh oh drive through for car 30 for not coming into the pit lane in the correct manner well that was the uh the duquesne car that's the problem child of the race so far that's been in and out more often than that with the radio problem yeah yeah yeah and that car renee binder at the wheel now down in 55th place whoa yeah they're in for a long 24 hours aren't they that's tough yeah then it's tough properly tough yeah this is our race leader now it's the it is our race league number eight car so how come the number seven car had to stop again and the number eight car hasn't yet good now did i right talk amongst yourselves darren why corvettes are rubbish are you trying to find out why uh why mike's had that extra stop at this point because it was 11 seconds slower than the whammy's last stop and so i'm i'm a bit confused myself with why that's happened because you think wyoming must be uh due to come in pretty soon as well um just to sort of uh get them back onto the same same strategy we're watching here we're watching the united car coming up in the back of the wrt cars and they're coming through and they're coming up to a real big gaggle of traffic here we've got uh lmp2 we've got uh gte am and ross has made the move on uh nielsen there so he's moved up nice moved up so it's aston one two three yeah and and uh we're just hearing there's spots of rain uh aston one two three and there are four astons in the shot as well the entire aston collective there because you also saw triple seven the d station racing car in the pit lane now this will be a scheduled stop the last stint for number seven was only eight laps and it was because of a second puncture they changed a tyre the left rear remember in in their normal scheduled stop when it was still the leader but he came in early because he had another slow puncture or another puncher alert so the number eight now is in for its scheduled stop so then out of sequence okay do we know which tire it was was it another left rear or dude uh not sure i will continue reading down the thread because of contact with number two any contact super type out between the two wrt cars both in this sixth and seventh in in lmp2 the 41 and the 31 and robin fryins has really got robert in his in his sights third place car andrena growl takes over from nico lapierre mata vacciviere is the third bullet in their gun so they're not lacking anything in terms of quick peddlers are they this could be a really really big day for for 24 hours for philip senior who has been presented with the spirit of le mans award this week another thing that i've just spotted sebastian bouemi in the number eight toyota each time he comes in for a pit stop the inlap is ferociously fast he is purple sector every single sector plus three seconds quicker on the stop as well so there's another three seconds in the bank you know they've they have oh well when we were getting all excited about more aston martin's and you can wave a stick at potentially in one shot duncan did say from the the pit lane that uh there were spots of rain so again you know with my team manager hat on i've just put brendan the reeb in and in fact the team have just put brendan new reeve in in that inception racing card he comes thank you all right you know how long ago did we switch the rear lights off 25 30 minutes ago probably that was taking that it's taken that yeah 30 40 minutes taking that long for the rain to arrive so it wasn't immediate [Music] well the click and house teams say this is the first time they have ever driven the cars in the rain both of them have just stopped 708 has taken on frank meyer and 709 has taken on roman dumas not the first time he's driven in the rain but if it's the very first time they've ever run any laps in the rain that kind of explains some of that first lap behavior and just trying to just figure out where they need to put the brake and and how you know they could see that ollie player got to the first chicane it done up chicane and he was too far forward on the brave bars it just went straight off but they've got the fronts and the the wheels never turned he just went straight up if the toy hadn't been there he would have gone straight into the gravel exactly and and then the sister car i believe went straight on at the first chicane on that very first lap as well so they were both struggling with breaking problems so but to be fair to apply it didn't look like he was being over excitable into turn one it wasn't one of those things where you are you know he's done a crazy move it was just simply locking up yeah and it was just cold tires wet tyres just figuring the car out in those conditions the first time ever and it's the start of the biggest race of the whole year yeah you know overrated yes 31-41 robin friends ahead of robert so that is the battle for sixth position still in lmp2 in fact ninth place overall because they are ahead of the clinton houses who are in 14th and 17th place the uh fourth and fifth of our hypercars philippe albuquerque is still trying to of pull himself back up onto the to the back of this top six top seven battle and then and uh you know he's still just working ferociously hard to to get that that car that the united sports number 22 switched on and this reigns not really going to help him there's a little bit of slippery surface here coming through the the esses and down into tetrarouge further update on tyres at toyota by the way uh they believe both number seven's punches were debris related number eight in that last stop had a right rear tire change because they thought there was rim damage after that side swipe yeah with the with the p2 car so you know nothing in life ever runs smoothly no matter how well rehearsed and well drilled you are but you know first year with the new car they are definitely having a little bit of an uphill struggle yeah it's it's sort of that thing of expect the unexpected and and toyota are certainly getting that certainly with the eight car and all of these punches as well it's it's quite unusual how it's it's effect it seems to be affecting them and maybe they've got a bit quite a sensitive sensor on on the on the tyres and in the wheels well and you know when you when you're doing the speeds that you're doing here you want the sensitive sensor you don't want it to be on the sort of not sensitive enough side of the coin if you like um update on the corvette the 64 car had a longer stop because it was short fueled in the first stop so it had a longer second stop i see um although that means every time they full fuel it it's going to lose time to everybody else in the pit lane yeah it does that didn't that didn't sound right as an explanation but that's that's what the team are telling us so uh oh and albuquerque is trying up the inside here of uh coming into malzahn corner and that's putting a move on uh kabitsu yeah good move solid move at that point and the weather down at tet rouge doesn't look so bad because every time they come through it looks like there's rain on the on the camera lens but actually no one's got their wipers going through that point so it can't be uh it can't be too bad down there we're talking about how dry it is ollie but actually drivers are reporting that it's still fairly slippery marco sorensen's just got out of the high-class car after a double stint saying it's still pretty nasty in the dunlop curves and coming out of indianapolis and if you have to try and go offline to pass a gt car there's where more of the drama lies because as we saw before the start of the race when the h-24 car was going around these for a loss of track is on public road and there are deep puddles on the on the edges of the road yeah we're just watching a replay here of uh albuquerque putting that move on uh on kavitza coming down into mul's and corner he had to use quite a lot of road and robert made him work for it but he executed nice job through clean and onwards and now we'll be catching up to the trying to catch up to the next wrt car of robin fryes out of our window here by pit entry we can see a number of people with umbrellas up yep light rain okay so a little bit of rain falling in fact we we can see the smears down our window can't we it's no longer the sort of drops that we had earlier it's actually smearing down our window race leader is number seven toyota let's hear from number eight sebastian poemey [Music] okay that's a little bit late because the rain has arrived um but and and you're all too aware okay do you think he's gonna be more heavy than this interesting um obviously you know when you're in the wind when you're in the car the first indication of of rain on the windscreen the first few spots your immediate thought is what am i running into i'll turn on the windscreen wipers that's my first thought i thought that was your last thought i thought that was only when the rain x is no longer clearing it well enough that the final resort is to turn on the wiper and smear all those bugs and oil across across your window with an engineer you really hope for a bit more information than rain is coming yeah in terms of what direction uh yeah what corner is it going to come to first so uh from that point of view it's a little bit more helpful if they can be out there and just get that information and the thing here is you're not at silverstone you can't see what's over the other side you know you're basically you know monica you're in a channel of armco here you're in a channel of trees and that that means you've got no visibility other than straight down the line or above you and you can't see above you because there's a roof in the way so you can't see what's around the next corner you can be blatting down the mulsanne straight a few spots of rain and you know in the back of your mind that it could be absolutely torrential just around the corner in mulsanne or at arnage or in the esses or wherever so you really do want some heads up from your teammate via the team i mean it's definitely coming down harder now you can see the wife later on as they're going down on their route uh on the way down to techroo so uh and there's a yellow out at uh martial close six so uh i'd say that's where oh and that's why number 18 car has just looped around and that is the absolute racing car andrew harianto has taken that car over slippery surface flags out the uh red and yellow catalan colors oh he didn't loop the car around he got clattered by the d station aston of satoshi hishino that was a battle for position that's possibly not the way that satoshi had hoped to sort it out this is a battle for positioning and class as well it is the af quarter ferrari of nick nielsen and the in fact it's not it's a team project one card matteo caroli chasing francesco castellachi's ferrari that's a 54 car as we welcome back allen mcnish allen it had settled down it's livening up against again nicely for you though yeah the weather definitely is following me around when i say that the wet weather because i started the race and it was torrential rain and now back on it's uh starting to to spit and drizzle it's actually at that sort of horrible point where in a closed car and darren will be able to sort of confirm this in a closed car it's actually quite tricky to tell how much it's raining especially here because when you are hitting those raindrops you're hitting them at nearly 200 miles per hour so they splatter onto the wind stream and it streams a lot more than very often it actually is whereas in an open top car i know that there's no upper top cars any longer but back in my day in an open top car you had actually a lot more feel about how much rain there was but crikey it's very bad 94 and 91 both going on at done knocking on the way in so you can see it's super slippery there now under braking i know it's and you even see the tyre lines in the in the tarmac now so you know there's some some reasonable surface water going on but in the wet earlier on though at the beginning of the race that actually i think played really well into corvette's hands as soon as it dried up it seemed to go away from them so i'll be interested to see if they can follow this through as there's another yellow flag at dunlop and whether they can actually follow this and it comes back into corvette when it gets into the damping greasy conditions the tyre temperature is always an issue on the slick for corvette because although they're using the same tyre that they use in the states track temperatures tend to be sort of 15 or 20 degrees lower here than they are habitually racing in america so they do end up with a problem trying to switch the tire on and olly gav was saying last night about this he said the porsche it just comes on like a light switch whereas the if you don't get the the heat instantly in the corvette then it can actually get further and further and further out of the operating window and then you start to overheat it trying to overdrive it and so on and so forth it is raining properly in the pit lane now duncan says yeah and you say about uh things that are a little bit off well takumi aoki is off at dunlop that's where we had the yellow flag there that's in the innovation car and uh we saw two cars going wide and he seems to be the third one that's gone in he's only just taken that over that car stopped about two or three laps ago maybe even only two laps ago actually it's not his out lap but uh i don't think he's been very long in the car he took over from matthia lahaye who was the starting driver and actually i sort of sensed because it was the end of the third stint one wet and too dry for lahay that we're probably due a pit stop there well it's the sun is out it is also raining i don't know if duncan can see a rainbow anywhere but there is the srt41 carp the uh philippe la filiere won't take long to put him back on terra firma it's on the exit though he's came out of it and got on the gas and it's looped around so i don't think it's any damage by the looks of things as just in front of us the number 32 united auto sports has just popped itself back into the pits um and that is uh nicholas germain yeah that and pr1 matheson uh also in with semen trimmer and that'll be the end of the third stint for all of these starting drivers so they will probably uh be surrendering their cars i really can't really can't imagine anyone uh going on to west at this stage it's uh it's only really just not wet enough is it very local it is falling into the lmp2 pit stop window because antonio felix to cost the race leader in p2 has just stopped and the 64 corvette has a proper attempt to pitch itself off the road tommy miller hanging on to that one there's the 32 car that was his the beginning of his in-lap into then he's just stopped gary robert shaw the head of the engineering lineup at united auto sports i sent duncan to find out what their issue was in the rain why they basically reversed from uh 12th in class down to 48th position overall or something there's the what if he did click the barriers we didn't didn't see the the end of that from uh the left-hand side of the car but uh you know i should say dry this side dry enough yes dry enough that that it's no question that it's not wet enough anywhere that you're questioning whether a slick tire a hot slick tyre is what you need except up to the dunlop chicane that's the that's when the drivers are really earning their money at this point there's about a kilometer of the circuit two kilometers maybe that is really treacherous at the uh with the slick tyre yeah and that and that dunlop corner you know it's a long far straight up to it it's a really fast high g load right hander and then you've got to move the car over in a way that that physics doesn't want it to go over to the right hand side straighten it up right it's uphill and it helps you slow down but as you as you wash off your speed suddenly the front tires are very much more prone to locking as we always see start of the race end of the race and every lap in between and that's when dramas happen that's a full tire change for the number seven toyota of mike conway yeah conway's done four stints uh so that was actually a short stint because it's done nine laps on that one they had an eight lap stint and a nine laps now the eight lap stint was because of a puncture we were told that by toyota but that should have been a 12 lap stint that should not have been a nine lap still team lap since what they've been doing earlier on and certainly with semastia and boeing and so not sure the reason exactly why they cut it short possibly because of the slow zone and the fact that they would be in the slow zone anyway and uh so the time losses are minimal but he's he's gone out the lead but boy he's just popped past the pits now so kobayashi's in conway is out and uh is on the charge and on the chase the number seven team have been defeated by the number eight team for the last four lemon 24 hour races and they do not want it to happen again they have been the quickest car this year they are our points leaders in the world endurance championship but two short stops don't want that this is the really confusing bit because they easily pick up a penalty because you come into the pitch driver change and they're going straight out into a slow zone and if the team haven't given them the heads up it's easy to go off the pit limiters above the 80k for the slow zone yeah and uh pick up a penalty and the thing is that the the speed limit in the pits is 60 and the slow zone is 80. that's a different limiter yeah so you've got to cut you have got to come off the limiter but then go straight on to a different one i think it right now the slow zone has just been removed it's gone so a little bit of a relief there i'm sure for some definitely but uh it definitely well if we just take it right now kobayashi who's leading the race he's just jumped in for conway it's only 11 seconds between him and sebastian boehme and that car the eight has been in the wars you know got whacked at the first corner of dunlop it's been down the escape road at ardage it's had a clang with the i think the 39 lmp2 car which was just served a reprimand for that clang on the side so i'm pretty sure they'll be quite glad to try to get some sort of standard running and a little bit of a settled pace yeah they need to you know it's that stage race where everybody actually needs a little bit of settling down don't they we're nearly three hours in and it's still really quite frantic massive action in the pit lane probably two-thirds of the field have been in and out in all four classes including the race leader in hypercar including the race leader in lmp2 not the race leaders in gte pro but most of the other pro cars just when you talk about pitch stops the total pit stop time between the two toyotas is actually uh very very similar it's not very much apart at all but the in and out lap times are a little bit different between them and so there's there's a little bit to gain there however uh there is the difference in so far is that uh sebastian buenas done three stops and the leader of kobayashi has done four courtesy of those two short stops that you mentioned earlier on which means they're not half a stint out of sync yep because you know that's a net loss of about six laps that they should have continued on pit lane penalty or a a drive-through penalty rather for the triple seven aston martin for speeding in the slow zone no notification yet of whether there's going to be a penalty for that contact with the absolute racing car of andrew harriento that turned the porter around that definitely looked like it was the aston martin that uh took the wind out of the porsche sales yeah i watched that just before it came on there martin and i'm not sure is a tough one to be honest because it sort of squeezes in it definitely you know was more as you said on on the one side but i'm not 100 sure i would uh i've really got to be uh completely alongside on a move into ten rouge yeah it's one of those such a fast corner isn't it you have to be to get to do that out of the s's is very difficult even in an lmp1 car used to struggle with the gte to do it and you had to have so much more momentum you couldn't do it just purely in acceleration oh that's the race leader that is and davidson lmp2 car has dropped off the road and is no longer the race leader and he's not alone that is the 18 car that is the absolute racing porsche of andrew harriento he's well off the road there that's that's downhill in the esses isn't it but that's also spun because you see the wiper is up there as well here we see it again and uh harry anton's gone off and he's on oh and ant has had to leap on the middle pedal and the car is snapped and that is a long way off but i'm a bit confused that looked a bit strange in terms of the porsche was really clear of of where ant was at that point so uh wyatt was uh sort of maybe there's something on the on the circuit on the inside you never know but it's a definitely quite separate into sepia that's the thing is separate i wonder if somebody was coming out of the pit lane or whatever and things just funneled in there but that was the race leader and davidson had only just taken the car over for antonio felix de costa de costa won't even have stopped looking at the monitors by the the time the car went off robert kubitz are now leads for team wrt but he owes us a stop uh so racing team netherland job and it has taken over the 29 car they are now in third make that g drive franco colopinto he's taken over the 26 car so there was a driver change there as well and back into the garage after that uh spin for takuma aoki a lot of examination going on on the left-hand side of that car which might have just ended up in the barriers dragon speeds henrikh hedman is in the pit lane as well as roberto mary for g-drive who is now up to 25th place overall after visiting the gravel trap early on 25 cart michael wainwright has been off somewhere because a new splitter is going on the gr racing porsche and so uh mike wainwright uh now down to 61st position and there's an incident between the d station racing and yeah they always will because two cars made contact even if it is clear and cut and dried visually they will always make sure that there is no penalty to be served that's i think entirely reasonable on board with the up united racing team netherland car lmp2 third place now that's the number 29 car right in front is the g drive racing number 26 car and that is the car of franco calapinto youngest driver in the field just a little bit of a note that there could be a few drops of rain possible in the next five minutes popped up on the screen again just as the sun seems to come out at the pits abusing track limits in the 54 ferrari and then we saw him in a battle with uh well actually it wasn't with reno masternardi who's taken over the 80 iron lynx car he was the battle for second place in lmp2 would have been third place alapago slow zone here and that'll be for the recovery of and davidson in the jota sport car that's a lonely dance davidson's well off the circuit so that's going to be a quite a bit of time to drag him out so they're just purely by the the fact is he's so far off and he'll have to drag him all the way up the hill to put him back onto the ground again and get moving so i think he'll probably lose a lap at least yeah and in a field this competitive yeah with a car that competitive as well you know the car has been dominant right from the beginning there he is he's already down to 18th in class i'm just trying to see where the leader is in lmp just to see if he is going to go down the lap at this point then get back on the track in the next 20 or 30 seconds leader's gone through so he hasn't left the g drive who's the effective leader has gone through and now they're released and this is the lead for the race because or leading lmp2 because you've got colopinto and von neuter going at it but also racing team netherlands vanitas in the pro-am category as well and they're leading it by quite a chunk second in that category seventh overall it's like duval in real team racing it's impressive that they're right up there overall in lmp2 yeah i think um when they bring in the rated bronze rated driver then clearly balances itself out a little bit but yes this car's always been quick though there and they've been at it right from the word goal with ida vander garda in there from the start it's a strong strong car but it's good to see that uh there is a nice race in p2 right at the front but i'm very sorry for davidson for going off for whatever reason i think we only saw the end of it as opposed to the realities of it yeah we need another angle of that to see what what set it off for both cars because it's uh it was very strange that they both went off at the same time but not because of each other at that point i don't know if how many drivers are still left to come out of the cars you know if if we've got many that are still on the opening stint not many because if you take for example calapinto um or vanita for now it's only been in two laps and uh that's just because the freeze has done four stints up till now and neilson's in for uh af courser in the 83 ferrari he's in the pits now so that's surely going to be the end of his uh his opening stint after nearly uh two hours and 50 minutes yeah if you think just in terms of a normal stint it's about 45 minutes for the lmp2s and also the the hyper cars and so if you're to think normally you would try to do four stints you know you're you're getting on there for three hours now there are regulations in place for the maximum time you can do which is four hours in any six hour rolling period and so it's long enough isn't it it's definitely long enough i can tell you it's a lot of concentration physically you know this place isn't so tough you know there's lots of straights where you can relax but the corners are coming at you very very fast and you've got to be absolutely spot on and precise on the braking and turn in and especially in these changing conditions as well it tends to focus the mind in some occasions and the other rule is that everybody has to do a minimum of six hours in the race and any driver can do a maximum of 14 hours in the race what's the longest you've had to do uh in the re in the race i don't know in a stick three hours 59 minutes oh right on the limit right on the limit in 2010 we played right to the limit of every game to try to be in the game three hours 59 and how many seconds i can't tell you i do know that coming into the pits i was on the i was on the pace car map to try to have enough fuel to get in the pit lane right on the limit yeah but sometimes you have to play those cards and unfortunately you know as you when you're playing vegas sometimes the house wins sometimes you win it's good to have you back david what's your view over things now i'm enjoying this lmp2 battle color pinto versus van out he's only four tenths of a second as they go over the timing line so we may have lost anthony davidson from the league but we've still got a great fight going on as we look down at 51 which has given up its gte pro lead for the moment alessandro piergudi has brought the car in and the ferrari's doing a very very good job at the moment compared to what we expected perhaps for qualifying but vop tweaks aside they've done a good job yeah this is a single with ferrari and you know you know it from the spa 24 hours they they do play poker very well yes they keep their cards very close to their chest and uh in they i don't think prepare very much for qualifying by what i see but they do prepare extremely well for the race and they know how to consistently deliver they of course know how to run the car without question and the other thing is they've got quite a few cars to get the information and data from so they do a very very good job when it comes to the deliverance of the big points game now how long before we expect number eight toyota in for its next stop because that car has just done an absolute best within the first sector well it's done seven laps so it's halfway through it's not right he's been doing 13 laps things which is about right it uh is it is definitely on the upper edge so he's been fast and also delivering good fuel economy and so he's done seven of this particular one with about six to go [Music] it's impressive when you think about that first hour for that car car a with the contact at term one and the control out delete on the opening lap plus the the little run down arnage to be only eight seconds off off the lead at this point it's a great fight back from uh from the crew on karate yeah boy he's got his tail up that's for sure but uh 29 jonathan oyeters in second and we're on board with him right now looking at the late news's radio maybe i should skip and as we survive okay exactly [Music] a little bit of information there about tires and the way that vanita is playing the game he's got a little bit more experience than calapinto in this situation clearly they're both fast drivers they know everybody's fast but in that respect he's thinking a little bit more in the wider long game interesting there though the engineer was sort of saying right down with the consumption get that air conditioning off and i said yeah but it's pretty hot near me but all the all they've got air ducts that come into the car as well and all of those are switched off they're closed and captioning not it's a bit available yeah is that from the driver or just generally though i never shared the car with you darren except except going to the driver's parade super impressed with uh color pinto he's doing a great job yeah given his relative lack of experience in sports car racing he has been mighty impressive whether it's been in this or a gt3 car that he was thrown into at the last minute at the spa 24 hours for example and another fight going on further down 34 ranger van der zander and for wrt xiaomi lazy up behind him that was a gap at the last sector point of 0.363 of a second and in the second wrt and trisha malaysia giving it a good go here to try and find a way up past the dutchman has been a pretty strong standout in some of the races so far you know he delivered a brilliant quality in i think it was in monza at the last race he was able to sort of hang on and get in there where if you think some of the other more established names within wrt robin friends for example who you know is a driver that's quick and can tend to drag a laptime of a golf car to racing car or anything else he happens to want to to give it a go in charlotte lazy rest here last year his father raced here as well second generation racer charming lazy that that gap has just widened a touch over the course of the lap as they come up behind gte traffic as well now so working for them that 45 and the porsche involuntarily but in the way and the gap comes right down and now charlotte lazy possibly close enough to make a move up towards the ford chicane bounce on boss looks on stefan ratel comes to say hello and as the cars dive down towards the chicane the net result of all of that we'll have to see when they come across the timing line it is still just ahead 34 renga van der zander but charming lazy right up with him back to the traffic there and quietly in the background 708 the glickenhaus is uh is closing in [Music] so vanderzander chased still by above 31 sharma lazy and then as you say 709 roman dumar at the wheel of it in 15th place now and in fact on his last lap he did a personal best ended at 3 32 leaders kobayashi doing at 328 at the moment but i think they're in traffic uh the toyota definitely still has an advantage actually looking at the 709 which is uh the card at the back of this run house that's the one of the two darren that seems to have struggled a little bit to find the balance the pure performances definitely came out of the 708 uh numbered car this this particular race weekend that's the one that olivier platt delivered on the test day fastest lap time overall and he delivered in qualifying and seemed to be able to hustle it whereas this one looks as if it's a little bit less hooked up uh whatever reason right from the beginning we've also got a 10 second pit stop penalty uh being applied to number 33 which is the tf sport car but felipe fraga had been doing good things in in the traffic here tries to get away but up alongside shah malaysia comes around mandu man now the hyper car clicking house to be able to go through it does it splits the two lfp two cars before the next chicane there's more traffic to negotiate as well and vanderzander puts that porsche between him and the opposition i was speaking to westbrook earlier in the weekend and he was saying that they're just struggling to find the same balance as the sister car um it just seems a little bit more nervous on the rear and they've tried the same setup and it just doesn't seem to bring the car into that same balance in the sweet spot that they've been looking for there's definitely in their sort of ultimate and also in their averages it looks like it's a little bit more of a struggle with that one however sister cars up in sixth place overall and is making inroads into that fifth you know it's obviously had a bit of an incident at the beginning those change and everything else with uh the incident with the number eight first lap 709 gains another place doesn't it so dumat now goes up into 13th place moves itself ahead of rank of anderson before into europol competition and that means that while he's been getting through that battle between the lmp two cars has been interrupted it's a much wider gap than it was here at lappago for example yeah and just to come back the ex-leader of this lmp2 battle being anthony davidson is now a latin and two minutes behind and so it was a long long time to get out the gravel from that lap in two minutes the issue is that you can't get that back in performance no question also if there is a safety car you're behind a different safety car so it actually even limits what potential gains there are behind the safety car and so he's going to be struggling to come back from that he's i think it's the case and now just digging deep and trying to get everything clean and tidy all the way to the end and see what you can pick up but right now jota are down in 19th place with the number 38 the mighty 38 and we're hearing from duncan vincent in the pits that there's no negative report about the car so he's not suggesting there was an issue that took him off points the finger but just an error [Music] so it had the number 18 porsche going off ahead and that seemed to have been the distraction wasn't it but as that was having its drama and it was just slightly distracted and off he went but as you say he's back in the race we'll see what the car can salvage there is still a long long way to go in 21 hours indeed so replay here of the vanguard van der zander oraca over the kerbs sharma lazy likewise in his efforts to play catch up so kamiko be actually leading at the moment outright by 10.4 seconds getting another uh instead of being locked out but no further action this one is for uh number 18 the harry anto porsche treble 7 which is the d station racing aston which is a little spin down at rouge so uh it makes sense because it wasn't really uh it was six six and one half dozen of the other and uh they both got away with it i'm sure there wasn't actually that much damage on either car either which is good sometimes that no further action is there because although it's right there looked at it doesn't necessarily mean that anybody is to blame there are these things called accidents yeah exactly and quite often you think when you're looking back at the replays it's very easy to make a judgment but when you're in the car you don't even know where the guy is you know you could easily hear um not even know that they're on the inside of you and uh it can be a completely innocent innocent accident well having visited the stewards on many occasions through my career can tell you that they are they actually have got a lot of data available and they're very very experienced the stewards for the world endurance championship and obviously le mans uh they tend to follow everything around all seasons so they build up an understanding of the drivers the cars the teams and the situations at different corners as well yeah and uh that's something that i think is a big benefit actually when you have got a traveling sort of steward group effectively sure that pit stop penalty i mentioned for aston number 33 that is still the leading car within gte am it's got dylan pereira at the wheel of it the luxembourgish driver but on the next pit stop he's going to drop behind marcus gomez because of the extra 10 seconds so that's been going to be applied on that next stop for the aston martin but uh the 33 has got a healthy lead on on the uh the second place 98 in terms of what's that now 16 seconds up the road um so yeah the 10 seconds will obviously have an effect but he should still come out with a little buddy of a little bit of a buffer there so where's the next fight going to come from we've had the vanderzanda versus sharma latest situation within lmp2 and we've also now got blondquist and james allen and wayne boyd within lmp2 further up the order getting themselves together for a scrap and doing improved lap times now we've got doing a personal best wayne boyd who in turn is being chased by his teammate phil hanson and they were only something like a tenth apart phil hanson fractionally the quicker the more experience of the two at le mans uh coming through behind him last time around in ninth and tenth place he's overall fifth and sixth in class the united auto sports cars now darren getting back into the mix they certainly are and they're coming back through and uh that's when you think about their performance in that first hour uh to be our sort of flooring their way back into the race at this point yeah it looked like uh for albuquerque looked like he was out on slicks and everybody was else and wets you just seem to be struggling who is back in the battle with the gt yams but uh they're sort of definitely coming back into it they are 35 seconds off the lead and the lead is still called to an lmp2 just followed by four seconds behind his yap and out and so they're they're definitely in the game and they're also within one safety card i'm probably going to keep bringing this back up at different points but you need to stay within one safety car period to stay in that game if you're split to the next safety car period which is about a minute basically uh then you're you're caught and you can't gain it back and then you sort of lose the train effectively now this is alessandra pierre guidi who is closing or daniel sarah for the lead of gte pro on that last lap he was 1.3 seconds quicker third in the class is al bamba and earl in the porsche his last lap was a good bit slower in fact than pierre guidi so the ferraris are still one and two but the gap between them is coming down now so daniel sarah versus alessandra pierre guidi al bamba third in the class and then jordan taylor the best of the corvettes at the moment he's fourth in the class number 63 and then you've got porsche 5th porsche 6 with michael christensen ahead of rickard leads 92 ahead of 91 now but this 79 is the car of al bamba third in class and hunting down the ferraris for the moment though there is a lot of real estate that he needs to make up so he's pushing on his al bamba outright winner of the race but last time around as i said he didn't quite have the pace of the ferrari it looked like earlier on the ferraris were working together i mean you could say they were racing each other hard but it also looked like they were breathing off the throttle towards the end of the straight and just sort of working the toe and trying to build a gap so at the moment with uh with a 19 second gap that's not going to be possible but maybe if they get back together they can start working as a team again but they did a good job didn't they because they caught up with the corvettes worked their way through pulled away so it was a very good almost methodical first stint whereas others were having their dramas they just got on with the plan so there number seven toyota this is still the leading car kamu kawayashi negotiate still in pereira that's the aston that's got the penalty on the next pit stop don't forget and kamehameha 9.9 seconds to the god on that last sector point comes through the chicane four pit stops to this car because of those two punctures that it suffered putting it slightly out of its sequence but number eight despite its dramas on the first lap looking very good and back at the races now the margin eight and a half seconds but with another pit stop owed by number eight there's 10 laps into the stint for sebastian boehme but for kobayashi he's only done seven laps since that last one which as you said was uh a short one again due to a puncture they seem to be quite sensitive to punctures for whatever reason i haven't seen many punctures for other cars but uh obviously two in the one car stop my starts to make you think right where are they going with the car to potentially pick up punchers you know from a team perspective they'll be obviously looking at that and knowing whether it's the same puncture and whether it is actually something from debris which there has been a bit of debris around we have to say or alternatively it's from the inner edge of the tire which usually means it's an inside curb strike well there is kobayashi for the moment on his own he stretched the margin a bit 10.4 seconds last time around so he's just made that gap slightly bigger and it's andre nagrao now in the alpine in third place but he's a minute and 53 off the lead so that car's kind of in a race of its own at the moment it's not necessarily being caught by lmp2 but it's not catching the toyotas is it no but the pace is good though yeah i don't know how they've lost that amount of time because if you look at the individual apps the actual pace is pretty good right now uh same as what the toyotas are doing so did have a big spin early on in the race nicola lapierre had a spin and lost a big chunk of time that way yeah because he tried to get out into the traffic and had to wait but you know was that a minute and 53 seconds worth of loss no but the pace of the hyper cars added to that stretches the gap yeah yeah you're right it's uh it was one of those things that i'm sure lapierre was very happy just to be going again after after that's been it could have easily been one of those uh simple spins and then getting collected uh by the oncoming traffic and here the toyota trying to work its way through the lmp2 cars which it does this is talking about the alpine on board so andre nagrau's view as he goes over the timing line up towards the first corner and this is the section that's been catching people out i wonder because we had the the the um a little bit of rain didn't we in the in this sector and if you get on the left uh where that painted chevron is on the left i've been off there when it's only a small amount of rain and you think everything's okay you're still on slicks and you just go to turn in on your normal line and away you go into the gravel so maybe it was around that period that we lost the porsche and obviously the um anthony in the lmp2 yeah that's a big kick for jose isn't it because that was certainly looking very very strong in the early part of the race and has now fallen way way down as a result so andre mcgrath still runs third and his last lap was actually quicker than the last of the toyotas so he's certainly pushing on doing his best 313 kilometers an hour on that graphic and storms down towards the chicane on the mall zone now i don't think it's going to be too long before the 708 clicking house is uh moving up to be in the top four position is uh i think that's now sort of 14 15 seconds he's closed down in the last few laps um and now he's only uh what is he sort of uh four seconds behind the the lmp2 in in second place so uh yeah that could be a few spots made up before the end of the stint so this is the order at the moment it's toyota one and two number seven ahead of eight third is the alpene and then fourth leading the lmp2 class for g drive is franco colopinto second in lmp2 yorban out for racing team netherland and in fifth place overall front maier has just got the glickenhaus between the two lmp2 cars with third in lmp2 tom blondquist in the number 28 jota entry af courser one and two in gte pro daniel serra ahead of alessandra pierre guidi third in gte pro currently al bamba and in am 33 tf sport aston of dylan pereira leads marcus gomez aston and then it is giorgio cernagioto for settler racing in third in the am so you've got an aston martin one two ferrari third there as we now work lap number 49 and in the pits michael wainwright's car is the one that's got the question mark over how much time is losing in terms of being 12 laps down already and still not having gone back out so that car clearly in strife and is it heading towards being the first retirement or can they get it back out as far as we're aware they can't get the splitter to go back onto the car so that's why it's taking this hellish a long time to get the gr racing entry back out into the race so it's 12 laps down already because normally a splitter you'd think maybe they're going to lose a lap something like that it's more of a five to six minute job to change something like that so the fact they're still in there after after six laps um if they can't get it to fit why is it not fitting what else has happened to distort things that it won't fit yeah the bigger hammer is required at this point isn't it so there is the am leader and that is dylan pereira and he is pulling away still from marcus gomez the gap is widened which is going to help on that next pit stop when the 10 second penalty is applied so uh we might not need to panic too much about that it looks like he's got an advantage of a couple of seconds of lap so yeah that's definitely going to give them a little bit of a breathing space when they come through for the next next round of pitch pit stops and take that 10 second penalty right number eight toyota you're on board with this is the view heading back onto the mulsanne straight be building all the time the gap 10.4 seconds and this car remember is due shortly its fourth pit stop to balance it against number seven but fast forward here because the cars are slightly out of sequence and how does that play out to the very end of the race well who knows what dramas might be for them in the meantime but right now kobayashi in seven had bouemi in eight and sebastian blame you stayed in that car right from the start of the race hasn't he so he's he's due a break shortly and to hand the car over to either kazuki nakajima or brendan hardy we'll see on that next pit stop roman dumas in 709 is catching up to the traffic and has just done a personal best lap in the clicking house uh the next target for roman dump is going to be the chinese driver yifiyi who used to live at the mall he's never raced here before but when he was winning the french formula four championship he lived at le mans so race leader kobayashi and on this lap personal best in the first sector and now with the sun coming out a dry road once more good conditions as eight is anticipated tyres are ready he's done 12 laps for sebastian boehme so they'll be ready to pop into the boots he's been doing 13 lap since admittedly the last few have had slow zones in there which maybe just dragged him across but we're looking at kobayashi as he comes through the last part of the circuit coming down into the chicane he's done eight laps kobayashi so he's got a few more to go before his stint so this will actually bring the gap back out again by about a minute and he's gonna stay out for one more lap here we understand from duncan vincent in the pit lane that the mike wainwright uh porsche has structural damage and therefore they can't get everything lined up and therefore it's not looking good so seven continues eight comes in it doesn't look good for number 86 porsche which is the car that ben parker started which is a big big shame but all eyes for the moment on the toyotas into the pit lane now comes sebastian bouemi and a driver chain surely is due now he's been in from the beginning so that's actually quite a long stint for sebastian boehemi three hours and 11 minutes yeah he's don't arrest hasn't he after that and of course that first few laps particularly frantic trying to keep the car on the road and avoid the traffic and then the fight back so yeah he's been busy he's earned his cash now is this going to reduce it should reduce the gap but second and third had between them andre in the ground now has an opportunity to close but again he's due a fourth pit stop soon so it'll pan back out again yeah negrow has done 12 laps as well and that normally is his sort of limitation on stint lens and so i'd expect the growl to come in at the end of this lap brendan hartley's got in new set of boots on the car and so he'll go back out just as i expect the growl to come in frank i always brought the glinkin house 708 into the pits [Music] looks like they're cleaning out the radiator the man in the front there in front of the refueller [Music] and he will accelerate out of the pit lane any second now then to make the run up towards the dunlop s's and so number eight toyota after its scare on the first lap chases after the sister car once again brendan hartley now at the wheel and that margin after the pit stop of course goes up to around 90 seconds i'm just thinking for you know the guys that are getting into the cars now um second drivers third drivers they're going to be getting in when it's dark you know the first time on the track will be straight into the into the darkness and that's always quite a difficult thing to sort of get yourself up to speed yeah but um did you find it more difficult to get in in that sort of half dark light i think it's better to get in in either light and go through the transition or get in in the dark at least you know you've got a constant sort of visual level at that point i think with the sunset especially here as it's towards the end of the lap and you go into the dunlop curves that's where the sun's coming down that was always the really difficult bit if you were thrown out on the track at that point and trying to it can be completely blind as you went through there if the screen was dirty as well um that was always the hardest part to jump in but i always thought i'd like to have a little bit of running in the daylight just to get myself dialed into this into the race so it's it's going to be difficult with the four o'clock start that lemon has it means and especially this time of year because there's obviously a bit more darkness uh it just makes it uh more likely that some of the drivers their first stint is going to be in into the dark hope they've eaten the carrots well robert dumas stays on the wheel of 709 away goes the alpe then from third place so pit lane busy but then it'll calm down a little bit as that next round of stop cycles through so we've got kobayashi and hartley and the grou first second third there's the alp back on track the battle in lmp2 is hotten up again it was out to five seconds between calapinto and vaneutta but it's back down with a bit of traffic at influence i think uh where it's just 1.2 seconds where vanitas shadowing the back of the g-drive racing iris of calapinto we look at the alpine popping itself through the estilla 48 and then into tetrarouge just saw a bit of smoke uh and i don't know if that's a barbecue on the edge of tech rouge or someone was locking up into intertek regionals all right let's just catch up on the travails of this 86 gr oh i'll come to that in a moment 98 has got bigger travails so hold that thought unconvinced into the pit lane 98 aston off and a long way off and into the tires that's marcus gomez second in class yeah that's indianapolis he's gone in heavily there safety card not surprised he's uh had a massive impact at indianapolis gone round the right hander and not made the left by the looks of things but huge huge impact you can see even the barrier itself has been to place back and there's what six seven rows of tires there safety car hope he's okay very similar place to where marco uh soros went off in the 95 a couple of years ago as well so um yeah so the medical team will attend the marshals will attend we go safety car the pace of the race slows right down that uh i did say duncan we'll catch up on 86. we'll let the marshals do their work for a moment tell us what's going on for this gr porsche of michael wayne right okay they've broken us uh a bracket off the subframe david and that is where the splitter mounts now the splitter takes a lot of forces darren and alan can see but they couldn't they couldn't mount it it kept on falling down so they tried two splitters that in the background the wheels going back on the car now it had a bumper it was a big impact i don't know if we saw but yeah thankfully the gr car will make its way back out although what looked like a promising start to the day with a great qualifying week hasn't gone well duncan thanks very much we just had the replay of number 98 going off the road and it's the car in the tiles at indianapolis in fact the replay was just maybe not early enough because we couldn't see if there was some contact with the lmp that was uh on the inside as they went into the corner so maybe that was the the start of the incident it was definitely offline and lost it quite early as he went through the the right part of it in some respects went in at a sort of 35 40 degree angle which is better than side on 90 degrees or nose on completely but the tire wall definitely dissipated a lot of energy and just hopefully enough now the safety cars there's three safety cars here one is at the start and finish line which picks up the queue there one is just after the first chicane picks up the queue between the start and finish line and the first chicane and the third one is at arnage on the exit and each safety car will rotate at basically the same speed so they will then be able to return to their original spot when the safety car session is stopped at exactly the same time to go green i have to say in the past that wasn't always the case but uh they've now got the timing the communication between the three safety cars that they basically hold and neutralize the race right so the aston martin team understandably wanting to know what's happened to marcos gomez the and why the car went off the road there's another of the safety car trains heading down the bulls down straight but our first safety car period then as the boards are there the flags are there and this now starts to throw certain team strategy up into the air because having just made pit stops others might be able to lock in here well you've got bohemia who has uh he's just made a pit stop he's in his outlap you've got kobayashi who's got three laps now under safety car used probably about 50 of the fuel that you would on a wide open flat out lap and so therefore if you've got three laps that potentially could be six laps under safety car with three laps as we see the driver out clearly winded but uh out of the car which is a very positive sign absolutely right so marcus gomez out of the car but uh being attended to by the medical team and uh we hope that he's a okay but for the car needs to be retrieved and then there's gonna be the delay while the barrier is repaired as well but the other thing is if you do pit under safety car then you are held at the end of the pit lane until the train from the next safety car that's behind you comes past right so effectively you lose a third of the lap now it's kinda the same it's not a free pit stop but it's the same as a as a green flag pit stop in reality and drivers trying to keep tire temperatures and pressures up little bit of weaving going on behind the safety car there as the aston martin team try to work out whether that was a failure that put the car off or a driver error but either way sadly that looks like it's going to be our first retirement of the race you're looking at the the pro class and the gte pro all the leaders are pretty close together so they're all in the same bunch they're all under the same safety car so at least that keeps that that class together in terms of racing i'm just trying to look through on the lmp2 if it's the same there it's pretty much the same in the lmp2 the one that's maybe a little bit out is the 21 dragon speed card it's done less and also the 82 reese's competition has done eight laps where everybody else is on 10 normally the lmp2 is doing 11 laps so i'd expect them to come in and in the next lap or two maximum and this could be quite a long safety car period if uh if that barrier needs yeah because it's not just the tire wall it's the barrier that's deformed behind it isn't it and nothing will be left to charles especially as you're heading towards the darkness in the next few hours as well it's interesting the incidents being investigated uh whether there was another car involved in some way we saw that there was an lmp2 car around and about but it's impossible to say whether they were party to it or not one other car that's getting on with the job which is good to see is dennis anderson's high class racing orica having had his dramas off the grid he stayed behind the wheel and he's had a couple of spins yes but the car is now up to 26th overall it's 21st in class admittedly but in terms of an overall position it has made reasonable progress out from the back and if it can keep out of trouble that looks a bit more promising yeah dennis anderson did the start the first nine laps then gave it to marcus sorensen who did a double stint and then back to anderson for a double stint as well so basically they switched in those greasy end conditions to sorensen who brought it through and but anderson's i think got the car underneath him again and got a bit of confidence back i have to be honest with you i wouldn't like to be driving in that first part of the race it's one of those times when i'll look at it and think i'm glad i retired getting the slow motion replays here brendan hartley in the toyota rattling over the kerbs and this is the view looking down as the car of marcos gomez is retrieved and then the barriers are repaired but as we've been saying this might take a little while given that the armco is deformed behind the tower barrel which again illustrates the speed and the force with which that car went off there's yeah there's no word from the team as to what caused that so they'll try to get to the bottom of it but really they probably need to get the driver back first and talk to marcos gomez and he'll have a trip to the medical center first and then go back to the team i think uh there it's going to be the tv footage that's probably going to give the best and the tv footage we've got one part but the circuit do have all of the circuit cameras as well that are not part of the television footage and they'll be looking at those as you see fans there a few rubbing their eyes already but uh g-drive got the engine covered off yeah and back on so whatever they thought they might have had to worry about fingers crossed the team doesn't but uh just taking the opportunity with a little bit more time just to check things over well as i said to you if you pit underneath the safety car you have to wait until the next safety car has passed and also the queue of cars so you might as well take the time go into the pits do various different bits of work because reese's competition are doing david at the moment yeah car in the garage so they're going to take a lot more time here you can get more people to work on the car if it's in the garage but it also suggests there's a bit more of a problem they're going to swap the front body work aren't they so is that a lighting issue maybe so you just put a new front section on and a rear wing drama as well for that car we understand yeah if you've maybe also you know had to trip across the curbs and uh the front nose is slightly damaged then for arrow-wise you might want to switch it ryan cullen's been in the car uh in the 82 for the last couple of stints uh ollie jarvis started that card at a triple stint and then passed it to ryan who's done two and uh so yeah a little bit of work but it is the opportune time to try to do it when you can and part of that extra work is free it's never a free stop but part of the extra work is free there's a loss isn't there that's gonna happen because you're gonna get dropped behind the following pace car um so you've probably got probably four minutes i would have thought in terms of being able to spin the car into the garage do any repairs and still only lose what you were gonna lose anyway yeah and we used to have a cut-off point where we knew where the safety car was and that was at the point where we were running down the pit lane to make sure that we didn't get caught behind the next one if you like and because there is only a period of time when the lights are green at the end of the pit lane alvaro paran getting ready to get on board the porsche that he's part of the driving force of this weekend g-drive studying data and waiting for the next pit stop from that car and currently we're on lap 52 but we're behind the safety car here at le mans and the reason for that is marcos gomez sizable accident and although we've seen him out of the car understandably he is somewhat winded somewhat shaken gt champion within the asian level series former formula renault racer been very competitive in brazilian stock cars and he was at the wheel of that car which was running second in class as you see now 92 porsche which is fifth currently michael christensen at the wheel of it fifth in class having started of course at sixth not getting a time in in super pole that's the car but one it's class at spa and monza but it's got a lot of work to do right now yeah porsche had a bit of trouble with that car isn't it it's it's been through the wars a little bit yeah it's recovered well but uh at the moment ferrari well they weren't the fastest in qualifying but uh the big points come at the end of this race and they're one two and consistently looked like they should be one two as well once it dried out and those big points just to make the uh the point once more double points for this round this fourth round of the fia world endurance championship so uh important to score well so we see the dc competition a car still in the pits as the aston's getting dragged out but the train of cars are just coming past us now and uh so the safety car and the window will be open for them to release so the reese needs to get back out there but all eyes are exactly on the 98 to make sure that hey first of all the first thing is the driver's okay the car can be repaired first thing is the driver but there's extensive damage to the front of that however it has done its job darren at the end of the day massively i mean you can see the safety lights are on flashing in the cockpit there um but yeah it's mainly a front-end accident you're right it went in on a slight angle which would have helped with dispersing some of the energy throughout the car but the uh the driver safety cell has done a done a great job we'll see it yeah maybe a little bit offline with a p2 car and uh it's a bit damper and things but he's he's still spinning and gone in pretty heavily the gravel's not slowed them down too much you mentioned earlier on about the different parts of the track which dry quicker than others and although the racing line would have been dried the little bit of road on the left there probably would have been still damp under the trees so the marker of doom is being employed at the moment sad to say to get rid of 98 so we had one non-starter but our first retirement is going to be number 98 and uh that takes paul dalalana nikki team and marcus gomez out of the race and a lot of damage as we've seen down to the front of the aston martin so we're still behind the safety cars here at le mans race leader is on lap number 52 and brendan hartley is one of the drivers that loses out under this because the margin now is two and a half minutes against kamui kobayashi so for toyota number eight safety cars come at exactly the wrong time there is the aston martin being returned to tarmac or then towards the flatbed and this is the last part of the clear up operation sort out the tar barrier and also the armco behind might need some work doing to it as well as more drivers get ready for a pit stop yeah those tires are belted together they're basically screwed together and then after that they've got a layer of belting in front as well to contain them so they're contained in stacks and then contained it's a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle but clearly when a car harpoons them then they do come apart but they do their job indeed so and we've seen the driver out of the car which is good there is 88 porsche which makes its way down in 56th place with uh don bastian at the wheel of it the oldest driver in the race at 75 years and eight months but the regular american racer who's done the aston martin support race at lumon in the past he's done the porsche race this weekend uh your van outer fan club in typical dutch noisy fashion if you've got a very very long memory you'll remember your van outer's uh uncle used to race in formula ford in the uk in the early 1980s one of the marlborough sponsor drivers really yeah i didn't know i never put the two of those just together gerald van outer yeah yeah yeah sorry what year was that nineteen eighty four three eighty four yeah when you're about wasn't it didn't i i actually yes i was i started in 87. yeah he was a marble challenge driver but i was 10 years old at the time and you still are there's a whole generation of people saying no never heard of him no i don't know what these two envelopes are talking about but anyway as i say if you have a long memory or very old but martin haven sitting in the background yeah yeah i remember i remember that you know very well in the 70s he's just nodding in general because that's what he does jumbo car in the pit lane 29 cleaning the screen cleaning the numbers on the side second in class isn't it a good job has been done by that no pun intended but drop that out at your van out a good job done to be second in class and battling with franco colopinto so g drive versus racing team netherlands at the moment helped in part to get there for the class battle for the lead by the dramas for anthony davidson so just prior to that pit stop both of those two cars were behind one safety car and the rest of the lmp2s were behind the the one that was behind so now when they go out they should all be in the same sort of the top six seven eight nine cars in that class should all be in the same uh same train behind the uh the similar safety car starting to feel left out but i don't have a flag to wave here but everybody else seems to do the in the stands and there's the queue of carls forming waiting as alan's been explaining for that next safety car wave to come past and then they'll join the rear of that train of cars issue you have here and this is where maybe you played the wrong game the tires are now just cooling down at the end and so it might be worthwhile to have considered just waiting there for a little while outside bring the tires at the last moment when you see the safety car train and then go down with hot tires to be released there's the race control team looking on with all the data and those screens the closed circuit tv that alan was talking about a little while ago so those not tv broadcasts that's the marshall's points cameras and that gives them another look at incidents around the circuit to know not only what they need to do to sort out an incident but when they can go back to green flag conditions so we've got uh the marshals hard at work we've got one of the medical vehicles returning to the uh pit lane and we've got others diving for the pit lane including i think 88 that we were looking at a little while ago the porsche of donbastian heading down the pit road as that is the shot looking down onto the pit lane if you see the pits to the right you'll see that the porsche i've just mentioned is in and the majority of the field pouring through don bastian in the car that was started by julian and lance david arnold is the third driver in that dempsey proton racing porsche that started 39th on the grid so the field's still under safety car conditions the team's getting ready for a long night ahead and it's still toyota one two with that two and a half minute gap right now between number seven from number eight and their conversations going on in the jota garage right tar stack has been rebuilt the barrier even though it is slightly kinked has not been attended to uh so the incident zone is clear and we've got the pit entry of number 28 jota car being looked at so that's the one that sean galil and tom blonquist share with stoffel vandoorne but it's pit entry uh quarter past seven is being looked at yeah i'm not sure 15 minutes ago that particular timing was what it is normally if it's speed lane infraction coming in too fast then that's kind of a slam dunk penalty uh which in practice is a find when the race is a drive-through and so not exactly sure where what this particular one is as we see some slo-mo and look at the mirror of the ferrari just vibrating not that i think they use them very much but i'm not saying that derogatory to ferrari drivers i know i never used the mirrors we had a camera in the car and as soon as the rearward-facing camera came then the mirrors became superfluous for me they were just you know nice that the heritage of a car well they were mandatory by the regulations more than anything else they weren't actually useful by any other sort of format ground gordon uh just a quick question um just going back after a little wait uh while away how long was safety car out that wasn't a late call it didn't cross the wrong line did he intercept into pit lane could have done um but i think 15 minutes ago we had 15 minutes of safety car i think you may have had a little longer okay but it must be a little longer it's certainly a thought yes as to why that would have happened yeah safety car was uh three hours and 14 minutes into the race it's about right isn't it i wonder if they've called him late and he's not taking the correct entry possible yeah it's a good thought it's a good thought so also the other thing is kobe ashi's due as well he's done 12 laps now we mentioned the fact that uh you use less fuel underneath the safety card um but it is coming up to them i'm not sure what their tactic would be with that they've got a two-minute 34 second gap uh to brendan hartley in the sister car at the moment and is it better to try to do that under full green i think it actually is if you could start with a two minute 38 second gap you would actually gain more because prior to it and here we see the aston and it's just out and that green there is not painted tarmac it's astroturf that just unsettled in and it's wet because that would be still residually wet from the rain earlier on and the astroturf is well it's blooming awful in these conditions and so just dipping your left rear wheel onto it and that's where he's lost his adhesion and gone off not nice to watch but the good news is we've been saying is that he's out of the car a little bit shaken a little bit winded but the uh strength of the car has stood up to that that's the d station aston that's in hopefully prognosis is good on it uh hearing from duncan trying to change due on the triple seven car so satoshi hoshino brought it in new tires on and the car about to run back down the pit lane tf sport operated car the porsche is getting on in their battle well porsche gt team being outpaced at the moment by weathertech but uh it'll be interesting to see how cooper mcneil gets on when he replaces uh el bamba in that car for his stint and clearly we saw limbering up ready to get aboard and uh as the d station cart gets to the end of pit lane it will be held of course tf sport with master martin at the top of the field very sadly we're gonna have the 98 car at the bottom of the field d-station and we didn't see the driver change underway but i wonder if that might be tomorrow fuji who's been something with revelation this year silver ranked driver and has been extremely quick and uh still held at the end of pit line triple seven now in gte am even though number 33 had an extra 10 seconds to serve as a penalty in that pit stop uh it managed to play the safety cars absolutely right and now dylan pereira at the wheel of 33 has got two and a half minutes in hand over giorgio cena giotto so actually that last round of pit stops worked out really well for the aston martin yeah did we we have to remember when we're talking about the gaps these are gaps at safety car speed yes once you get up to racing speed then clearly they will reduce by natural but it's the general gaining and lossing that we're looking at at the moment safety cars doing about seven and a half minutes per lap in racing we're talking three and a half minutes per lap so we can't expect the gaps to come down wrt have put epa into 41. yeah if he has done 10 laps actually after robert kubica started and ran all the way through kubica did four stints in there at the beginning been busy yeah so lmp2 if he a from tom blonkis from wayne boyd safety car in this lap then so we are going to go racing at the end of this lap and then we'll start to see what the gaps really are yeah safety car a which is the first safety car that will come into the pit lane is now coming down towards porsche b is at tetra rouge sorry b is coming into mulsanne and this is a c which will come in just after the first chicane and so it's critically important as a driver you know actually which one you're behind so you start to prepare for the toyota repair the tires the brakes and also the hybrid system ready to go and that you know when that car is going to pull off so i'd expect this particular one to pull in at the end of this straight and after the chicane and then it's all systems go so we'll be set to go racing then this time as this safety car period comes to an end everybody on their toes now weaving around getting the temperatures back up getting the pressures back up and we will go racing then with toyota's one and two and 53 laps in the book that's the leading car then number seven which is in the wave as you see coming down the mall zone straight but the first safety car train is coming through the porsche curve so it won't be long before it gets to the end of the lap here and very shortly we will be back in business in fact just before we do do that let's quickly go to duncan vincent in the pit lane uh news on recent competitions problems duncan yes they had contacted the front so they changed the front nose but what happened is the locking points for the rear wing had failed now they don't know how they heard rear wing failure david that's the worrying thing for the team but they've had to take the biggest hammer they've had to remove the cam locks they will be back out soon but a great shame it should have been a routine stop and they couldn't get the wing off the back of the car duncan thanks very much now we're going to go racing but there are more pouring into the pit lane so some of the squads might have mistimed that but we do have the green flag on the start line the race back underway then green flags all around the circuit you see there the safety car peeling off the road coming out of our house and straight away the quick drivers that are alert to the situation spread off on their toes trying to gain ground because with everybody bunched up like this this is an opportunity to try to make places and look at this ferrari fight going on here because the two of them are nose to tail swinging their way towards the porsche curves with the gte pro leading ferrari 52 which has got daniel sarah at the wheel trying to work its way through as well because not that far behind is pierre guidi but actually pierguidy has been held up a little bit and that gap of stretch there is pierre greedy and he's falling back a little bit thanks to the back markers yeah but he's got through the back markers you see a big train behind here and there's a bit of scrabble position you've got to be very very careful with that because it's quite easy to get tripped up as you're sort of coming through especially in the pinch point in towards karting graham and they've got to be on it because just behind them are the third and fourth and fifth place cars in the class the weathertech racing car on the hands will bamba is right behind and making his way through that same batch of traffic so two is jordan taylor in the 63 corvette and so too is michael christensen in the 92 porsche there's the weathertech car that's one two three and you get a longer shot you'll get the corvette there too but also not only is pierre greenlee trying to catch he's also being passed by lmp2 traffic and look because sarah has got another wave of cars he's got to get through so admittedly pio greedy will have to do the same thing but daniel sarah for the moment having gapped into the tune of 3.8 seconds he's now losing time as he has to thread his way through cars of a comparable pace yeah big winner here has been joe to sport though and not the anthony davidson car who's switched to roberto gonzalez but actually the sister car tom blondquist by the fact that everybody else is pitted is now leapfrogged up into first place followed by united auto sports of wayne boyd and so just with the way that it's factored in the fact they pitted just before the safety car has really put them in a good position at the moment certain position where united auto sports were just struggling uh seeming every turn well a bit of luck and a bit of strategy brings them straight back into contention jota united panis g drive racing team midland team wrt it's the big boys at the front yeah it is it certainly is um callapinto who was leading and then vanoy turt who was in second place they're now fourth and fifth they're in this particular train though it's not as if they're too far behind but uh they're in the actual game it's just they're not leading the game right now and as usual the safety car procedures will be checked though graham just to make sure everybody a slowed down correctly and b also kept to the appropriate speeds as dragon speed another lmp2 has just popped into the pits as we're now on board diving down the inside in towards uh the indianapolis 2. that's not great for dragon speed pitting as they go green oh dragon speed have been a little bit out of it henrik hedman's at the wheel at the moment they're 13th in in p2 and they're effectively a lap down over the leaders tom blondquist in the jota sport car [Music] the good news is that they though are eating into the time that henrik hedman needs to spend in the car and actually having a gentleman driver in while the safety car is out is is very important you know part of managing your time strategy is very efficient uh the gentleman drivers got to do six hours out of the 24 it's it's a lot of running and in terms of stints each stint is about 45 minutes and so you know they're doing a lot of times in the car eight stints basically yeah and that's something that uh strategically you try to manage but there's also gentlemen drivers that are out there that are blooming quick and there's ones that definitely don't want to get out of the car yeah absolutely right i mean you know they've spent a lot of time effort and not an inconsiderable amount of money getting here to not sit watching the race they want to be part of the race obviously they want their car and their team to do as well as possible but they want to be part of it and the united auto sports joe to battle out front not too far ahead of this car racing team netherlands in fifth place java nighter and uh his gentleman driver the man who runs jumbo supermarket spritzman aired yet to get into that car but he will probably at the end of this stint for yop and uh then we will see you know as we get into the evening he's still got a good couple of hours of daylight probably so he'll double stint maybe even triple um and you know get his first real trudge of race track under his belt job still just only on his second stint he's only done 14 laps total 12 in the first and then two in this one and as we see the dragon speed car back out henrik headman still at the wheel the only problem if yop stays in for a triple is that you're starting to put fritz in as it's starting to get dark so you want him actually to have a you know at least a single stint 45 minutes before you start to really get into dusk so my again with my team manager hat on i'd be getting yop out at the end of this because that's when the tires are due for changing anyway so put fritz in as early as you can yellow flags in the porsche curves right now just looking as well at the progress it's the 44 and that's a nasty place to be facing the wrong way yep that's going to need some some help to get that turned back around now there's one of the two canopus miro and mate it oh is from the real team racing car and a couple there straight lining the chicane and you know hard to argue with that because straight line and yes it's because the car was a car pretty much curbed curb broadside across them davao is on a charge at the moment trying to close the gap to yifaye in the team wrt 41 car so leader in the pits kamui kobayashi how many laps in this stint comey should be coming up towards a pit stop he's done 15 laps now 13 has been the most by any car but remember we did have the safety car and so he saved definitely some fuel there but i would expect kobayashi to be popping into the pits he's in the pits now he is that is the first full second full stip that that car has done in the race do they do a full 12 rapper in the second stint yeah so they've had two short ones forced in at the end of their at the end of their second stint they changed a punctured tie but didn't have to come in for it that's miraculous coming in he's had damage as well hasn't he i think it's mainly going to be flat spotted ties as well the second stint the the first short stint was also because of a puncture they had to change the second punch of tyre the nine lap stint they brought him in because of the slow zone at the end of the pit lane they would lose less time stopping then then they would do stopping under full green so that's the reason for that nine lap stint as far as we're aware i haven't had that confirmed by trg at ttr rather you mentioned konopka coming into the pit lane but i haven't actually seen him coming into the pit lane he was crawling along it looked to be did we miss identify pet lane there well we stopped in the pit entry road he is stopped out of our sight in the pit entry road okay so he's not actually in the pits yet so alan's looking out at both of our windows and still can't see him and that all we can see is the pit yellows down to road that site absolutely right i can see by where the spectators are punching themselves is just literally just out of our sights yeah a bit of a dream rather so yeah he's on the right side so drivers bring all to bear left if they need to pit and of course if you need to pit you need to pick there's there's no two ways about it so coming up on four hours of this race it's flown by certain the first hour as instant packed as a day i can remember that the 24 hours of le mans had quite a lot going for it didn't it really did yes we'll beat slow zone by the way to protect uh will they recover the 44 cart to safety [Music] yeah that's that's going to have to happen because it's not going to make it in on its own is it so um yeah slow zone in zone 9 which is the final slow zone of the racetrack so it's not necessarily marshall's post to marshall's post they don't vary there are set zones which will go slow zone at the same time here we are manchester porsche comes into that in that car in fifth position in class there's mirror canopy push me that way because he can't be assisted by the pit crew for some little time yet yeah it's quite a long push see it again contact happened before the corner didn't it [Music] the question is was he losing that as the car went by or was there contact from the real team racing and again you know the students will look at that they'll look at the data from the cars they will look at the the track cameras [Music] into the pits has come uh have come earl bamber for weathertech and jordan taylor and michael christensen so again because of the slow zone it's an opportunity and it could be an opportunity bamba's out of the car so there's a driver change at weathertech it could be an opportunity just for a splash of fuel it could be an opportunity for fuel and tires could be an opportunity to fuel tires and drive driver change a very angry mirror kanopka he wants the the uh the marshals to push this car much further towards the help from his crew that's being pushed back to a place of safety just out of our sight i can see mirror waving his arms he's extremely unhappy promise is another two or three hundred people it is absolutely push and the marshals need to be at the martial they do indeed and they are correct they're not there to push cars around the track um so driver change at weathertech earl bamber out didn't recognize the helmet the corvette does pop back out in front the 63 car that's the order in which they oh no jordan taylor came in behind the weathertech porsche so there is a change jw ferrari pops into the pits and uh so that's ninth in gte am at the moment michael christensen i should have recognized the helmet got into 92 63 jordan taylor stays aboard cooper mcneil in the weathertech car that's i should have should have guessed because he's about foot and a half taller than little bamboo should have really figured that one out so coupe takes his first exploratory couple of corners of the race and of course are still with their foot on the gas in this one first and second alessandra pierre guidi ahead of daniel serra 7.8 seconds to gap first to second third place car back a minute that's the corvette of jordan taylor now they have stopped but the ferraris didn't use that opportunity to dive into the pits tf sport car gained basically a safety car where the safety car came out and it's allowed to pull them up ahead they've got a pretty mighty gap at this moment in time not to say that that won't change i wouldn't say it necessarily will swing back around but uh you know uh pereira there is uh he's in pretty good shape as the car's in the pits and he is strapping in ben keating so the texan getting ready for her his first stint and again in the gt yam class among the gentleman drivers ben keating is right up there at the very top of the speed tables habitually it's his seventh lemon 24 hours it's the seventh different car he's driven and uh he i'm sure will have been aching to get into the car maybe not in the first hour may you know if it rains when you're in the car you deal with what you deal with but okay pretty happy to let the car get started and go with it and as you said allen they are comfortably ahead of chetala's giorgio cena giotto and kessel racings and scott andrews that's the yellow car guy ferrari which is in third place so safely completed that pit stop and pink heating exploring the circuit for the first time in race trim [Music] mr martin's with very different fortunes indeed in the last half hour or so with the elimination from proceedings of the 98 car that's uh nasty accident for marcus gomez but uh that all felt really pretty well d didn't it for the number 33 car certainly did they had a pit stop infringement as well a 10 second to add to their last stop for an infringement because the engine was running during refueling at the last stop it hadn't obviously switched off by the time the refueling man had located the hose onto the car so they've served that so slow zone speeds will be examined as always they are but uh seems to be no major issues that we are aware of giorgio senor giotto in the blue and green chetela colors right behind scott andrews in the car guy yellow the car run by kessel racing they had the entry car guy taking it up and in the center is the iron dame's car another of the gtm ferraris and who's in that sarah bovee just on her out lap so the new bronze driver for the team and that's very that's squeezing hard there the chat to our car and the castle racing car and there's contact yeah santiago does not want to give this away and he hasn't given it away all italian lineup in that italian car they're very proud to be racing that ferrari the hub also porsche behind his full position by the way so that is climbing back up with dre's ventura at the wheel so looking to get by scott andrews and giorgio senegioto it is a pro car of course the hub auto car in fact it was our pro pole sitter and it's still on page two of our timing screens yeah a couple of woes for that car in the early running including being hit by the edex sport car up under the dunlop bridge [Music] so looking at our battle for fourth place coming into the pit lane good news for slovakia motorsports yep there's uh arc bratislava's 44 car manages to get going again ramiro is heading towards the welcoming arms of the crew on pit lane that's good news it is good news you know for that team first time in world endurance championship first time here at le mans they will be second time here at the mall they will be looking you know really looking to to try and make sure the car gets to the finish you know when when you lose time like that you know that the chances of everybody else losing the same amount or more time are are slim but they will be desperate to try and uh keep the show on the road the center of your shot there fritz vanier yeah to the right was uh mark kurzer who in past years looked after the efforts of one of the lamas and the racing team yep racing team holland in there remember with the uh with the domes holland and then was it not also racing team netherlands in a later iteration anyway hub also into the pit lane so dries van tour has completed another stint in the car as it claws its way slowly up the order but how many laps has that car completed now it has completed 53. our leader has it's the same lap it's still on the lead lap in gte pro here's the battle for third jordan taylor ahead of michael christensen [Music] so in the uh catering unit i'm sure darren turner and olly gavin are pushing and shoving each other to see who's who's going to come out on top either the corvette or the not corvette there's no aston martin in the pro battle this year saw that earlier and uh for lunch the two of them it was not pretty yeah darren did end up getting the meatball after that so that's all very good so a of course is ferraris one two now four seconds apart they are jordan taylor in third place a minute back car 88's under investigation overtaking on the yellow marshals post 32 it's mike wainwright the cart has already had a new splitter uh in the beginning of his stint came in no it's not my way right that's the this is that's the second deputy president sorry 86 yes the oldest driver in the race and that car the way down the order that will have been as the yellows came out for protecting miraculous it is it's exactly at the point of carting so yeah we saw a couple of cars diving off to the left and one seemed to want to get back on the circuit quicker than the other still pretty frenetic stuff getting deep into this race now yeah almost the european monster is racing yep driver change at hub auto alvaro parent has taken over the hub auto car a fuel pressure issue we issue we are told by uh duncan vincent in the pit lane for arc bratislava so presumably he has had some way to change it onto a secondary pump yeah he was on 13 laps so he had been on his in-lap when he went so he was probably at the point just making it anyway and that's why i saw that it wouldn't have picked up once it had spun yeah and once it's funny he would use more energy fuel energy to actually get the car moving and rotated than he would be if he had rolled through the corner and came to the pit okey dokey richard mill racing team leaves the pits fights kavissa on board the number one car they are midway up the lmp2 group 13th place in lmp2 and we have 24 all 24 lmp2 cars running reese's competition with ryan cullen back at the wheel back out on track but losing more time in the pits with that rear wing issue look at the top speed comparison between our two top classes and then in gte hey of course the pro leader and the am leader ross gunn 306 95 right that's the top speed he's not the uh leader in that tf sport aston martin in fact long way off now john hart's horn is in that car it's in 12th place in class it's the 95 car that had problems earlier in the week there was a brief period though where we had an aston martin one two three in gtam which uh greatly uh pleased darren turner very slightly miffed olly gavin [Music] here comes the g drive car it's called pinto with alan yep and allen just moved over there to overtake and call upinto sort of got squeezed here this is a chance for finauter because calapinto has not got a good run out to the corner don't forget bikes kavisa and that white car has only been out there no it's the g yeah there is convicted she's only been out this is her first flying lap so they go by franco colopinto keeps his nose in front of y'all nighter that loses a little bit of ground here's the view from vanita dives down the inside of bayskivissa i thought he had a better run out of the corner than it turned out he did he didn't seem to get the momentum that he needed to be able to deliver an attack there on calapinto and ahead as they go past the gt porsche again franco colopinto dropping in behind the porsche james allen already jumped by kolopinto trying to pick up whatever little bit of drs effect he can on the street on the slips nearly took out james allen oh boy got in maybe a kilometer or two an hour quicker because of that slipstream and uh hoist on the handbrake metaphorically if not literally [Music] forced four steps to one side as he tried to take the line through the turn it's a little rattled maybe by that moment youngest driver in the race this year also somebody reminding us a little bit earlier that in virtualemon last year he was the fastest of the pro drivers color pinto yeah was he hmm that generation so parents ahem your kids should be playing video games let's take a look at this again this is coming from a long way back and it was he's just in too quick yeah he actually recovered it very very well it was a good recovery but it needed to be a good recovery because otherwise it was going into the into the kitty litter on the outside how long has he been on those tyres yeah i don't think too long no so he's gonna have to survive on them for a lot longer and they will be properly nasty and he's been in the car for 18 laps he had a stint to 12 and then he's six laps into this particular at least another six laps on those times as you think yeah yeah but at least because normally they should be doing three and possibly i would think four stints on these tires not sure those are going to be tripled or quaded are they they're probably absolutely flat they'll look like fred flintstone carved them out of rock what are we seeing here replay coming on to the mulsanne out of tertia rouge is somebody going to appear in shot backwards no okay that's i think that's possibly not the replay that they were hoping to show us it's the herberth car we don't see much of the hermeth racing car another of our i think it's nine wnt debuting teams at the long 24 hours this year yeah and again you know for them it's not a big step up in terms of duration they've done lots of 24-hour races but in terms of the competition then it is different from the 24 h series currently at the wheel ralph and eichen who has been driving with uh herbert for three four years five maybe six years i think in uh in their endurance racing program absolutely and uh they came here uh as champions in a vast gt contingent of the age of one series in that compressed winter series that'll be repeated again in february next year in uae with the continuing issues for travel and logistics to the far east four hours into the 24 hours of le mans toyota lead alpene in hypercar jota united auto sports and panic racing are the top three teams currently at uh one fifth distance right one six distance in air gte pro af quarter one ferrari in front of the corvette and the porsche as the second one has just entered the pits so the 51 car leads 52 sam bird has brought it into the pit lane and in gte am back down onto page two of the timing screen a of course a lead from tf sport and kessel racing and chetillar continue their battle we lost one potential starter from idec sport before the race got underway and we have seen the 98 aston martin of marcos gomez crash heavily at indianapolis the 98 car is now out of the race gomez fortunately although he was really winded when he eventually got out of the car properly rang his bell but hopefully no other injuries whatsoever carl though of paul dalalana and the northwest amr team is out dalalana definitely deserves a change of fortune here at le mans this is another bad luck bears year for him henrik hedman aboard the dragon speed number 10 car and henrik hedman again you know late in the afternoon it's it's sensible time to get your guys in in the uh number 21 entry rather henry headman lots and lots of uh gentlemen drivers john falcon at g drive dennis anderson is in vancouver capitalism roberto gonzalez is in paul lafargue but it's kafissa i mean there's an awful lot of the gentleman drivers in these teams now in the cars a good time to do it just as the sun is coming down 8 o'clock here local time driver change for the gt pro leading car a few drops of rain possible in the next 10 minutes we're being told well right now looking down from telly helly it's uh a beautiful sunny late afternoon early evening but as the shadows lengthen they may disappear altogether if the clouds come over and we get a little bit more rain new fastest lap off the race just posted by the second place car brendan hart with a 327.607 60 scores and brings the gap down for the two leaders to 7.1 seconds sam bird ahead of cooper mcneil we ride on board with mcneil this is currently the battle sam on his out lap for fourth place in gte pro ahead is com ledegaard in the 51 a of course a car he's now taken over completed racing team running half a dozen porsches here this weekend in the support races and our leader now back to the top of the tree jordan taylor in the corvette 63 car leads from 92 the porsche that had that big crash in qualifying an absolutely brand new car was built up around a new shell and that car now up to second unbelievable five cars taking the scenic route through the chicane and no driver change there i don't think i think rengar van der zander stayed in i just stayed in oh that's right i know that is fritz fernandez you're right yeah and over here he's wide open um so far saturday i've been doing pretty well second guessing team strategies to be honest with you i was just thinking about hiring you for as a strategist yeah that that's the sort of decision that loses you jobs as a team manager you do realize that i was being sarcastic yeah just writing down here mcnish not as clever as i thought yes everyone's allowed one double that would definitely be it 29 car off onto the bullseye fritz vanet the owner of the largest supermarket chain in the netherlands and a staunch personal and corporate supporter of not just motorsport but other sports including uh pro cycling of course it's been a great effort he's brought that was on the bump there he just uh blondquist when he hit the little bump coming into the braking area he had too much pressure on and skipped the front of the car and ran a little bit wide no no foul in that respect no problems but uh except maybe a second loss or three-quarters of a second loss but you don't want to be doing that too often you've got to be a little careful into our nurse it's a corner that sort of drags you into making a mistake quite easily a little bit like mulsanne a little bit like the dunlop curve joseph already had one car off in the gravel out of the lead of the race they do not want a second off in the gravel out of the lead of the race back in the day his father would have said that would have been a 90 right note cut and that almost went terribly wrong didn't it did you see that did you see the replay of the antonio phillips de costa thing because it swapped ends really fast and davidson rather yeah because i mean i know that's really quickly done a lot curve but boy that thing swapped ends on him in a big way yeah it caught it a little bit late for us to see the reality it was just coming up into here and it was very early in the corner that was it was that area there in the corner that was the part that i'm not sure if he just got dragged a little bit offline and onto the sort of painted surface it was a bit slipperier but uh certainly it threw him extremely quickly off into the far side of the gravel trap he was a long way off line now through the esses down through the s de la ferrari as we go to uh united auto sport 23 which is second wayne boyd who's 12.9 seconds behind blondquist blonquist has sort of eeked out a little bit since the last pit stop over boyd and i think it looks at the moment like jota they had the performance certainly with the cost at the beginning of the race and it looks like they've also got just a little bit in the pocket in general over the united at the moment i mean we've got some rain in the porsche curves spotting with rain here just having walked back to the booth not much but just the old little spot in the air as the traffic gets in the way a little bit of the lmp2 battle that's going on right here but the drama has continued over that last half an hour graham hasn't it it absolutely has it keeps coming doesn't it it's not quite at the frenetic pace of the first 50 55 minutes in terms of incidents but the races but wipers yeah on now on the 34 car is this going to be the next spanner in the works well i was never a big fan of putting wipers on unless i really needed to because it there was dirt and smear on the on the windscreen they've got tear offs but those terrors stick to each other so the outer edge of it's slightly sticky and you can get a situation where you smear completely the windscreen so think of it this way if you've got a windscreen full of flies and you don't put enough fluid onto it and you just scrape them across that's what the vision can be like so it was always a case of trying to wait to right to the end before you did it let's just go on board with kami kobayashi and here his conversation with the team so the message being relayed that we were just talking about effectively a few drops of rain starting to fall but it's certainly nothing significant for the moment oh it's funny that because it was just a few drops of rain i would always prefer to have a grading of rain level one level two level three a few drops what does that mean it's kinda a little bit like well drive faster drive slower you know save more fuel try to give me something i can work with it's a consistent point all the way through so rain reported and that's being related to the teams on the timing screen as well they then in turn can talk to the drivers the margin between the two toyotas then 11 seconds right now but in lmp2 battles graham all the way down the class absolutely it's been we said to all weekend and we that we thought we'd get three titanic class battles and an interesting introduction for hypercar certainly lmb2 has doled it out those battles all the way down the field gt pro is its usual bar fight um as it's been more or less every single year that those cars have been here gt am well you know the safety guards helped it back into a nose-to-tail battle but that one's uh looking to be shaping up very nicely indeed to be something we can revel in through the nighttime hours and hypercar well it's sort of back to order restored isn't it remarkably it didn't look like that from term one it looked like massive dramas but uh we wait and see whether or not dramas wait when we get a little deeper into this race david spots of rain there on the camera lens on the balls down straight so this is the fight that's still raging on between rengar van der zander and charlotte malaysia but of course the racing team netherland car has dropped down the order in that lmp2 battle in the last half an hour sean malaysia the start last time out in the fy world endurance championship 20 year old i believe he is and number 44 one of the kanokas has got to go to the race director after his stint that will be mirror and my guess will be that will be his behavior to marshals when they push the car to a place of safety right um so the car more or less out of fuel um when uh when they it was contact with the real team racing car in the porsche curves recovered it he was clearly on fumes at that point and we could see through the window rather than on uh on the pictures that mirror was gesticulating angrily because we're going door to door here between the 34 into your pocket oh that's that's very edgy indeed that's malaysia around the outside and that was brave and that has worked and he's been chipping away at that for lap after lap after lap and that was his if you like final role of the dice he committed to it and that was good stuff i've never actually seen renga vanderzander back out of anything usually that's the sort of saying come back in there but uh he obviously realized it was a long race lifted and let malaysia around the outside and on his way but we did say didn't we about calling cards that's uh charming lazy kind of pasting his to the side of the well nearly to the side yes orenga knows he's here now he's if you haven't heard of charmander before he certainly has right now this is the uh pit stop number five for the alpine andre nagrau has brought it in so fuel tile's clean of the lights but he will stay on board yeah negrow is been in that car for a little while but he's still got another stint to do at least he's been in for two stints of 13 laps he's on his way for the third one and a replay here of way wide that's the 49ers yeah that's that sound is fueled back and he hops over the curb gets it back onto the circuit but loses time and gives himself a scare in the process he also goes over that crosses over the circuit when he comes back on again it's not exactly a safe return to [Music] now track 10th and 11th in lmp2 gabriellebree being chased by esteban garcia there is the real-time racing car and he's trying to make up that three-second deficit right now into the pits camp 709 it's going slowly what do i do about the wheel driver change time that was a very gentle entry there by roman duma yeah and they've not recovered that ground have they they've been slowly slowly going back up the field from the ground lost earlier in the race it's uh pretty clear that one of two or both things are going on here a very conservative pace or they haven't got the pace i think you know the pace changes throughout this race and at different points i think they'll come into their own and come out of it uh chances are that with new tires then it'll definitely help them so we need to start charting the first stint relative to the second and the third stint in terms of performance so far it's a bit tricky to check that because of the slow zones and also the safety cars that elongated some of them but i think that particular thing is it's also a learning process for them they haven't had the testing mileage the car was a little bit late in initial conception and the testing mileage and also relative to the competition which clearly know the game being toyota now we do know that having to manage the brakes after the lessons they learned at monza rear deck on that car is absolutely filthy gloriously filthy but filthy yeah very very dirty as uh right as now pop out the pits and down the hill usually that's oil or brake dust or a combination of both yeah but the brake dust generally is from the front of the car so it's the front brakes that usually take a bit of a hit more than necessary looking a lot better than we saw in italy in the last uh wc round where they were in trouble yeah here's lighter on brakes but and also they've made some modifications from that race to to make sure that they were covered here i think they understood the preparation of the whole ducting system needed to be absolutely spot on but at the same time you know you wouldn't have any real issues with brakes at this point of the race it would be much later on almost uh coming together there between the kessil car looking to get away from the shetland racing car in the battle for second place in gtam and almost side-to-side contact with the duquesne car but that was forged at the last moment with scott andrews just ducking out of that and also lmp2 are shuffled a bit on this round of pit stops wayne boyd is in and so also is james allen for panic racing so now g drive franco colopinto back to the head of the class with yiffi for wrt up behind him and the margin between them at the last timing point was 35 seconds so you for you've got time to make up there's 88 cycles through its next stop this is the teal livery 88 cart from um temperature proton racing dominic last year 75 year old driver brought that car in didn't see whether or not there was a bit the driver changed there the gte am championship leading ferrari the settler racing car has got to repair a mirror on its next stop yeah it's third in category with serginoto at the wheel at the moment so don't know exactly how long that's going to be but i would suspect that they won't repair the mirror they'll just change the door and then it's all in one so but it's still going to be a time loss relative to a standard stop yeah when they say repair there is no mirror left by the look of it so it's going to be a door yeah mirrors are optional extras not legally but yeah there's toyota's in the pits as well that's the second place brendan hartley popped into the pits that was a 14-lap stint for hartley but remember at the beginning it's massive dust there the lock-up beautiful beautiful sight no rain in sight down into mulsanne the sunset there is the toyota cycles through that stop so brendan hartley then having done his first stint brings it in and we'll stay behind the wheel of that car fuel tires go to work clean the mirrors and yeah betty hopes that the proton number 99 ahead of him with the tour at the wheel in the pit stop gets out of the way before he has to move or it could delay him one one two seconds now you know one it doesn't sound very much but the reality is they're going to be fighting with their sister cart over those one or two seconds to who has the strategic advantages very soon and it is a push back and so he has got a little bit of uh time delay there one second just because the orange car wasn't finished its work in time so the pit lane goes brandon hartley there is the car that's got this mirror issue like that thereof and so georgio senagioto will have to have a new door put onto that car on that next stop he's chasing after scott andrews this is a ferrari fight for position it was a second and a half between them at the last timing point so there sergio trying to get onto terms with the american-based australian we saw these two good old tussle didn't we as the race went back to green and uh scott andrews has extended that lead got this uh drive good to see of a recommendation from michael jensen well just looking at this gtm battle we've got now ben keating that's leading in the aston martin we saw him that car taking the lead and then the safety car sort of guiding it forward there scott andrews as you said second in the kessel racing ferrari ferrari third and then there's also ferrari fourth ferrari fifth ferrari six and then the porsche that was absolutely blinding in all of the practice and qualifying where's it going it's back in sixth place seventh place i don't know if there's been any particular issues with it but that car was definitely the pacesetter over the course of the week so far you're absolutely right in the top 12 in fact in gtm there is one porsche and one aston martin the rest of them 10 of them yeah ferraris ferrari knows what to do when it comes to race day doesn't it as they're 88 back out after its recent stop tries to pick its way through the traffic lights david arnold at the wheel and that's another car that's dropped a long long way back he's lost eight laps now hasn't it against the overall race lead fritz fernard at work he's been passed by phil hanson on that map so that drops him to ninth in lmp2 doesn't it but the owner driver is at the wheel but still these pro am and he's got what is it 45 seconds advantage on esteban garcia in the real team racing car garcia having taken over from vote defend at the last pit stop 29 lead 70 so the lmp2 pro am battle is now for 13th overall and hanson should be able to get away from vanier shouldn't he with all due deference to so that gap will stretch hansen's next target he's going to be ranker van der zander up the road and he's catching him he took a second out of alexander on the last lap so that gap is just 1.2 seconds right now and vandazander has dropped back by four and a half seconds from charlotte lazy we saw that rather muscular pass firm but fair certainly brave wasn't it sharma lazy then trying now to improve on sixth within the class four wrt their cars are now fifth and seventh because phil hanson has just jumped ahead of him because he's into the pit lane charm malaysia comes in so kel hanson gains two plays he's one on the track and one by the end of a pit stop ahead of him into the top 10 overall for the number 22 car after some woes earlier in the week just didn't seem to have the pace in that car did not get into hyper pole uh they they had i think they had the pace in the car for the hyper pole but they didn't necessarily get the lap to show their faces it was very busy hyper pole qualifying there or the qualifying to get there and uh it didn't work out for them but there's a lot of teams yeah mentioned that it was an it was it was uncharacteristically rattled philippe albakirk well i would oh yes and having spoken to him this morning he seems to have got himself back into his normal race mode if he were no doubters to his feelings did he earlier on the weekend that's for sure we had a few words in the public as well i said if you re-found your smile and he gave me the gritted teeth look right so right it's in there somewhere right so here for the class lead wayne boyd versus stoffel vandoorne and it is a second between them and on the last lap well vandora was on the track but wayne boyd has uh just rejoined after a stop hasn't he so that's why the gap is right down between them so this is the opportunity potentially for vandora to strike now well this is an interesting battle isn't it it's a man that knows the car he's raced the orica numerous times never here uh multiple lmp3 champion uh wayne boyd but uh lemon rookie and being taken on here by x formula one star stuffer van door and lmp1 for that matter and wayne boyd whose career really was saved by united auto sports because much as he had the talent there was no money and he absolutely gone from a spell in british formula three to making the occasional outing in club level formula four just for the sake of it and then suddenly united auto sports found a niche for a driver of his speed and the rest is history so here he is one of the many rookies on the grid at le mans this year and for the moment heading the class there are 40 rookies in total can i point out that there are what i would describe as being apocalyptic clouds on the horizon no you can't you can point out that the obsession ferrari's had a moment coming out in the chicane but no more about rain doesn't rain anymore yeah but i think it depends which way that rain is going green yeah it's it's certainly raining it's not very far away it'll go down the rain yes yes yes so a bit of work sorry just the jota sport there's that gibson engineer there and there was a couple of shots there and a lot of gesticulation so whatever is happening clearly there is an engine discussion going on at joe to sport it may be for the second place car of uh stoffel van dawn but at the same time we have got roberto gonzalez in the sister car and that car had a massive trip through the gravel track did and he's just coming up from a pit stop so if he's seen something in the pit stop but you're right that senior engineer from uh from gibson [Music] doing a personal best in the middle sector uh on the uh current lap that what are we on now lap 66 and the margin between them after the most recent round of stops slightly uh greater because of course brendan hartley stopped means he's dropped away but uh the number seven car with a stop due but it's certainly advantageous seven at the moment but number eight is in many ways still fortunate to be in the battle given what happened on the opening right absolutely that's uh kind of going on either way couldn't it extraordinary had the uh control alt leap moment as well following that but since then there's run like a train [Music] discussions underway too as well as a joker at wrt that looks a little bit edgy yeah yeah having the engine guy going out the backs one thing having the engine guy and then the engineer following him at the backside duncan i know is going to be working his way down the areas at the moment with uh racing team netherlands and job van oy turks catching up on that and then he'll be whisking his way down to joe to see if he can get to the bottom of whatever it is fascinating fight though this isn't it wayne board like we were saying rookie here versus vandoorne who is obviously no slouch and with greater experience but wayne boyd what's the euphemism holding his own i mean he's doing a very good job hanging onto that that class lead but it's pressure time because he's got to deliver it is and this is effectively the all-star car for uh united water sports and it's uh it is their big hope i think for retaining this win or it's one of i think two you could reasonably expect to be there on pace and it is it's right there wayne wayne boyd holding off uh vandoorne and with color pinto in third james allen who by the way starred at the start of the race last year and then an unfortunate uh end of the race right in the final hour i think in the porsche curves but james allen having another strong run here for panas racing panas racing certainly i think stepped up massively in the last two years yep uh they were running a different chassis earlier on and kind of there and thereabouts but in terms of as a team they're now consistently swinging when it comes to you know pure performance and being in the fight and it was it was great to see them taking the fights to the win last time out in the european la monster is their first in many years of trying and you sort of get the feeling it's not going to be their last because you're right alan it's one of those teams that seems to have unlocked the code all of a sudden something else has been unlocked in gte pro and that is jordan taylor who's just done two personal bests in the class leading car on this lap so jordan taylor is ahead by nine seconds from michael christensen in number 92 porsche that is now looking a bit more racy but the corvette that was good at the very start now coming back into the equation at least for the moment as the stop cycle through and that puts the af course of ferraris down the order a little bit more third and fourth in the class now so shuffle has happened in gte pro yep 351 last time around 351.5 for jordan taylor what can you do this time around with a very quick lap and actually it's not just him because nick tandy and the sister corvette is also doing two personal best so both of the corvettes have suddenly had an energy drink or something on this lap they're both working up they've taken the they've unlocked the fast and furious thing they've found that 17-speed gearbox that'll be the one yeah that'll be the one yes they had a good dinner 350.7 this time around from jordan taylor's he is finding pace he was slower in the last sector but he had started off very very well we just have to remember that they're out of sequence in the pit stops with regard to the f corsa cars who are now down in third and fourth place and he of course have both switched over drivers about five laps ago whereas uh jordan's currently on his tenth lap and so he's probably got another four or five laps to go before he'll have to come in for a pit stop nick tandy is basically closing the gap and closing it rapidly to cooper mcneil in the 79 car as he should be so again if he's coming to the end of the stint it'll be a lighter car helping that pace but yes allen's absolutely right they're out of sequence but it's the fact that the sector times were looking so good that was attracting my attention to those cars yeah the one thing you've got to remember as well here when the fuel weight comes off especially if he's on the end of the first stint and maybe the second stone when that fuel weight comes off the car gets a lot lighter especially in these gt cars that are taking enough fuel to do 15 laps and the performance can also come from that as well a little bit less on the lmp2 cars because they put less fuel in and it's not quite the same effect but it still is an effect sandy took five seconds now to cooper mcneil on the previous lap on the lap just completed it's another six seconds so the gap for the battling fifth between the 79 weathertech racing car and the 64 corvette now down to 6.7 seconds and that's around the gap that he's pulling back on him on a single lap and this battle is still on between boyd and vandora half a second at the start of the lap in the first sector stoffel was quicker by just under a tenth in the second sector he was slower by just under a tenth as the ferrari in the background rattles its way wide over the curbing there that being the castle car but this lmp2 lead fight we'll be predicting it was going to be a great battle there p2 it hasn't disappointed at all the cars in that fight might have changed over the course of the first what do we have four and a bit hours but it's still a great fight and so wayne boyd is holding off the attack from uh stefan vandoorne in the joe dirk cart 23 from 28. he's holding off the attack but actually that hasn't been attacked because he vandals not actually even got close enough to deliver one on him but they're now being closed by franco colombo talking about closing just a quick point there david kamui kobayashi's done the fastest his fastest for sector and then the overall fastest of the race second sector down to mulsanne corner of uh the event so far so ash is on one and he's got a well he's got about traffic coming up in the final one so i don't know if it will be a fastest lap there's a critical point here when we look at the data from this race because there's been a lot of debates about the the gap performance gap between other p2 and hypercar and the faster these toyotas go uh the less of a debate there's going to be because it does show that the the potential uh performance of these hyper cars is a little better than we were told they were looking for for the performance window 327 uh as the current fastest lap of the race we'll see what camus kobayashi can produce at the end of this lap and we saw the engineer running off out the back from gibson in the jotter garage duncan's done a little bit of inspector cluseau and investigative journalism and it was actually on the 38th car they had an issue that's the one that anthony davidson started roberto gonzalez is in at the moment in 15th place a lap down because of an incident for anthony davidson and it seems to be more of just of a dodgy sensor as opposed to any particular issue so i think the cam has restored to the johto sport garage yeah so leader is in the pits on a lap on which he did a personal best set to one and absolute best sector two and then bales at the end of it so uh just again proving what the post could be in the sectors so yeah kobayashi into the pit lane uh we've now done four and a half hours of the 89th running of the le mans 24's it is toyota seven from eight and then alpine 36 in third fourth to seventh it's all lmp2 boyd ahead of van dorn about second and a half and then a further three seconds back franco colopinto so this is building up really nicely it's gonna be great this one uh that mother was 13 lap stint again from the leader as we expected so 13 laps with a little bit of fuel saving gonna fall green for the totals and uh brendan hartley winning six picks uh brendan hart he's only what three laps into his current stint so while yet before we see the eight car car turned around quickly seven is on its way indeed so now what's going on in gte pro still drawing taylor leading now we've been saying that the corvettes are slightly out of sequence against the ferraris but jordan taylor giving corvette a bit of optimism at the moment leading the class by six seconds from michael christensen and ollie gavin smiles at the thought of a corvette leading the class here it's fantastic i saw jordan just on the grid before the start of the race and he looked a little bit sort of apprehensive nervous but i just sort of put my arm around him gave him a little bit of a chat and he was he is a great talent young talent and he's he's the future of corvette racing and he's doing a fine job right now and uh you know he has he's formed a great partnership with antonio garcia they won a lot of races last year that won a lot of races this year in the image championship and this is a massive race for corvette racing to bring the cxr for the first time here indeed and indeed progress as you're talking uh ollie because nick tandy has gone by cooper mcneil and takes the second corvette the 64 corvette up into fifth position yeah nick did a phenomenal job in in qualifying in hyper pole and in fact i spoke to him again as well just before the start of the race and he was a little frustrated with the hyper pole session because he thought he had a lap going that would have got him pole and he was blocked by one of the um glicken houses i think it was duma into uh indianapolis so even when you reduce the feel people still complain about traffic you have limited cars out there exactly but that move against cooper mcneill with all due deference was in the post wasn't it because five to six seconds a lap yeah in that car but this is in the post as well vandoorne are on wayne boyd now we've just been hearing alan mcnish was rightly saying but as yet vandoorne hasn't got quite close enough to make a move but he's almost almost almost there and you get a wide shot here when you're going to see the bright orange and grey uh g-drive car franco colopinto he is closing on this battle it's three and a half seconds back and it's been consistently quicker than these two cars over the last couple of laps because whilst they're not battling they certainly track each other that door's a bit stuck isn't it yeah it's it's impressive to see this one two three in lmp2 the wayne boyd in the lead there's stuff of andorra is second and then you've got franco colopinto all drivers were competing in the asia le mans series earlier on in the year and they all stood out as as as those real great talents obviously stoffel is is right up there but wayne there they are the one two three yeah there we go he's is he's a coming man and you know speaking to someone like richard dean he was he was saying that he can't believe that wayne has been picked up by one of the bigger teams but and maybe he will when after a race like this you know maybe he really comes on the radar for one of the big manufacturers he's flown under that radar hasn't he largely because he's not raised at this level because he's never had the money to progress but right now look at him he is leading the race stoffel vandal one of the biggest stars in sports car racing in actual global motorsport is pressurizing him and he's dealing with it yeah well to give you give him that alright give you an instance of wayne boyd's life in motorsports uh we had the unfortunate coveted positive for fabio sharer who won the wc races they were lucky enough to be able to call on wade who told me i was on my way to work he goes off and he sells cars on a car lot with his family firm he's got a day job um he's desperate to be to get that break to be a full professional racing driver and this is the way you put those calling cars down the table you don't have to go back that many years to where nick tandy was a windscreen fitter and used to arrive at young driver events for the brdc in his little um auto glass van very quickly yes yes thinking it very quickly as we look at the leaders color pinto is still chipping away because he's now 2.6 seconds back so he's almost with them and it's going to be a three-way fight to get to the next round of pit stops p2 another driver that was massively impressive in the asia le mans series just didn't put a wheel wrong the whole time but now look vandoorner is on it he's got just about close enough he can now think about a tow possibly he can certainly think about adding more pressure to wayne boyd and we'll see what he's made of but wayne boyd sharing this car the dream team if you like it lmp2 for ua paul deresta alex lynn along with wayne boyd he's got to soak up the pressure he's got to be a sponge to the end of this stint yellow at uh just where we are and that's uh that is one of the two high-class racing cars that is the 20 again which had almost drive yes but he's got to get by here because he's going to be told by the team and there you go that was just caught up by the other joker car and right in front of the toyota just missed yeah they're they're the ways in which this race is won and lost bit of a rub wasn't that just enough to unsettle that car the point is that jota will be telling uh vandoorne that colopinto is coming the time to make this move is now number 36 the alpene is being told it's got to repair the rear light to the next pit stop so there's going to be a bit of time lost there unless they can just put a new rear section on the car as we look now at the lmp2 lead fight there's almost side by side there vandal has a look at the inside line yeah wayne just got a little bit deep into the left there at indianapolis and he just rode it onto the curb on the exit and then stoffel was on him yeah and now he's got the lights flashing and it's traffic up there and everything yeah it stopped smart where this will be using the traffic as a pick and we're trying to find a way to to sneak through so the back markers are overtaking one another weight boy threads his way through the inside does it beautifully gets absolutely bought and that stretches the gap brilliant driving behind the point color pinto color pinto is now looking for a way past one dawn the dynamic shifts immediately it's amazing how it turns that quickly absolutely dare one say that has just buoyed the spirits of united states because that gap has grown hugely is under attack rather than uh being the attacker he is attacked by franco colopinto so he's on the defensive and we are having that incident we've just seen with dennis anderson being or the number 20 car i should say being looked at by race control however wayne boyd's advantage now is three seconds over vandoorne that traffic has given him a get out of jail free card in a sense because he's away for a few more hours i love sports car racing because traffic is always a factor and part of it is luck and part of aggression and part of it is race racing sense and it will always always make a race more exciting it's not a race we keep saying it it's four races at the same time on the same circuit and it just throws all sorts of possibilities at you it was great the way that it just the timing absolutely worked for way the way that he could have threaded his way through those two gt cars and he could sort of he knew it he just knew that the track was going to open up for him as long as he could get around the outside of that first right-hander of that of that gt car and then it just was clear trap you've raced for most of your racing life and a class that has been nose to tail what's that feeling like you've had someone all over the back of you and you just get the break oh it certainly brings a smile to your face he does relieve that pressure it's sort of because he's been building you know it it does build and so you know he would have known you know wayne would have known that stuff was there just gaining on him gaining on and gaining on it and it just relieves that pressure so then he could just breathe a little bit and he just naturally let the flow come back when you're driving and this time vandoorne gets to break and color pinto drops back a little so that gap comes comes out a little but these three still separated by what just over 5.3 seconds between the top three in this class let's not forget these cars identical specifications yes there's things you can do yeah in terms of the performance in terms of the setup of these cars but this is where the driver skill and the skill of the team and preparation and delivering these cars to the track really really makes a difference and also keeping out of trouble you know absolutely in the traffic that could have gone totally the other way that could have been all strife but yes keep out of trouble almost beautifully choreographed wasn't it the road opened up and played boy just sailed through it was perfect for him and g drive by the look of it ready for a pit stop because franco color pinto must be coming grave to the end of the stream sorry that was the internet it's fine it was fabio it's risen off with franco uh yes he is the g drive that was has a new helmet this year it's black with roman roosevelt written down the signs in orange i was using that as a guide and i think that's what i wrote he's getting a hang of this grave isn't it he's quite good you know yes all sorts of things great stuff out there at the moment again there with his mirrors full of glickenhaus gradually climbing back up there's frank mayer in the 708 at the moment ryan briscoe is in the 709 there seemed to be a little bit of difference between the 708 and 709 and i think one of the other lads was talking a little bit earlier on about how the 708 seems to have got itself dialed in but the 709 they're still hunting for that sort of comfy spot with the car i don't think richard roman or orion are really that comfortable with it with the 709 that's julian canal [Music] uh we've got 708 and 7th and 709 currently in 12th place ryan briscoe in the slower of the two at the moment uh and he's trying to stay clear of some of the lmp2 traffic if he can stay on this kind of pace frankly he'll be with that lmp2 battle in a couple of laps so that'll spice it up oh boy yeah he's coming across more traffic look at this three wide down to the chicane sharp intake of breath drama averted but only just by the way great to see franklin uh being put in this position of trust by the team he's been loyal to them through the development of their gt program he was named and i think some people were surprised to see him named as the seven uh seven man crew for the hyper car program put in uh for the race in monza and has stayed aboard uh for them on he'll be delighted it's been some years since we saw frank i think it's part of the cignatek team in the early days of lmp2 in the wec since then he's had a reasonably quiet time but uh it just goes to show there are talents out there there is jim glickenhausen he's trademark hat sitting on the uh pit wall watching what's going on and what is going on in lmp2 right now is that the battle is renewed for second place vandora to color pinto six tenths of a second last time around wayne boyd is three and a half seconds to the good yep so wayne board has made that different stick color pinto has managed to claw his way back to uh stoffel vandal [Music] and it's shaping up to be the back of the moment isn't it this in lmp2 at the moment it's been about how they can deal with the challenges of traffic light is fading and fading rapidly yeah this this at this time it's just starting to get a little challenging out there with it with the the darkness creeping in and you you'd just be if you get into the car now and out on track you'll be just hunting for those cues and those break points and those those little bits that you're looking for and been using on the track and you'll really be switching your mind over into the night practice mode and this is the thing you were saying earlier is it's not much fun where that light starts to change you know you'd rather be either in full daylight or full darkness but this is the tricky bit yeah it it it really can be quite tricky and and this is when you also see more stuff just happening on track you know people dropping wheels off gravel being dragged on people going off and other bits of debris you just have to be really aware you know you've got all of your senses operating absolutely 100 to make sure that you're using everything to help guide you around the track into the pit lane has just come from the second place toyota then so number eight brendan hartley who has done the fastest lap of the race going back 11 laps also well he's coming now so the margin is going to stretch once again and how many times have we seen that where one of the one of the toyotas is coming to the pits and that's but i think purple on an in-lap it relays its best sectors it doesn't necessarily mean it was on that lap when it comes into the pit lane i see that number eight is in but yes the timing screen showing its sectors but i think when it gets to the end of the stint the timing screen i see illustrates what it has done in that sting rather than on that oh yeah it's one of the quirks of the system okay so if i'm done got a little bit of a break there in traffic into our knowledge with the 44 car coming between the two but cola pinto now side to side with kanopka makes that move stick the 44 car into the car now it will it's great to see this overhead shot with the cars flowing through the porsche curves massive downforce here so rain level one to two expected from 2056 in about 10 minutes that is that black cloud coming and mira konopka by the way stayed aboard after the pit stop just now i think he knows that the race director wants to see him yes and he's going to stay up there until about four o'clock tomorrow hopefully the problem will go away yes right hoping that eduardo has just forgotten about it and the fact that by the time that arrives it's going to be darker he's going to make it even more lively and actually we just saw another shot of the g drive garage with this man called roman rusinov sitting there you got his name on the helmet and he's sitting there with his helmet and he's got his name on it you're good you should do this more often and i'm convincing to the pit lane he's standing next to somebody called rob anderson off and he rents he's ready to go so i'd say clearly a real person bro yes yes [Music] so very shortly the uh russian driver will be in the car and you can expect him to be rushing around so color pinto now behind one of the palace cars is that the pr one car just powered on regardless it didn't even bother that knowledge no no we're in trouble just ignore it well that will be the br one card it's the marble effect car pinto is just passing that's a back marker for him that is the 24 car he was right on the right-hand side of it off the actual racing surface after that uh that rough bit of tarmac there that that lines them all down straight and it's uh the car was uh fluttering and bouncing over all of that all the little bumps and undulations and that's when you get yourself in jeopardy isn't it because the further out wide you run the more little stones you can find the best of debris all the litter yes yeah that's it and and also there's a chance that uh you can do some damage to the floor or you can hurt the splitter you know all these little things that they just add up over time so vandoorne the leader of this bet and once again color pinto's got to dig into the talent locker and find out what's left there the answer is quite a lot but uh wayne board has not lost that gap that he gained what three laps ago is still 3.2 seconds van der waan maybe chipped a couple of tents out of that but that's all he's done it's great to see brilliant racing at the highest level 92 in this is the michael christensen pit stop to neil yanni yesterday that's his first stint in that car of this race double check sure it is actually been impressed with neil he he's come into this program and it is a high pressure program that this porsche porsche operation and he had very little gt experience yes and it did show really to start with but he's worked and worked and worked at it and you know he's been helped with adam hardy the engineer on that car as well as you know the two teammates that he's got a world class and and now he looks comfortable in the car what's the connection between yiffi in number 41 for wrt and neil yani lives in his house but he's managed by the officer he's lived with um the yani family since he came to europe and it shows because we were in dubai at the asia le mans series and there was neil yani and i what do you do here he was a little i'm his landlord it's not benny's rent trouble with a tap yes now toyota number eight uh still running in second place brandon hartley at the wheel let's uh go eavesdrop for a moment hey brendan rain expected 10 minutes rain expected heavy on light lights level [Music] it's that level one to two that's it's quite a problem just because it's enough to make the surface slick difficult but it's not wet enough to go to wet or unlikely let's let's just see because it might just be just on one particular part of the racetrack and that's again another challenge of this race circuit and this race is the circuit is so big and you know you can have only 30 of it wet which is what we had before you know the amount of water was not consistent all the way around and it was changing yesterday just the shot as we saw the uh the project one car pulling away you can see that black cloud beginning to sweep in that rain is expected within the next ten minutes and uh of course level one to two is what's predicted that that cloud looks pretty menacing to me wouldn't be remotely surprised if it's slightly heavier than expected indeed indeed we shall see for the moment there are still people pressing on though ron briscoe in the 709 clicking house has just done a personal best sector so for that matter is kami with kobayashi so as it gets even cooler because it's not exactly been a balmy august day as it starts to get a little cooler so quick lap times can be coming yep and uh you know we've seen the air of courser cars now come lady gaga and uh sam bird in the in the 2a of course of course 51 and 52 sort of stretching out and um pressing on and this way it flip-flops backwards and forwards with with this strategy in the way it is with that uh safety car period so yeah strategy being played out these pit stops coming thick and fast now the 22s in yeah that's phil hansen who was uh doing good things closing on if he ate but now has to come to the pit lane so the united auto sports entry in and new set of uh tires going off to 22. united auto sports busy not only with a three-prong attack in this race but also running cars in the uh le mans cup two support races that have been here this weekend so 22 the phil hanson fabio scherrer and philippe albuquerque gets used to the goodyears and we'll go back into the race as the rain gets closer we're about five minutes away from the expected flute [Music] watching sam bird working his way through the dunlop chicane and he's uh i mean sam's an absolute ferrari stalwart and he's he's actually jumped into this car hasn't he because of an injury from for a driver from spell 24. that was it yes accidentally yeah yes to think of sam bird as super sub he's a bit strange in a sense because he's a headline driver himself absolutely and um you know he's just come off the back of a season in formula e with jaguar and uh now he's just he just he's plug him in and away he goes he's he's a real talent but that's the demand these days isn't it of a factory driver whether it's gt or prototypes you've got to deliver yeah you can't be excuse the practice session to get back up to speed completely and yeah and and and sam is one of those guys who just jumps in and you know it's 100 all the time yeah indeed so right now it is of course that leads in 51 sam bird is second in number 52 and you can see what's going on behind he's being chased by number 92 porsche neil yani but he's on an out lap so neil yani he's going to bring down that gap there's a driving standards flag heading the way of number 69 for abusing track limits 69 uh being the nikon porsche yeah yeah and that car in the moment in the hands of role for nikon the swiss driver it's a bit like a time warp car that himself isn't it because renault ralph bowed rolfing like it they all come out of carrera cup germany a few years back and now they're all reunited in this le mans debut for the team it's like a cravantic night out isn't it really it's uh which is no bad thing and they were they by the way as a team were very impressive in asia at the early part this year and i suspect we'll see more of them as far as this race is concerned all rookies one of couple of more rookie cars on board with yarny now yeah it's just seeing a few little spots of rain for him just that little bit of moisture in the air he's just going up to sixth gear coming down here at 275 kilometers an hour can we see the green horse on the right-hand side here now we oh they've just gone by and uh that was a that was a a marker point that corvette racer used to use every year there was a green horse outside of a um it's a bricolage i think yeah and it is it's a great it's a great it's a green horse it's a green horse and he's just outside this bricklayer and as drivers this wasn't the team this is the drivers would be using that as a reference each year how fast are we going at the green horse it was just like a corvette racing driver's reference point on the first straight at le mans you go out the pits and you get a couple of laps under your belt and then you'd always look okay how fast are we at at the green horse part of ipa at the green horse for me about everybody that's uh dear me the life of a professional racing driver it's a little strange it's a little strange but it was our reference point and it just it was actually i think it was antonio and myself we started looking at it and then we got everybody else onto it and uh so yeah yeah right i'll just move ground back to the plot for a moment we've got right hand number panels not working for a handful of cars so more drama in pit stops there's about four there this of course increased importance race control need these number panels to work going into the darkness they have to work and they will be told uh to fix about the next pit stop at the very least but is that something that's easily like a fuse or do you just take the door off and put a new one on i'm pretty sure you just take the door put a new one on absolutely right i mean what we saw i mean the the classic story is the first year of the toyota efforts uh when the car was effectively not designed to be a race car but they came in because peugeot weren't there going very well indeed in bahrain if i remember right and it took them a long time to actually change more or less the whole of the side of the car clearly that when the car's redesigned as a full race car it becomes a lot more easy to do that you've got kind of modular parts you can do that with but uh yeah on his right it'll be a door yeah and in comes 52 so we were talking about sam bird and the gap's gonna widen a little bit because from second place he pits and we'll see where this puts neil yani but he's about a third of a lap back in fact currently in 92 for third in the class sam staying on board yeah looking for another stint another of course brilliant team really well drilled there's they're keeping the tyres on he's going to go for another stint on these so they'll just be all on the fuel all on the fuel just waiting for that now and the fuel hose has to be connected for two and a half seconds completed i love reels like that they're so easy to see now number 99 has just gone to its pick garage we've been told that is the multimatic crude proton cart the one that features harry tingle and why why are they crude what have they done to affect you they're very crude yeah if you might roll larry uh bless him uh takes takes swearing to an olympic sport level i think it's fair to say but the 99 car they're in some trouble okay alpine into the pits for a routine stop personal best being done by ron briscoe house and more news on rain coming as well is this routine is this the stop they've got to fix the rear lights or they've already done that the flashing lights are on right they were told that it had to change is that rear deck going to be changed on the rear slip right they're doing something on this drive change it might be that they make a routine stop out of this if they've had to come in a bit early they might try and do everything rather than just that one element because they put fuel into it anyway so you might as well do the whole thing other pit stops on the way include wayne board from the lead in lmp2 franco colopinto now leads lmb2 it promotes frankly up to fifth he's just one car now between him and joining the fun at the front of hypercar 11.8 seconds behind and catching colopinto by about what's that three and a half seconds of that so that'll be another impressive thing about franco colopinto is if he's been able to hold that pace and also fuel save absolutely so where is he i don't know whether that's the case but you know he's going another longer than everyone else he's ten laps into um his no he's not sorry my apologies yes ten laps into the stint should be a 12 lap stint okay let's see so as he said that puts him in the lead of the class for the moment ahead of the wrt entry of epa and then down to third for joe to stop off paul de restaurant is next in lmp2 and then julian canal is next in the queue if a year was another talent that was spotted in asia le mans series wasn't he and he was uh he had a strong run through a lot of those races and he's just set personal best there in sector one and really interesting to see how the g drive racing crew were using the asian le mans series and that really was like a talent spotting exercise to decide exactly what they do with those crews now the ifa thing that became some of the commercial battle with the wrt team which is where he's ended up but uh the talent they were chucking into that effort with what was the first outing for that team together with algar pro racing uh with the full g drive racing effort they have been there in the year before in asia only but uh it was impressive to see how things have gone there ryan briscoe puts in the quickest time of the race so far for the 709 that's a mark by the way of the pace in that 709 car that's a 331 is the quickest that car has been against a 327.6 for the toter on board with nikki katzberg here coming to indianapolis to the left here just got passed by uh here's the glickenhaus it just went by just using all the curb there on the exit up to third and then hard on the brakes down a second down to first for arnard really tricky corner here traction's always a problem off but he gets it down well the c8r has got fantastic traction and working its way up through the gears and down into the porsche curves we didn't see any attention going on to the alpine uh we think they did have to fix the rear lights and it was a one minute 25 second pit stop against a one minute 11th the toyotas looks to me like some work went on there so yes time they can afford to lose given that we know they're gonna have to make more stops yep but still they're still there in third and they i think they always knew that it was very likely to be uh something where they were expecting to be uh sort of relying on issues for the totals ahead we've got now got alexander sims in the 64 car a couple of laps on those tyres he'll be pressing on just trying to make up that time that they lost behind when they got split with the safety cars didn't they absolutely yeah it's unfortunate that's just the way the way it can roll here at le mans with the multiple safety cars on such a big track the drizzle is starting and number 99 has ended up in this garage as they go to work into the pit lane now uh comes 26. so this is franco colopinto bringing the car in and again these two-part pit stops so the refueling first of all then you can do the rest of the work it looks like it is i think he's stuck i mean he's been there for ages i was gonna say he's been in there for how long graham uh okay we're just getting some information just to say from duncan just saying that uh they want to keep franco in the car because he's doing such a great job and this will be going right in his own quadruple stint there's a slightly old troll here trouble that's the 24 car that's the pr one madison car in the gravel and that's it i think and it's just got in there kelly patrick kelly at the wheel and he's deep isn't he and he's not going to reverse out of that spotted you were saying earlier on the weekend it's a tricky do you know you corner do just a meter or a couple of meters too late on the brake zone you snag a right front or start to lock the rears and then you're chasing the car all the way in and before you know it you're in the gravel 21 easily done 24 car was running fourth in pro am with patrick kelly and uh so i'm gonna get a slow zone army yeah the least for that so it's gonna be a matter of where the recovery equipment is for this and also what's the left front corner like has he hit anything and if he has how bad is that damage well it's almost like the fact that he's deep in the gravel is good use yes on that front because it stopped it stopped it looks to me like he's just almost just nosed it in and it's just ground to a halt and then he's you know just more frustration than anything else and they know they're gonna have to get the car back clear most of that gravel out give it a quick once over and then on their way but all of this time it's just [Music] right we've been talking about 99 the uh troubled uh porsche and the uh proton car is still in the pits and duncan vincent has been monitoring all of this and by the sound of it duncan it doesn't bode well no it doesn't david they have broken one of the main suspension bolts in the back right suspension and it's caused a it's caused a bit of an issue they have got to now try and drill out the bolt and for anybody who's done that on a car they know just how difficult and time-consuming that can be there is no real quick fix they're going to have to do it larry hopes it himself we're going to be here a while it's just one of these things so that's the 99 car that's an update all right thanks very much for that so fingers crossed they can get it back out and do some laps because even though a result will disappear at least there's the opportunity for the ams to race at le mans you look at the leaderboard just cycling through and the leader of the gte and class remains as often as the case atom ferrier run car tf sports aston dillon pereira at the wheel of it which even though it had that 10 second hit lane penalty the safety cars came in exactly the right time for it and it stretched the advantage reigning winners tier sport from last year with the turkish flag to effort that now moved to lmp2 and they're doing the right thing with that effort by the way not bringing that to le mans this year looking to expand their lmp2 efforts alongside the gt programmes for next season and no doubt in my mind there's a long term future for tom ferry and tf sports in a number of aco products and beyond it's interesting how the emphasis of the teams is shifting a bit you know we we see these teams come from national racing into gt then into prototypes and yes there's always going to be that cyclical nature that some of the teams that have done well go away or people retire or whatever it is but there is this change now different teams coming into the mix wrt another example of a team that you know earned its spurs in gt racing got a deal for the dtm now into lmp2 and a bright future the running joke is that so you can't have international insurance rating and they have caught a ferrari well we have this this thing about tf corsa and it's the same now for aston martin's with tom ferriero in this crew and it's so it's a relatively speaking tiny crew got two cars in trouble at the ford chicane what is the 71 inception car that has driven away from whatever's happened there it's another ferrari it's another ferrari it's one of the pro cars it's the second-place car so it's sam bird replay let's have a look at this ollie okay just coming to the fortune canes here side by side it looks like sam is just trying to get up the inside of the inception car and uh just either the inception just didn't give him enough room or sam wasn't quite all the way up the inside and uh the two touched and spun and hopefully no damage done to either carl major damage done to either car but that will most probably go down as a bit of a racing incident brendan arreb in 71 the less experienced of the drivers in that car yeah and without pointing the finger yeah i mean it he should have just given the the corner really to just to sam but now he's back past it yes so they both carried on which is the good news but yeah it's not what either either team or car want but these these incidents do happen now they're going to be you know all over the car or the engineers will be on the data looking at tire pressures other sensors trying to see all the load cells trying to make sure everything is okay because i think sam did run over a couple of those uh those big speed bumps or the you know the bananas uh the banana curves so would have rattled things around and just given things a good shaking over let's have another look so sam bird to the inside and he's got the gap he's got the line brandon just doesn't let him go and it was almost like it's almost it's almost like he he just he could see that he was gonna come across on him and he'd sam at the last minute try to get out of here he's locking brakes but that's one of the perils for the pro drivers isn't it because you are committed to your lap your race your line but you don't know what an am might be doing yep that's it and and that's part of the skill of operating here at le mans is is trying to read the body language of the car that you're coming up to pass trying to understand okay how precise is this driver being where is he placing it what how much curbs are using is he flowing the corners in the way that you would be doing or that another pro driver would be doing 24 about to rejoin now graham what's this cost is it a lap two laps right so at least a lap and we've got rain you're absolutely right uh 24 car will rejoin now yeah has just been passed in fact by john fowler should drive racing live off the line yeah let's drive off the line and get rid of all of that gravel drive back on it he's dropped from fourth to fifth in pro-am at least with that incident and he's coming out just in front i think of maxine brabant and i think we'll lose another place no doubt my money should be coming in after that thumbs up big thumbs up there that's awesome to see these are the moments aren't they that really do breed race fans uh news from high-class racing about jan magnusson's most recent pit stop a delay because they were fixing the gps antenna for the fia data which wasn't working properly uh also the nose was changed anderson hit something during his stint and they were able to use the time that was being taken to fix the antenna to sort the nose out as well we did see if you're about rattle over the curve with the porsche did a little bit of damage and that might have been the trigger for it anyway crunchy some numbers something else just popped up and apologies if you already mentioned this i didn't hear it but the there's another issue for the 71 which is 10 seconds after the next stop for a slow zone infringement i don't think we had mentioned that but yes it's one of those cars that's accruing dramas right back onto the throttle goes in seven kamui kobayashi race leader he wasn't messing around now he was straight back on it throws his way through the traffic through that bank left at indianapolis first gear corner and now we get to that point where you see the effect the headlights have through the darkness yep exactly and it's all going to be about switching those tires back on again and just sort of tip-toeing your way off i've got another car off here the 29 racing team netherland that's in the gravel trap yes and he's not very happy at all no and he should have heard on the side of caution then we've got it here on board now with fritz van aird god god damn it man well there you go apologies for the language but fritz vanid is very irate he's in the gravel he's been caught out by the rain that was coming and he's off the road but it's not the team's fault he's driving the car it's his right foot that judges the speed isn't it yes and and he has and again this is another thing with the rain isn't it it just pops up and it just he just arrived arrives at the corner and sometimes you you just are a passenger and you're just the first car there which is obviously not good so you're very set ready to go he is a shrug of the shoulders there's nothing he can do at this point but if all of the lmp2 cars get themselves in strife like this you know we've had jota we've had the pr1 we've now had this and if they all have a drama it'll start to balance out over the course of the stint won't it but yes here and he just he lost the rear corrected and then he's just gone sharp left into the gravel trap there at the the first right so fritz van eared in the gravel let's see if he's calmed down at all do you hear me do you hear me yes i do okay okay uh yeah i thought you are in the brother yes ma'am it's raining nobody's but he's the team owner so he's very keen that people giving the information but there's now a little bit of an argument going on and the rain he's certainly catching them out because they've got more cars in the ground yeah we've just seen the number one richard meal car there are two off here up at the exit of the dunlop they are 23 and 32 and it's 32 that's in the gravel and there is the number that was on a mission and that was tom clutch tom clout now by the look of it because that was a big big whack yeah okay this is gonna come out and what's it gonna do but reversing across the track yes who was that that was severe right so safety car is deployed let's catch up on who's going off the road graham that's maldonado yeah and there having had a spin sophia flourish was trying to reverse off the racing line but across the circuit and into the path of number 74 that was trying to dodge around this is the united auto sport significant we've got two united cars yes yeah 23 and 32 as we were saying and they've wiped themselves out there that is just he's coming into maldonado he had arrived in the brake zone before the dunlop chicane and it was obviously too wet he was at full speed lock breaks and then he's gone to try to go straight to use the gravel trap to try and uh to to try and slow himself down still and he's just gone straight over and taking the car out and then we've got another car off i think yeah we have at the fourth chicane it's a p2 car i think yeah facing the wrong way into the same situation one at the exit 25 has gone off at pits in and there's another one in the gravel coming out of the chicane you're quite right graeme so trying to catch up on everything this is a replay of the dramas that went off united auto sports well that's a different internet this is sophia and she's she's crashed with a 26 car to get out of the strike and it's the 48 the 48 uh is uh the one in strife at the ford chicane so we've got the 25 in trouble the exits the fortune game sophia flush still hasn't managed to get that car turned around no she's impacted the 26 then the 74. we've had the 48 in the gravel here and we've had the 23 and the 32 hitting each other at dunlop and the catalyst for all of this is it's obvious but it's raining at the wrong slicks and the grip level has just disappeared there's at least six lmp2 cars involved in four separate incidents and what did i say a couple of minutes ago if other people have dramas it brings you back into the game it does like the 38 entry for example from earlier on but quite a bit of damage down to severe fluoresce's car and if it won't start and won't fire up and she can't turn it now this was trying to reverse out of harm's way along comes tom clert who i think he's committed to the right line but then realizes that he's no escape no it's like they're magnetic weren't they yeah i don't think she can so this is the incident this is how she ended up like this and it was she's got together with with the 26 car franca colopinto look like that 26 cars lost it already yeah and that's just pitted with the damage so cola pinto remember was kept in that because he was doing such a good job the team told us and in the start of his next stint he's caught out by the weather he's done some damage and that thing falls down the order now i'll say thing because it's a damaged car it was seventh it's tumbling tumbling tumbling to eighth in class and that's the damage for tom curt who's brought 74 into the pit lane so let's just summarize gentlemen what's going on here rain has fallen and we did say it was going to be probably how it looked like it was going to be heavier than predicted what level one to two until 21 20 which is five minutes from now looks to me to be slightly heavier than that so 26 and number one got together we didn't see what started the incident we did see the 26 spinning across the front of the number one impact and pretty heavy impact between the two in trying to recover from that incident there's been a second incident for the number one with the number 74. separate incident again up at the just before the dunlop bridge with the 20 33 spearing through the gravel 32 at 32 and impacting the 23 of paul de resta uh the 32 is still in the gravel up at the dunlop bridge uh then two further incidents one at the exit of the four chicane uh involving the 25 car off the road and i think has rejoined and another incident at the entry to the fortune cane involving the number 48 edex sport car let's go through that again yes i can so at the moment we've got the 74 is in the garage the 26 is in the garage both with damage front damage to the 74 and significant damage we believed in 26. there is a 74 with the new uh front body work having been fitted but the good news if there is any for these teams is that with the safety cars out the pace of the race is a bit slower you could lose a bit less time all of that the jota car it's back into the lead of the race the 28 car uh the jota car in the hands of stoffel vandoorne head of the panis racing car uh julian canal louie denitrous third in the wrt car fabio shearer fourth in uh lmp2 the 23 car by the way is still out there um after that impact uh i think it's lost one single place to the second the team wrt cars 30 habsburg and still the number one car is stranded in the middle of the road i i can only guess those steering yes because all it can do is go back and forth absolutely and that steering damage will have come in the first impact very very likely yes and it was um you know so now she's just so stuck so the only incident we really don't understand in terms of impact is ho ho is absolutely is what caused the incident with the 26 and the one in the first place was it polo pinto losing it in the rain was that side to side contact we don't know we just saw the major impact between the two we'll unravel it due course duncan vincent is down at united auto sports trying to assess what the parts department is bringing out because they've got two cars to sort and of course maldonado losing time now but also graham these were the incidents at the end of the lap car yeah and there was more coming through the chicane as well the 25 car was further down the road than that and it was a separate incident and that was almost up against the pit wall so our second safety car period of the race there is 26 so you know how quickly things can change can't there carl that was doing so so well and all of a sudden massive time loss it's there in the garage and it's losing place after place and the fear is lap after lap graham can you see who's in the 26 car uh that is is it a bloke with uh roman roosevelt this is gonna be a long race isn't it gonna be the running joke of the race that's for sure so roman rusinov who uh delayed his arrival behind the wheel because colopinto was doing such a good job frankie's explaining himself to the media over on the other side of the garage and so now roman rushing off behind the wheel another replay let's have a look arrives look left boom there he's lost it already hasn't completely i think so i don't think there was i don't think there was contact before the major concept i think he'd lost control not so i'm not sure whether sophia had actually seen had actually seen franco coming yeah she maybe she turned in there was she was this is the other incident with her oh just it was like they were just yeah collision course weren't they still have not managed to move that car yeah they must have there must be a maybe possible gearbox and um and also with the steering now it needs a lift doesn't it yeah they need to get the flatbed over which is heading that way into the car yes you're right [Music] i think she'll only get out on the marshall's instruction being that the circuit is still alive though mobile phone talk to the team yep so they're trying to talk her through the process aren't they here ollie yes they are they are and there must be also a problem with with the radio she also looks like she's pumping something as well she's telling the team she has to come out yeah if the medical lights on she's she's done she must go to the medical center yeah are those lights activated by the driver so the initial impact from colopinso or the second impact could have done that i think it was the first one we can see the blue light is flashing i'm afraid that is game over yes yeah i mean that first impact was a much heavier one this is big right so carl's over the timing line safety car is on track uh i've mentioned that um shandy vincent was off looking at the parts department at united auto sports um put your damage assessor's hat on what's it looking like duncan okay well basically paul the rest has come over the radio and said the front of the car and the back of the car are both in trouble that's how i would have to broadcast it what he said is not broadcastable um the 32 are saying that yeah there's damage to that car but also the engine now sounds pretty terrible so it's not been a good five minutes for united there all right thanks for the news bad news as it is but uh united auto sports chances are just unraveled yes they have and when you actually look at that incident the two cars colliding and the amount of energy that was going through those two cars you could just go well that's it's a tough that's a tough tough hit and something i think both cars are going to struggle with right now that has looked like it was the car that was going to make progress uh in the in the next stint or so we're going to see again this is the impact between the 74 car there's a red light on in the windscreen there let's have a look watch the watch the windscreen of the one car blue light medical light has come on has come on in the second that second impact and that i'm afraid she's got my understanding of regulation is a big hit oh yes and that that means that she does need to leave the car and she will have to go to the medical center and that car strung out in circuit means she'll leave the car she'll be far enough away from the car that car will be gone yeah that's that said day done really tough break i think it that the replay of that on board is franco color pinto not backwards as he comes into shot past the nose of sophia flourish his car i think as he comes into shot he is almost sideways he's not backwards but he he's sideways i i need to see it again yeah but i think that maybe sofia hadn't seen him and was moving over on him slightly but the surface was definitely damp slick and there was gonna be you know an incident reminds me of mario andretti's summary of the porsche curves in the race that he and michael very nearly won when they had a big crash there he said his exact words were slicker and snut greasy grimy and very nasty well it probably wasn't but it was very slippery indeed and that car with the medical lights flashing sofia flourishes out the driver is instructed by the marshals to remain in the car if the medical eyes go off until the doctor arrives until the medical crew arrive not marshalls they will not move the driver because with an impact that's big you don't know what damage has been done actually the most frightening bit of that whole sort of number of incidents was when you get the on board and you're watching sophia and she's clearly still focused on trying to get her car moved no there's a hit and then there's the hit and it just jack absolutely shock of that second hit well because she doesn't see it coming right and also because she can't look outside winter but you can see the rear shot looking through the curves there there's just a wall obscuring her from the racing line there's no way you see her in the road until you are 30 meters and it's almost like he whoever i'm sorry i can't who was driving the 74 74 was in the hands of gentlemen well he was behind you know his yellow flags he must have stayed even slowed down he gets around the corner he's 30 meters away he's on slicks it's raining that's why cars are going off left right and center you know even if he tries to stop in the drive he might have in the rain he's got you know there's a classic example of going where you're looking and he was looking and he was definitely he was just laser focused on that car yes and he was just he was only going one place and that was straight in the side of it now from safari's point of view she's in that cockpit with the new safety bar the relatively new safety bar that separates the two parts of the cockpit that obscures her view to the right hand side so she cannot see what's coming from the from her right hand side but even if she could she can't move the car because she can't steer that's why she was so shocked absolutely yeah she had no idea that was coming you saw what you just saw in in the uh jota sport garage you just saw antonio phillips acosta kind of banging his head on the partition on the wall because he can't believe what is going on at the moment and you know every lap that the safety car stays out their chances of closing up on the leaders go again on board with sophia so she's in kind of in the middle of the road she's not to the right she's not turning in she's not moving over to the left he comes past her yeah out of control i'm afraid yeah again watch watch the windscreen nothing else of the number one car and look for the blue light yeah instantly yeah and and also by the way in the racing team india so how has that car left the pit lane again yeah his blue lights have come on as well and here we go this is the on board now she's trying to get the gear and she's just hit yeah that's the shock it's it's what the devil was that i mean that's absolutely it's a brutal hit and she's so focused on the on the steering and just trying to get the car into neutral and trying to get in traverse another explosion so the answer on the racing team india car is it was able to leave the scene in the accident and get back to the pits and they changed the drive the driver may well now be on his way to the medical center as a result of that team's now coming into the pit lane and they're going to intermediates i believe that they're putting on the car this is the 20 car i believe looks like cut to the hand who was in the real team car is that norman nato not sure no i'm not sure either either it's got a hands device on and i think it could be is it just is it getting ready to go in it is normal and it might actually be that's a that's a good spot from a hairy wrist [Laughter] toyota gazoo racing lead we are five hours and 25 minutes into the 24 hours of le mans and it is a hyper car one two three and if lmp2 cars keep crashing at this rate there's a growing chance the hypercar might actually win this one as well panic wrt and united usa are the top three cedric don't shoot me yet you might need me later might not it's a good line of course one two ferrari back again with their foot on the throat of the gte pro class at nearly one quarter distance in gte am again tf sports number 33 car sneaks up onto page one of the timing screen in 34th ahead of kessel car guys and the 83 af courser car so jota's 38 car in the garage and is it going to be the end of the road for that car i didn't hear what duncan said when he reported back from jota they they had that trip into gravel with anthony davidson just after he'd taken the lead car over as it was then from antonio felix to costa then it was a lot of consternation gibson engineers the engine suppliers really chatting very very animatedly to um the team and uh a center and and here we go this is a hive of activity now in the united garage and this is where your your team manager your crew chiefs or you or your lead mechanics are really earning their money and knowing where to go what to do what parts you need how you're going to get things fixed and how you're going to get it all back together as fast as possible but it in the correct way and then these this is an extremely well drilled team they've got a lot of staff here a lot of people it's a big setup but it's it's going to be solving those problems fixing the car as quickly as you possibly can getting it back together during this safety car period which and you're not losing that much time as you would under normal green flag racing but yep but i think we're gonna go yeah let's get down and hear from duncan vincent he's with paul diresta at united auto sports wayne boyd was the leader in lmp2 and he's got a lot of problems going on there well i'm not actually with paul paul still in the car but i can see that i can see paul's face it he is not a happy boy they're changing the front right front left sorry steering arm that was bent at a kink in it [Music] you're doing now for me in the pit lane it's sweet but tell me i'm on the track we meditate we're in there yeah we saw before arriving looks to me to retry our drawing but uh we are so sure so i cannot tell you now here yeah the engineers are looking at the onboard camera feed china you know trying to read and looking at the external pictures trying to read what they can advise machiavellia in that third-placed alpena because it looks pretty dry here it does look dry but when i just came back in the booth that was quite consistent misty drizzle and it wasn't really showing up on the screen but then it's within two minutes of the radar yeah within two minutes there were cars off everywhere uh the first of whom of course was fritz van aird in that racing team netherland car and actually looks like they've got got away with it relatively lightly when you compared his accident to the other ones that happened maybe a minute later yeah that car is still running jack van impe has taken the wheel of the car so fritz obviously brought it back in and had probably had enough of it just for the moment he will have to do lots more hours though let's hear from toyota gazoo racing brendan hartley's aboard number eight [Music] rain right now i would probably recommend interest because the track's not that wet um no rain in the pit lane well that's because you're in the garage because outside our shed comedy booth at the entrance to the pit lane it definitely was raining is it raining any longer graeme says it's no it is no longer there is not no rain here also here are your four class leaders kamu kobayashi for toyota gazoo racing julian canal leads for palace in lmp2 comeledega for a of course the porsche pro in a ferrari and dylan pereira has been at the wheel of the tf sport car he's got back in after handing it over to ben keating he's been in it they've got to the end of the line and then they're coming back in the opposite direction so felipe fraga may well be in next although we were told to expect rain in the first couple of hours of the race we were told that pretty much after that it should remain dry but as we know weather forecasting you know particularly at le mans it's this this race does seem to be a bit of a magnet for it doesn't it but it you know all racing tracks have their own microclimate anybody who's ever watched anything from the nordschleife of the nurburgring knows that and lemon is no different right there we've just gone past the point i think where this is the replay that was just going to start talking about sofia flourish and franca colopinto yes you mean he's coming into view sideways yeah he is spinning around here i think they had contact but you see the problem is you watch your hands and they don't move and and almost inevitably you think if if you're in a turn and you make contact with somebody the wheel your your your wheels are going to get knocked your hands will move on the steering wheel right and there was the secondary so there she is that's how little you can see around the corner don't forget the driver's eye view is basically of armco yes and she's on board she has no clue what is coming for her whoa and that that you know three or four replays in it doesn't make for any more comfortable with the united cars yeah and it's just a brutal impact and that is a big hit for both of those cars richard dean must have just have his head in his hands right now well you know fortunately both driver crews are both drivers are a-okay all three united cars right now was that the 28 no no no it was just it was just two of them so 48 spinning as well the idex bought car that i think that was the third car that was there that came through after that incident that looked like it was another united car yeah the 23 car now back on the pit lane with no tyres so more time being lost here well i think that they're now with the safety cars they can't leave the pit lane until the next queue comes to pass and the next queue is at our large i know safety car a is just going into the porsche curve so actually they do need the tires on because oh they're going slicks yes i was wondering if they were waiting for wets they were just they were just deciding on which ones they're going to get out of the heater different rear end going on to the alpine now is that because of contact and damage is that because there's been damage going off or is that grip didn't they really problem and i think i will miss that one matcha vaseville waiting all right let's hear from the 49 high-class car please try the best you can do to get temperatures in the tires if if there is a restart on these tires you need to be extremely careful in the beginning because the pressures are really low and also stay off the curbs pressures are really low which which gentlemen means that the temperatures are going to be really low which means there's no grip stay off the kerbs because otherwise we'll get a puncher or more likely to get a puncher the car will bottom out if you straddle them because you've got a little less there you can see the drivers safety indicator inside darren turner safety car boards are out around the circuit safety car light is on in the cockpit so everybody knows exactly the state of the race track where they are i just come back and it's it's all kicked off hasn't it pandemonium again was it was it you i don't think so but uh yeah it looks like a lot of chaos has gone on in the last 25 minutes or so yeah well you know toss a sprinkle of rain into a closely fought race when everybody's on hot slicks and and that's what happens cars off everywhere and actually predominantly lmp2 cars off everywhere and and that's what we've seen through practice isn't it that the cars that are having the high speed offs predominantly have been lmp2 cars back to green we're back to green yep that was a very short change back to green so in fact what does that do for the alpine the safety car q goes by and the pit lane will open and he will come into it the leader is midway down uh from oh just come out of our so he was behind safety cart uh c for the drivers that were in the pit lane just now and being released on new tyres fresh out of the oven this is actually ideal because at least they can get straight up to speed without uh having some more time behind the safety cars yeah and the guys that have been behind the safety car they're now going to battle to get their tyres up to temp and just get everything going again it is it's as as as yan's engineer was saying you know you've just got to be super careful when you get going again temperature's down pressures are low don't use any kerb but you know be careful great opportunity perhaps for macho factories coming out of the pits on hot tyres and paul deresta from united on hot tyres when everybody else is not at best they'll be on sort of vaguely close to operating temperature let's catch up with what happened to the 38 joe to car duncan vincent yeah thanks martin the 38 car went through the gravels we're aware of very early on they didn't realize they picked up a small stone hole in the oil filter so the car had been losing oil which set off a few alarms and it got gibson involved they saw that they've brought it and they've changed that now and as they did that they saw what happened at the first corner and it really has spurred on the rest of the team now to say that everybody can have a bad day there's a long way to go and they're still very much in it with the 38 here well there might be a long way to go but they are 23rd of 24 uh their 23rd of 23 running lmp2 cars because of course we've lost the number one car which was ahead of them on the road um so they have definitely got problems recent meal racing team i'm afraid car number one 44. 44 arc bratislava is uh facing the wrong way or facing the barriers and is that miro canopica no he got out of the car a while ago didn't he it's mate can occur his son and why has this happened obviously this is one of the chicanes of the first chicane yeah it's still damp there isn't it yeah isn't it and that's because there's a crown on the road as there is on every public highway he tried to spin turn and hasn't got it done and he's ended up a nose up against the barrier nudged into the tires 26 back out on track yeah roma roosen off at the wheel franco cola pinter nick dufrese the other two drivers of the g drive machine yellow at marshall's post 11 which is first chicane so the canopica car is still there and i think the marker of doom do we think that is the end definitely the end of the road for the number one richard mille racing team car i think it very probably is so the marker of doom is coming out there is no tip x of redemption so that is probably them done which is one of our two all-female crews gone nikki katzbergen uh still behind the wheel of the number 63 car he is up behind neil yani uh in the 92 porsche tiptoeing their way down down to the second chicane there's tricky conditions mate if this is tiptoeing i don't want to live in the flat underneath you they are lead footing aren't they i'm not sure nikki cats but of course he can spell tiptoe but i'm not sure he actually does tiptoe nikki katzberg does door handles and nothing nothing in between really yeah he is very good in the rain and he gets it done he's dutch he's used to it through you know sample gets as much rain as silverstone probably and yeah so yeah johnny in the in the porsche the 92 car which of course on lap one was suddenly nowhere nightmare opening lap didn't it yeah and came from a long way back listen if you're gonna have a nightmare have it on lap one not the last lap of the race because then you've got 24 hours to recover so yellow flags have been withdrawn the arc bratislava car is on its way again and the number one richard mille racing team car is our third abond it's not it's our second ab on dawn the number 17 idex port car was they did not start of course so be interesting to see what tyres people are on let's see if see what they've um i'm sure they'll be just the drying wet in gte pro and it'll be intermediates i would have thought for most yeah a flurry of pit stops here were there was there lots of tire changes because of the rain did people come in or did they stay out because the safety car came out so er so early in the in the uh crash fest i'd be surprised with with anyone taking on a a full wet or even a drying wet i presume maybe some have gone on to an inter but when you look at the circuit it's only like maybe 30 of the track at the moment has got any any issue with uh with the rain yeah the the only problem was that when everybody was going off stage left right and center um if you had a gentleman driver in the car you would almost certainly have whipped him in to to get him onto something more appropriate or get him out or get him out or get him out yes yeah there are quite a flurry of lmp2 pit stops 709 clicking houses in ah the toyotas the race leaders have been in and out of the pit so brendan hartley has been through in number eight and on pit road at the moment is camille kobayashi at number seven so the two toyota gazoo racing cars both stopping driver change and this will be uh pachito lopez it is getting in for his first stint behind the wheel i think brendan hartley's uh he's gone out on intermediate that's all just shown showing a little message on that so he's out there maybe maybe the uh the eight i'm sorry the seven car will will go to that as well enters for number seven we are being told that seems really belt and braces because you know we're now getting to the stage where it's dark temperatures are lower and now if that of course that is is that the slick intermediate or is that actually just a slick it's got to be white it's wonderful if it's been cut and cut no no it's got that well certainly the rear had no grooves on it at all but it is it's their intermediate tire it's uh the front had great slick immediate oh did it okay the rear didn't look like it did that was always a little trick to have in your bag wasn't it just a set of hand cut slicks uh available just in case uh you come into these sort of conditions when a slick is nearly nearly right but not quite yeah so the alpine stays out in third place we're on board in the battle for second place in gte pro completed our leads from sam bird both in ferraris this is a 92 isn't it porsche they were passing a clicking house there i think earlier on in the straight yep well when you've got well you've got grip stay with it and there is a that's the gr racing car in between who's in that now tom gamble is in they've taken mike wayne right out after his two stints neil johnny on board with the porsche and those rain lights as you were saying ollie nice to have them switched off because particularly in the dark it's like following somebody who's got their fog lights on on the motorway you really have your retinas seared by them they are really offensive but they work in the big spray the big rain the worst track condition looks like it's from tet rouge down to the first first chicane everything else looks pretty good now yeah in terms of general uh grip levels etc alexander stalig at the back of the porsche garage and this 92 car you know you wouldn't have given tuppence for their chances on lap two of the race would you and here we are when you know we're not even a quarter distance and they're in a podium position and how far from the lead of the race 18 seconds yeah 19 seconds yeah and that's you know a drop in the ocean even in a class this competitive that can come and go in a heartbeat yeah and it's it's uh tricky conditions at the moment but you know a car that's quick right now in 20 minutes maybe falling like a stone um just down to its configuration the turrets chosen or or something they've just done with the car but we'll have to see we'll have to see because nikki's just dropped off the back of uh neil yani so nikki kasberg in the 63 car she's dropped off the back of the 92 car yeah just about four seconds back now did we see what tyre the uh number seven went on uh i'm assuming it was eight yes eight definitely went on to an interview yeah yeah [Applause] let's hear from duncan vincent uh that you've been picking up a little bit of a trend in the pit lane about communication problems i have i've been very lucky to to kind of find this one out to ferret this out the teams have been having problem redoing from the car or the shore to the car depending on where the car is on the circuit so take racing team netherlands fritz had no prior warning that the rain was falling on that part of the circuit the team were trying to radio and trying to ward and tell him but it wasn't working so that's how fritz you heard on the radio was very animated and very annoyed but that's just one of a handful of teams that's been cut been getting caught up with it martin so radio communication issues at le mans catching the teams with the weather that's certainly not something that you want you know it's critical to have that information that flow backwards and forwards between the team the driver the car you know just just for you know normal strategy and just running on track but when it gets tricky conditions like this and it's critical to get a message to the driver you know it can be race ending as we've seen you know if the driver is not warned about certain conditions that are coming up and uh yeah it's it is and again it just comes down to you know really sort of crossing everything off you know in that checklist before you start the race in that warm-up session making sure that everything's good and strong but i don't know if there's something that's popped up particularly today with uh with radio transmissions because it seems like there's a few teams having the problems yeah and it is unusual you know in the old days it was it was like going around the dark side of the moon wasn't it you sort of get halfway down the mulsanne because the trees were so high and there'd be nothing nothing nothing nothing until you're coming back out of arnold no repeater well let's hear from the 92 porsche yeah you're doing a mega job mate mega drop it's the battle for peace [Music] he's actually gained from it yes he has [Music] having a couple of minutes ago uncapped the marker of doom to cross off the number one richard mille racing team uh the marker of doom strikes again this has been a fairly uh fairly tough time for some teams number 32 united auto sports car will not go out again so united's 32 car is out of the race wow so that is our third official retirement is it the 98 aston martin the number one car and the number 32 car hey so ferrari win if you lose a few keep your foot down yeah we'll see if there's any action taken there if he does it another couple of times then i'm sure something will be done but you know it does happen occasionally you know if you make a mistake and you end up straight lining a bit of a corner then and you keep your momentum up you know and he obviously got off the break when he realized he wasn't going to make the turn and just round enough he just did enough just to make sure he didn't go in the gravel yep but he also knows that there's that bit of tarmac on the inside there of the ap of the left-hander apex so that he just used that and then just got his toe down and got a really good run off dunlop's always uh good for that has it you come through term one make a mistake under the underbreakers i think it was kobayashi in the night yeah and it was like six or seven laps when he was in the ferrari um behind i was like i can't get away from this guy and then i worked out what he was doing because chicane is much quicker if you don't bother with it yeah i learned a few of those tricks with thomas enger yeah you know those years ago in the 550 ferrari jumping the chicanes at the four chicanes come on let it go hang on hang a bit ollie okay how many races do corvette reckon you won because of thomas enger mistakes i think it was it was either two or three lemon that we ended up winning because of something that thomas did so boy he was involved in and yeah you know blessing thomas he's a brilliant guy such a lovely chap yeah yeah so so fast and he got a lot of pole positions here didn't he yeah yeah it was great five to midnight it was ender o'clock wasn't it yeah on uh on thursday night you're always just waiting for him to go out do something very very special he has he definitely had a draw of top top laps that he would go to yeah here's our lead battle in lmp2 the number 22 united auto sports car started 12th in class dropped back like it was in free fall at the beginning of the race in the rain and now here is fabio shearer challenging julian canal for the lead yeah they're just making their way through very tricky part of the track at the moment this looks slick and slippery through the porsche curves coming out out of there and then down to the first part of before chicanes what you need in the porsche curves is a nice greasy track because they're no challenge at all really aren't they yeah it's uh ah drive through penalty for the number 28 car for crossing the pit entry white line and that will have been probably a very late call box box box oops okay and he's been in the car for a while so he actually incurred that penalty fabio shera in the pits for united auto sport so that was his in-lap he was chasing uh the panic racing car and that's a very slow way around the chicane not quite sure which lmp2 car that was but getting in very very deep indeed under defensive driving on the white line on the pit lane entry where's that then everywhere i know the one on the way out but you just come off the track on the way in yes it's amazing yeah but if you come in late it's a big curve and come across which she drove over once yeah i've had that that yes certainly all right well let's hear from the number eight toyota brendan hartley was hoping for interest wasn't he maybe i think it was a mistake sorry guys okay we need to uh see how long we can make this uh go for it's a bit vague talking about making a mistake yeah sorry guys he's tried quicker than he expected because we heard him saying when they were behind the safety car you know if we're going to change tires now i would recommend inters he's now going damn it no it was slicks but both cars are in the same situation because the number seven car also took into so it's no net gain no net loss for the number eight cars so yeah if they're looking to jump back onto them and maybe even leapfrog them that was their opportunity to do it yep well there will be more opportunities because there will be more full course yellows there will be more safety we'll have about the full course here yeah there may will be more safety cars will be more slow zones so we're watching sam bird and neil yarny going at it again into indianapolis and [Music] yeah well luckily race control have no access to any images of the track and so they rely on teams to grasp up their opposition however neil stop getting on the radio and whining because you're closing in on him but it'll be super frustrating isn't it every time he's getting close and then trying to line himself up for a move and then you know the ferrari takes over a shortcut it's uh it's frustrating there's an instant message messaging system that the teams used backwards and forwards to eduardo discord like all gamers do yes right of course exactly so there'll be yeah plenty yeah plenty of that going on lots of chat on that no doubt lots of bounce and actually bizarrely virtual le man which we held in in june last year because there was no real them on in june last year that introduced race control to the delights of discord because all the teams all the drivers wherever they were across the planet from the studio in paris to japan and america and new zealand and and wherever else were on discord and eduardo went this is the most fantastic thing and so they introduced it immediately that was close that was close duncan cameron is the gentleman driver in there yeah that's getting a little bit too hot into the s's there and they're on the left and then just running over right over those bollards that the other side of the curb on that right-hander and he's just spun around took one of the bollards away and fortunately not gone in the wall that's a really tight spot to try and spin around as well there's not much room around that area but he's just done it yeah he's managed to get going plus how wide will his eyes have been as as oncoming traffic and just missed him before it even stopped rolling and and we don't we don't am like that it's this next lap or so where he's just got to get his composure back where he's just got it really focus [Music] to somewhere you're faster than sam bird that much is evident you're also faster than the leader who is the other a of course the ferrara of com ledegar so the gaps come down now to 13 seconds the last time we looked at it was 18. yep adam hardy is the engineer on that car and he's working hard to to keep neil updated and you know making sure that he's got all of that sort of encouraging information to make sure that neil's you know confidence is buoyed and yet you know let's just keep pressing on don't get bogged down in in the little things that maybe sam's doing that could get distracted by yeah there's a lot of radio traffic going on to neil gianni isn't there i just correct that the corvette behind [Music] is just three seconds behind this battles this is soon gonna be a three-way listener that's super information though that's the type of uh information across the radio you want from a race engineer just to keep you up to date let you know what the picture is around you because at this certainly this time of night you're not aware of the cars coming because they're just a load of lights behind you in the day you can pick people up as you go through corners you can see okay this guy's like three four seconds behind but at this stage it's just another set of lights exactly yeah and there are so many of them and and actually it could easily be an am-class car you can't tell in the darkness even if you recognize the light pattern you can't tell whether it's a pro or an am car i think we've got someone off uh down at the esses again after the dunlop chicane there's a yellow down there so it could well be that somebody's gone off on that slippery surface meanwhile sam bird clinging tenaciously to second place neil johnny in third in the porsche i'm sure that uh eduardo has sent a message to the to the af courser boys and saying look you tell your driver behave he may well have sent one directly into the cockpit to sam bird saying that final warning track limits yeah you know do it again sunbeam and it's uh it's a penalty stop of vandoorne in the 28 yota sport car so that's a 90-second penalty isn't it yeah this has also been a leader for joe to sport there's no question they've got a great engineering team they know how to run these cars to victory seven getting ready to go full course yellow how many minutes ago did i say we haven't had one so far one full course yeah i must learn not to open my cars to bear totally to the right all cars bear totally right at marshall post five marshall post five so that's down there in the s's yep somebody is off beached on the kerbs on the uh drivers left-hand side james getting ready yes so full course yellow if you are on your way from uh arnage it's a great opportunity if the window opens and actually anybody who's on the wrong tire are we gonna how long since the toyota's changed they're not even halfway through a stint it's been about four or five laps not even how many have they got on there there's four well what do you do it's a it's a dribble of a stint isn't it you know you've you've you're only a third of the way through but you are wrong on the wrong time you've only got 23 seconds now so well number seven has opted not to go into the pits so they are staying on the tire ten nine eight it's too short six five four three two one full course yellow removed four course yellow has been removed and great yes that was just to collect the bollard that was sat there from duncan's earlier spin could well have been could well have been just to allow a marshall to run across the track and as ever thanks to all the volunteers the marshals who have come here the inspectors in the pit lane the garages everyone else who is working for race control and for the safety services to make sure that the drivers that remain safe at all times all still looks unpaid it's very sketchy out there yeah coming through the s's and into tetraroos it's just as and we're not seeing lots of spray but there's so much reflection of the lights off yep and it's that sort of condition now where you just sort of think is it going to dry how much more is it going to dry is it it's just not [Music] it's just that horrible forget this circus because that film on it [Music] three or four gte am cars stopped under full course yellow got somebody off here [Music] birdie going off as sam just placed his car just in the right spot there as he was coming off the corner and neil just had to just breathe it yep sam stays in front yep again look at the cue of cars behind it's starting to close up how far back is nikki katzberg now 1.2 seconds he's the next car isn't he he is the next car yeah that set of lights there that's the corvette entertaining stuff and roman rusinov behind them uh in the g drive car next on the he's not actually behind him on the road he's next in the order he's up to 28th place overall has james collado already been in or would this be his first no he's been in before yeah his second time in the car yep been sleeping no i had a little sleep did you well done it's important as soon as you step away from the car or the microphone go and get some rest hydrate eat massage did you enjoy massage yeah excellent very good oh dear that is the chest of roberto la court and that car ninth in gte am he hasn't just know he's not one of the pit callers and he has dropped behind first chicane was that the car we saw that sam was nearly gonna yes it runs westward yes it is which one i'll just pick that out which chicane is that that's the first time i can't see the alpine has just gone through i can't see which one it's a gt am porsche so it wasn't one of our pro cars but um yeah i wonder whether that was the car that narrowly narrowly missed duncan cameron when he was spinning and facing the other way because it was another ferrari that shot by but we didn't really see the replay but uh he has just lost a spot to duncan cameron so i have a feeling it may well have been great view down from the uh telly heli of the village that is le man in race week the uh all the illumination of the pit boxes g drives number 25 car is in this is the car john phelps driving did his run effectively by the algarve pro team with regulation hit stop high class have just sent ricky taylor back out in the number 20 car and the number 30 appears to have stopped coming into the pits every lap doesn't it remember we had that long period where the ducane car just would not stop bothering its team yes and now they finally have persuaded it that actually going round and round in circles is what it is supposed to be doing i think they fixed the uh radio they fixed the problem they had with the steering wheel the aircon they've fluffed up the pillows yeah polished everything drivers stopped crashing yeah well that too that doesn't hurt either does it uh tristan comedy at the wheel of that car in fact he is ahead of ricky taylor by just under a minute and chasing birthday boy felipe nasa who celebrates his birthday today in the risi competizione car and that is 16th in lmp2 and 19th place overall 20th place overall because one of the clickers both are making houses actually now the 708 clicking house is up to fourth place overall didn't notice that people durrani has gone past the lmp2 leader louis delatraz who is in the pits luis dad john denis was racing earlier mostly that's a blondie here don't sing haven't done it jan magnuson comes into the pit lane just under our noses that's in the high-class racing entry they've had a tough week the high-class boys have both cars both the 49 and the 20 30 habsburg in as well that's wrt from third place three blue lights down the side pods of the car that shows he's in third place in lmp2 another driver from the uh who's been impressive through this year and he was in the asian le mans series you know he was doing a solid job out there all right there you go there are both of our wrt cars john dooney heads off and he is now third in class as ferdi habsburg's lights changed when he got to the line the top three lights went off and then were switched over to uh louis de la tras not john denis that's another dads and lads combination although they haven't actually raced together this weekend right they're both racing at the same track but not in the same car right so you'd say at the moment the track certainly for the hyper cars is a good 20 22 seconds off maybe yeah something like that well it's it's too dry for inters and they're stuck on inters and that's their issue right but you're right yeah they're certainly not troubling the three-minute 30s are they last lap for the toyota's three-minute 47 for the number eight car and four minutes 28 but that hasn't been a flying lap now why have we got a slow zone here this is is that still for the errant yeah car do we think yeah but that car got out going ages ago [Music] there's more spray [Music] there is more spray and they're leaving marks in the road yes good spot and gav looks just so sketchy slimy is the word isn't there yeah just these conditions that you as a driver at this time of the night it's tough to manage you know it can catch you out just like that and it will change corner to corner straight to straight and lap by lap as well it'll be a little bit drier which is okay or a little bit less dry which is definitely not yes [Music] because because you're not like driving like a row car down are you you don't sort of see what's there and then gradually break you're all or nothing yeah i mean you've basically got one one option isn't it it's uh let's drive as fast as you can with the conditions you've got facing the wrong way 83 83 that's one of our leaders in the uh am class where were they second in class and in fact dylan pereira is in the pits for tf sport aston so that was a less than optimal time to drop the car yes [Music] sub-optimal on that but uh yeah it looked like he just looped it as he came around and through the left well there's very good news yeah a bit battered and bruised and and still shocked but little yeah a little thumbs up and a bit of a smile on her face [Music] so yeah i don't think there was any sort of coming across onto the racing line no but it was it was completely uh did you see at the last moment her head turned she was aware that there was somebody coming down beside her and i think that was that car was already out of control at that point yes absolutely the more i see it the more he's having an accident and collects her yeah this is not nice to watch for it and that's tom clowe he just had nowhere to go like we said earlier on it was like his eyes were going on the car and he was just going wherever at wherever he was looking and that's her trying to select a gear she's flicking the gear she's trying to get it to to move and then bam that her world explodes yeah that's he already been through a next slow zone sign yeah because right the other side of them was the 80 markers so you should have already been slowing down yeah ready for 18. and he probably was but it's the porsche curve so you're slowing down from a lot of speed and it's greasy so you don't just hit the anchors because you go straight off so he's yeah now i know less than ideal and that's why that's why race directors get really really ticked off with people who don't slow down in slow zones sure absolutely all four slow zones because or just for yellow flags no exactly right exactly right [Music] so 17 hours and 50 minutes we've just passed the six hour mark here in the 24 hours of le mans so one quarter distance feeling fresh everybody absolutely absolutely are you fresher than i was this morning i think probably and accidentally thursday evening crept into friday evening which was never never a good thing the point of rosa you had i didn't have a pinty rose it wasn't too red into europa have inserted alex brundle into the car the last sixth in lmp2 so uh boy brundle is back on okay down into india indianapolis part two this is the 83 car is it yes oh it looks just do you know what saw what was coming and got himself out of trouble and doesn't step on the brakes and lets it roll so he's further away from the corner i know but the further you are are away rolling backwards in that corner the safer everyone is that was a properly it was a bit of skill to go back that was a lot of heads up because he could just easily put his foot on the brake make it stop 22 united car again felipe albuquerque felipe is the fastest car that's fabio shera at the wheel that is the lead real lmp too that is the poison chalice of this race so far isn't it being the leader in lmp2 you're just waiting for the guillotine aren't you you're waiting for the axe to fall and that dropped him to third because it's not competitive in lmp2 at all [Music] there's felipe they're just going oh yes you know and antonio felix decosta in the joe to support garage as well the third show can't go oh make it stop now could you now now he's definitely in the could you just blow the car up can we all go to bed now you know they're down in 33rd they're 20th in lmp2 yeah it's tough it's really hard now you've got to keep grinding away and doing the laps and just hoping that you somehow get a result but there are so many competitive cars within within lmp2 here is your race leading team panic racing and if you notice it is it still bears the name of olivier panis but the i is a one because the technical running of the team on behalf of olivia panis is by tech okay so former single seater team set up by xf3 driver uh simon abadi with his sister sarah and sarah is is the engineering brains behold the whole thing she runs the entire program and tech one very successful in things like world series by reno in gp2 multiple championship winners and single seaters and former renault oh wow it's a 22 car going off again through the gravel at bullseye corner just getting in really hot just needs to take a breath franco colopinto has been summoned to the race director they have watched data telemetry and video and they now want his final word on it okay that would be because they were all trying to slow down for the 80 weren't they that the 80 was already in place [Music] i didn't see it live so i don't remember there was a lot going on there yes wasn't there though there was stuff going off everywhere in a big way 30 has been in and out of the pits standard pit stop i didn't know that mima rojas was guillermo rojas that's obviously uh the shorter version of guillermo never really ever really thought that he's always just been yes and then there you go so it's a diminutive uh he is out in the decaying number 30 car so pit stops for the gte pros and you need to develop this skill you know become like david or ian titchmarsh who just whacks lyrical anytime there's some tatty old italian alfa romeo in shot you know you need to start oh look at the gorgeous lights what what a beautiful car actually while we while we were looking at that what is the big difference between thundering great front engine corvette and ferrari like mid-engine corvette how is it even remotely the same kind of a car to drive it is a it is a pretty big step change for the team and for everybody that's been driving the c8r i had the pleasure of driving it all last year um and but you know with the engine now in the middle you know that engine placement of it and where you're now sat in the car when you turn the car into the corner it's rotating completely around where you sit before in the c7 other previous generations of car it was rotating right around your knees so that was something that was it was just slightly detached in some ways but you know the weight distribution of the car the arrow on the car is a big step forward and you know and so yes and you're also sitting further forward in the car so you've got slightly better vision you feel a little bit more connected with the road i mean there's all of these things have just helped to enhance the you know your performance in the car and also your experience on the road with with the road car the corvette and and the aston martin as well darren you know with that front engine because they because they were based on road cars you weren't quite sitting on the diff like david brabham would have been in the panels but you were a long way away from kind of being in the middle of the car still yeah i mean all the astons that we've raced uh right from the beginning with the dbr9 they've all been front-ended yeah so we've not had that experience yet of going to a mid-engine aston martin but i'm sure that will be something in the future to look forward to what we are heading down to pit lane to catch up with louise beckett who's not once complained about the weather which is jolly good news but she has uh caught up with anthony davidson so we're going to find out a little bit more hopefully about what befell him in the race-leading jota number 38 car and as soon as we get the opportunity to do that we will bring that to you meanwhile okay let's get down to louise beckett anthony we saw you go off in the gravels not usual for you the the conditions are difficult out there for everyone tell us from your point of view what happened [Music] yeah okay we'll come back to you lou thank you very much we're not seeing you or hearing you just so you're aware [Music] louis de la tras and the race lead being really hustled by julian canal and racing team netherlands in japan it will stay in this is the end of his first stint so slick's going on scrub slips by the look of it they don't have that sheen of a fresh set so they will probably have done one stint or a part stint before they went on to winters yellows marshall's post 27 darwin have you found that yet is that down at mulsanne corner that's avanash [Music] i need to go and get my glasses from the car rain lights may be turned off says the race director what happens next ollie it starts right yeah exactly right and i'm in the booth again so yeah so those those those same clouds are lining up behind yeah um you'd have a choice now wouldn't you if you had someone really behind you and you're in a battle i'd leave mine on it's a choice i'm sure they've oh what the rainbow turned off so i'd be like okay i may turn them off that switch professional racing drivers ladies and gentlemen it's all good clean fun till the day it isn't toyota gazoo racing one two and up to third place a long while ago when the alpene was in second early on now the clicking house has just stopped of 708 and that's dropped down from fourth to eighth place and another spin for the 44 car is that mate konopka again i believe it is he's taken the rear wing off the lights on inside the gathered into the barriers it's possibly because he's had the door open okay let's hear again from anthony davidson if we can anthony we'll try again uh it's not like you we saw you in the gravel we know the conditions are difficult out there what happened i just lost it plain and simple um it was wet around turn one the porsche went off in front of me probably distracted me a little bit i'm honest and took my eyes off the road momentarily looking at him and uh the whole rest of the circuit had been dry up until that point and even the memory of having left the pits going through the pit lane and through turn one and turn two it was much drier than what it was when it came back around and um yeah like plain and simple hands up my fault um i'm sorry to the guys especially antonio he was flying out there doing such a great job this week and it's not normal that i'm the one that ruins it for everyone but i did this time so i'm gutted the 38 jota has been in the garage for quite a while since then was there damage from that it was part of the um it was part of the uh the off through the gravel unfortunately some i think stones got wedged between the floor and the engine and punctured the oil filter which then the engine started losing oil so they had to then change that so yeah just snowballed from that that one small mistake which had massive consequences i was hopeful that i got away with it because didn't end up in the barrier but um yeah it's just it's disgusting the rain came down straight out there on slicks cold slicks and yeah i mean honestly i think if you had given me that chance to go out there and do it all over again i would have made exactly the same mistake all over again it was really just it was too difficult to manage i know other people managed it but you know i was in the lead of the race or in my class and you don't want to give up the lead so it's a balance between taking risk not not letting others catch you under those conditions and i'm usually really good in those conditions i never throw it off with slicks in the way i'm always the one that survives and [Music] so no i'm i'm disappointed with myself gutted yeah it's not the way that i wanted this lamont to go it all looked so good the car was so good the guys had done a brilliant job and uh yeah the car was flying it was a dream to drive all week we'd all worked so well myself included getting the setup just perfect but yeah i hadn't i hadn't scraped the car at all the way through i was the one that didn't damage the bodywork the other two had crashes and i was the one that didn't and um i chose the worst possible time to do it oh anthony i'm sorry yeah i think from your from your answer you've done enough of that now all right thanks thanks thank you very much louise and guys you know when you know you've just dropped the car there's no amount of apologizing that can make any difference in in retrospect but it's just heartbreaking isn't it yeah it is and you know and was very honest and open there you know about what happened and you know he isn't someone that that drops the car and and goes off and crashes regularly he's usually an extremely safe pair of hands very fast and very experienced now and uh you know and it can it just can't bite you like this and this this race it can be just brutal uh in the way that it just can run up and bite you out of nowhere and you think you've got everything covered and and you know he covered all of that he touched all of those points just saying about how that really worked so hard on the setup of the car really fettled everything and they were super happy and comfortable and really got themselves in a great spot and then just one the timing of it you know with the rain and the gt car going off going into that particular part of the racetrack and then you know into the gravel one little bit of gravel then gets into a filter and then oh you know someone off here i think this has come down into the first two cars 56 and there's another car that's another porsche isn't it that's a porsche rear wing there are two porsches there so 56 integer perfetti the former gtm world champion safety car is out 33 is there because their lights are new lights are flashing so julio perfetti and there's big barrier damage mr martin that has been in hard and fast it's going to turn sharp right as we see it sharp left on the driver on the brakes and then somebody has just gone off in sort of in sympathy that's another that's another portion no it's not it's [Music] no but he can't get it around the corner either he wouldn't slow down and it wouldn't go around the turn it was like he was he was cadence breaking he was trying to get everything sort of it was locking and then was coming off locking and coming off right so why did the porsche swap ends it was in the middle of the road it's not wet has the porsche just had a catastrophic loss of oil that is the engine or gearbox seized on him is that why he just kind of went looping off down into the tires certainly with the the tf car that looked very strange to be sort of just following into the accident yeah it also didn't look like he's even pushing at that point that wasn't like he'd already backed off so yeah because it's yellow [Applause] you're an aston martin driver you've broken enough of them what's what what's broken on this well i'm just trying to think what that noise was but this is it's disappeared again this is now post the accident so this is live i thought that was going to be a replay of him going in let's hear what felipe fraga has to say coffee currently safety car how do the tires feel okay it sounds like a puncture something's chattering is it the splitter the car was crabbing it looked like it was crabbing or it was doing walking he was sort of walking in the brake zone but that that was maybe some sort of failure in the porsche but it may well be that both of these cars have had some sort of mechanical failure at the same point yeah well the tv into the pits and just see yeah see if they roll the car it sounded like something in the diff or something didn't it so yeah but if they roll the car back into the garage you know it's going to be a a fairly sizable change or something there's a tf sport garage yeah that does not sound good dustin does it no he's got all the hallmarks under the safety car he could be catching up with the group in front and he's not going that quick at the stage does he so he's definitely nursing that car back to the pits yep he's got a while to go as well the safety car in front of him actually is at indianapolis so he is in the back of the queue that has the leader with it meanwhile work going on uh that was pr1 matheson wasn't it the dolly's went under the car when simon trummel was sitting there so that is going into the garage for something edex sport there in the garage we're in the pit lane rather with the 48 car united pulled the rest of the 23 cars in the uh has been out actually so got out mateo vazivir got out as well now toyota didn't stop in the full course yellow to get shot of the inappropriate inters are they going to stop behind the safety car for the inappropriate interes where's the number eight car in the queue uh he'll be behind the safety car that is now the first chicane i think so the race leader will be our cue the number seven toyota is behind safety car a this is safety car is behind safety car seat this safety car a you're just looking at through the chicane safety car b rather and there is a gdo perfetti well the good news is that the norwegian is out of the car and a-okay the bad news is that the car is not a-okay they'll be out won't they yes because they can't he can't get the car back and he's not allowed to drive it and nobody will go out and get it so they are out as well i'm afraid to see a bit of a debrief here sam burns just giving james a big sort of chat to about what's what the track's like and you know what to expect or you know what bits to to not use or use of the circuit you know which bits that he's found to be very particularly slippery when james started it was very wet and he's not driven in these nasty conditions yeah and there might be just a particular thing that's happened on the track that you you now need to avoid you know like coming through here at uh you know the first chicane you need to it does look so slippery and slick as you come through no oil flags so but i mean the ego perfetti accent egdo is absolutely one of the fastest am drivers in this field he and ben keating i don't think there's i don't think there's a gtm driver that is quicker than those two just his body language there he's frustrated and he's going you know i can't believe this this happened yeah he's just standing there going what happened right that is that that is what happens is there's something else that you know that the car before those two ended up going down there dropped some fluids and the hardest thing is for the the flag marshals at this time of when it's dark just to be able to be able to see yeah you can't see a slick on the road when it's half slick anyway because it's so greasy right rear puncture for the 33 louise reports i think louise might need to go to pr1 matheson because that car is in the garage and the door came off it and i don't know why again watch those lights goes one way goes the other and then he's just a passenger the weirdly was that he was on the right hand side coming down into the corner he was all the way over on drivers as a driver would be sitting there it's on driver's right it seems like everybody looks yeah so it was right so was frogger as well at the same time wasn't it yeah just not taking a normal line and he's yeah but he's desperate to to get the thing to start now it's just not stopping no no and now we've got to see how much damage has been done with all of that that tyre flapping and unraveling and that's a right rear puncture what did he hit to get a right rear puncture just he drove over something to get a right rear puncture yeah the car wouldn't stop because it the right rear wheel was going down so the front wheels which are doing the braking are coming off the ground that's why he wouldn't stop yeah is it debris that put a gdo perfetti off there as well they changed the floor at the back the splitter at the back as well as uh changing the tire they had it where they had it off didn't they they had a really good look at it and i think they've changed it but yeah that is the uh that's the offending i think that is cause and not effect the mishnah men will be able to i don't know how they can take like shreds like that and go yeah that was a puncture caused by debris but apparently they can it's actually unusual to see a wheel like that usually the michelin guys are all over that with a bag protecting their intellectual copyright yeah technology that's the end of the road i'm afraid for another i don't think david's not even wielded the marker yet and that is a big loss for gta and battle that's the 56 porsche and that is done and for exactly the same reason not un repairable damage but the fact that the medical lights went on and the driver then was not able to get back to the pit lane but to get out of the car and then go to the medical center in his eighth so seven's gone by seven has gone by and has not stopped behind the safety car now he was nearest to the pit lane he's the race leader he surely would have had the option but you'd want to stay out wouldn't you if you didn't have to box under the safety car you're going to try and push it as long as you can and as soon as it goes green then box because that's still going to be more efficient than boxing under the uh under the safety under the safety car even staying out on inters well it's only going to be another lap or something like that so it would be at this point try and drag that out as far as possible if you've got the fuel to do it if you can you don't want to pit under the safety car okay why not because you lose so much you definitely fall out because of the safety cars or you could gain a lot well let's get down to pr1 motorsport matheson and find out what's going on louise beckett gabby aubry we can see this extensive work going on in the car tell me what's happened well i've just arrived a couple seconds ago i've built on that i've been told that it's the oil cooling system that's leaking so we've been losing a little bit of oil since uh since the start and that's what we are changing right now and we're making also a couple changes on the door which we had a problem on so could that oil have gone out on the track well it must have been somewhere right it's not been a huge one but as we started to lose um to lose performance we started before we actually lost all of it on track okay how long do you think this is gonna take i have no idea hopefully about 15. we've seen that the race is basically a carnage right now with cars everywhere so we're not losing hope and i'd rather have an issue early in the early in the race than tomorrow at four so we keep we keep pushing and we see where we are in the morning thanks gabby thank you thank you gabriel aubry thank you two to louise beckett so it wasn't maybe a catastrophic oil loss but something punctured the 33 cars tyre and something put a gido perfetti off there into the barriers of the first chicane and i don't think that something is unrelated there's there i'm pretty sure there was something in the road both of them were running down in the middle or to the right in the approach to the first chicane yeah maybe it was just they were looking for the dry line at that point but could well be uh but it's strange that they're both in that track position at that point and and the drivers are both too good to just been a car at the chicane for no good reason it wasn't suddenly much wetter you know that that was it was that sort of an incident where they suddenly go skating off because they've hit water that wasn't their last lap and that wasn't so we're in the third safety car of the race and comledega has just bailed out of the gte pro leading ferrari hand it over to james collado and that means that nikki katzberg goes through pl1 matheson with a bit of work to do they had an issue with the door and presumably that's because it wasn't closing properly in pit stops or easily in pit stops and so they're changing that as well in is the graph racing team the calisthenics for toyota so the number eight car has stopped and gone on to slicks oh and kazuki nakajima is at the wheel now and i don't think he was before so jose maria lopez is in uh it remains in that was the seven crew getting warmed up ready for their stop so indeed i want to see a bit more like thigh slapping a bit more of the of the sumo wrestler workout because that certainly gets your quads going um so jose maria lopez went by the pits last time how long should i think we i think he'll have another lap past the pits probably because i think that tyre wall at the chicane is going to take a bit of replacing so gdo perfetti is out of the race the 56 mentos porsche run by project one going off pretty heavily into the tyre wall that defends the runoff area or the the straight line rather the main road of the first chicane on the mulsanne straight the medical lights came on and that means that he couldn't get out of the car in the pit lane and go to see the medical crew so he was taken out of the car on the scene he is up and about he is okay but there's the view down into the chicane and there you can see not only the medical rescue vehicles but also the marshals working on getting tires back into the position in which they were intended to be great view down there as well into the garage has gone number four 64 corvette yes that uh the splitter came detached and the team have just alerted us the fact that they were going to have to change that so that has gone into the garage okay it's a good time to do it while it's on the safety car so this time around out of safety car qc comes the number seven car so they're obviously persuaded by those aerial shots that the safety cars came to last a little bit longer and this is a 12 lap stint so it's a foot actually become they could probably have gone one more but that is pretty much a full race stint so slicks for kazuki nakajima in the number eight car [Music] and no driver change pachito only took over the car last time round brendan hartley was in the number eight and handed over to kazuki nakajima having apologized to the team for suggesting inters was the way to go when it became apparent fairly quickly it wasn't number seven also went on to enters but he's got some crispy slick tires so one stint on the inters he's got new slicks this isn't going to be a double this is going to be a triple stint on these tyres so this might be stint 2 of a quad potentially for jose maria lopez unless rain intervenes or weather intervenes we're not expecting any more weather but we weren't expecting the last lot either so that might change a bit of a weight now at the end of the pit lane yeah and that's the drama isn't the safety car that he's waiting for is coming into the porsche curves now it's still a good minute away i would yeah this place which goes back to what allen was saying earlier that if you know you're going to get caught by that safety car and they have to wait you might as well wait for the tires to come out a bit later and then that's exactly right i mean i was just thinking that right he's got lovely toasty hot tires and now he's sitting at the pit exit where he could have been sitting up on the jacks with the tyre still in the oven seconds later and then gone uh and it probably would have tied him when the safety car was coming past the pitch but you're allowed to do that right i mean there's no reason why you couldn't i don't think so i think it is it's just timing it correctly isn't it i mean this is the safest thing in terms of making sure that you can go out when the yes if there's a drama with the car restarting or something then you're not suddenly going no no we've missed a safety car drop in another safety car but if you're trying to optimize it then uh waiting until probably that the safety car comes into the ford chicane yes then putting the tires on and trying i would think i think that i think their slight profit loss gamble here is whatever temperature is lost in the tires actually he's going to be in a safety car queue so he's going to lose that temperature anyway and he's not going to immediately be going out on cooling tyres into a hot track so there's brendan hartley just stepped out the car the safety car he's about to join uh is actually quite short in terms of cars behind it it's only got a small group which is really a benefit because it won't take him when it does go green it won't take him that long to get and it's mostly p2 cars as well actually isn't it yeah so so that's not too bad so as soon as the queue goes by the lights at the end of the pit lane it should go green and then they'll go red again there we go they'll go red again to shut the pit lane right yep he's falling asleep go go go he's off was it not the right color green i don't know how actually too busy reprogramming ways and the traffic light has changed on him how long your though they are green you know when do they stop it again they're not green uh forever no they do have a period of time and it's roughly when the next safety car comes to a particular point i can't remember exactly when it is darren to be honest with you but it's you know you want to get back out onto the circuit and you also want to make sure that when you do get back out in the circuit you try and generate some temperature or keep it but now he's sitting onto the back of safety car a which is the one that will stop at the start and finish line did you see how filthy the circuit was on the way through the esses towards techroos then on the outside so much gravel out it was filthy it was filthy i need to clean that up what a mess well it's all stones and gravel and stuff coming from people going through the the s's the gravel at the s's though someone bring me up to speed here on lmp2 i know there was a bit of an incident with two united cars getting a little bit too close to each other but how did the jota that was leading become fifth and how did wrt they were right right now we've only got 17 hours i'm actually not sure we can fit it all in so could you give me a quick summary it rained i know okay it rained got greasy fritz fernaird went off and swore a lot um then a porsche uh the inception car i think spun in the uh the rubber ducky one uh spun in dunlop ahead of aunt davidson who anchored up and went off into the gravel and this one this one i'm up to speed with okay so that's that one so that's the one you asked me about i'm asking about the two united cars crashing into each other and i'm asking how did wrt go from where they went to the lead and jota uh which was leading with van gorn went from the front to the back pandorn had a penalty for what uh a lie crossing the line on the wall yeah on the way into the pits it was ah okay i think correct so we had a 30 second hold 90. 80 seconds i think it was 90. he must have been not um and the two united cars was at the dunlop chicane one was turning left and the other one came flying over the top and hit him square in the front wheels so that took the 32 car out so 32 car is gone number one car is gone sophia fleurs had a uh was knocked into a spin and uh and then hit by the racing team india car which survived and was able to drive back to the pit lane even though the medical lights were on they weren't incapacitated so he could drive back to pit lane so he got out of the car went to medical center james winslow took that over so bizarrely that car is still in the race and presumably the medical lights were switched back off again because it's for damage to the driver often damage the car this is the 64 corvette alexander sims remains in the car and they are changing the splitter waiting at the pit exit is the clicking house in neutral doing no mph auto kill does that activate the machine guns behind the front headlights so that's uh just to make sure that's normally used only when you come into the pit lane isn't it to make sure the car stops and then shuts the engine off at the same time yes um so so since the start of the race well we didn't start with car number 17 edx sport that car was crashed heavily up the dunlop chicane on thursday and did not start the race we lost the number one richard mille racing team sophia flush had a very big impact the car was pretty much stranded anyway she was trying to get it to move it was stuck across the middle of the road then she got hit by the team india car her medical lights were on car was immobile she was taken out by the medical crew car out of the race this is the pr matheson car which is in basically for a hundred thousand mile service you could see sarah aberdeen that was her in the headset uh who is the boss of of tech one that are running the team and this is ego pathetic going off oh yep and hitting the barriers and in behind him comes philippe fraga the leader in gte am who just rolls like this into the barriers why well we've looked at it and we're as clueless as you are seeing it for the first time you tell us he did come in with a right rear puncher i think that's the i think that's the answer because he didn't hit anything with the back was there was there any debris that caused the first incident because i think they must have this was a strange one because yeah normally if you're going to go off there it's it's front end yeah yeah you're just washing it out underneath have a speed wobble no i i think the i think the aston went off because it picked it had a puncture now i don't think it picked it up there necessarily but it had a puncture and it was the back right rear was punctured when he came into the pits but he didn't hit anything safety car comes in this lap and that will be a comes in the start finish line yeah safety car is entry to porsche at the moment safety car b which stops at arnage so in about a minute green and this is the safety car c which is coming down safe car people watching us now on the way down to arnard to indianapolis rather than arnage um so safety cards will come back in marshall's post to remove a martian yellow flags removed at marshall's post 11 which is the first you can on the mulsanne uh ryan briscoe has exited the pit lane in the glicken house jose lopez has exited in the number seven toyota and the race leader is about to be released across the line to start lap number 96 of our race well let's get down to the pit lane and hear from louise beckett who is with sophia flush [Music] okay we'll come back to you as we have seen a number of times had uh an incident not of her own making in the russian meal racing team lmp2 car she was knocked off track by the spinning number 26 g drive car franco calipinto calipinto was having an accident on his own shot by and into the number one car that left that stranded sideways across the track in the porsche curves of all places and when she was trying to recover the car and get it to move again she was hit very firmly indeed by the racing team india lmp2 car run by eurasia and that car um did the real damage because instantly uh the car the richard meal car was hit the safe that the medical lights came on and that meant that sofia was not able to continue okay so let us hear from sophia flourish sofia flash well what can i say first of all from the number one richard mille are you okay because you really took a few big hits yes i'm i'm fine um just really frustrated but um yeah anything else is fine we saw the second half of the 26 incident which was the first one that sent you in the spin so tell us what happened from your point of view well um we we had a slow zone before indianapolis which got green and then it was a kind of house with two more tt's and two united cars in front we exited uh mulzan uh now sorry and then well i don't know the car g-drive just came out of nowhere to be honest no idea where he actually was i didn't see him um he just i don't know came sideways over my front and yeah then we ended up in the wall um yeah and then i was on mid-track and then another car came i don't know how he could not see me actually because i was there yeah quite some time but um yeah apparently he didn't see me and just crashed into my side again from the 26 was there an issue with the car for you getting back or you just you were just trying to get yourself back sorted uh was it the second one you mean the first one well uh after the first one uh when we when we hit the wall on the right side and we were stuck on or i was stuck on on the track and tried to get um first gear and again which which didn't work in the beginning um or in the end it was didn't work and then um the car came and then everything was broken so um yeah apparently we had to retire then yeah um and i had to go to medical center to get checked but you're fine yes i'm fine but unfortunately the car now and the team cannot continue well that's that's the most frustrating part to be honest because we were running p11 which was um i think really good and pretty unexpected so early in the race still many hours to go and i mean a lot is happening um it's just really annoying to to end a race like this with something which was not in our control um yeah it's it's a hard one to swallow to be honest all right thanks very much thank you louise beckett and thank you to sophia flourish giving us chapter verse and in the onboard replay from her car suddenly she looks to her left and this car comes shooting by sort of sideways having an accident all around her and that was franco colopinto now he has been asked to go to the stewards to explain himself and i think there may be a little more from that and it's not a good half hour for all female crews because this is the 85 car this is the iron dame's car and it is running very slowly along the mulsanne strait rahel fry well if anybody's going to get it back the experienced swiss driver might but it's smoking a bit has she got a puncture there is so much gravel now and there's been so many incidents right from lap one hardly surprised that there are an increasing number of punches if you run off wide because somebody's coming by or alan because you're trying to get by somebody then you're suddenly in the debris field yeah it's not just necessarily the stones because actually they changed the stones in the gravel traps quite a few years ago because they were quite sharp to more rounded stones believe it or not but it's also all of the debris that's flying around as you say and that uh those carbon shards can quite easily get lodged and create a puncture but uh not sure what the situation is for rahel frey but she's got a long way to make it back to the bits because she's only on the mulsanne straight at the bottom yeah she's got another nine or ten kilometers to go the high class racing team strife continues they brought the car in and had to stop to fix a gps antenna which sends data to the fia which wasn't working properly they also changed the nose because there was damage there in a subsequent pit stop they've had to fix the antenna again the team say that there was an fia mod this morning uh issued to say that if the antennas failed they would not bring anyone in to force them to fix them hey guess what they did bring them in to force them to fix them so so much for the fia announcements that that was not going to be the case uh spearflowers rahul fray now approaching the second chicane but going equally slowly she is trying to stay as much out of the way as possible fabio scherrer in the pits for united auto sports that car was battling for the lead and came in uh durant just before the safety car actually battling with louis delatraz panas racing julian canal in second place and wrt's ferdi habsburg in third place so wrt having a very strong early evening we're a quarter of the way through the race heading up towards our seven completion actually and uh pr one matheson just leaving the pit lane there's number 22 car pr1 matheson having to do some work on their oil system because it was leaking and they have now dropped down to 20th in lmp2 alexander sims is now back out with corvette so they've fixed whatever that issue wasn't because it was the rear floor the the um the diffuser had kind of come off basically yeah come loose [Music] the splitter well the rear space of the splitter the diffuser had uh refused to defuse any longer dennis olson team project 146 car back out but 56 joins our list of retirements so ego perfetti and his crew and the 5016 project one card they are out 32 united auto sports car is out the 98 aston martin is out the number one fishermeal racing team lmp2 car is out and 99 the proton competition car is in the garage anna mcnish what do you know about that car it's been in the garage for a little while uh actually and it's dropping down the order pretty quickly you can't drop any further there's nothing moving behind it yeah well it can't drop any further but it's dropped to the point of i would say no return i'm questioning whether it will actually be going back out again at the moment did it have any incident on track i didn't see one but then because we're you know doing shift work you don't necessarily see everything yeah but it was within the last hour i don't think it was nice nine laps behind the next stationary car so it hasn't it's over 20 behind the the rest of the class basically isn't it it's done 66 laps [Music] that's 99 i think it's [Music] not unless there's an awful lot of carnage still to come mind you there is an awful lot of carlos one two three four oh yes hypercars are back up to the top four again uh this happens sort of with pit stops as the glickenhaus bounces back up ahead of the lmp2 cars at least the number 708 does 709 is still in the hands of ryan briscoe just outside the top 10. yellow at marshall's post 11 where's that boys and girls chicane it is indeed whoa fernandi's gone off there seems to be back on again though so iron links have got two cars in strife yeah how did he not hit those barriers and how did they miss him from behind i don't know he recovered straight through the gap is that ross swift driving that not raphaeli jamaria look at the cure cars behind here oh no no no oh 47 and 80. that's that's the other iron links car have they all had an issue too much coffee i think the spin was the 60 car wasn't it spitting was the 60 car ravioli camera 85 has got a puncture and the settler car was the other one that was and 18 swinging just got a biff that's callum island in second place no 47 the settler got i think got the hit didn't it no that was that was the 80 car there made contact with the 47 car they weren't they were side by side or or was it no it wasn't the castle racing car guys carl that's in third place so callum island in the 80 iron links car is in second place in gta yam and he is half a second behind alessio rivera so maybe it was the air of course or 83 car it was at the front of that queue crikey o'reilly well if only harry tinkle's manager could have told us what was going on however one of his good friends is going to louise beckett what's going on at 99. well you can hear that noise behind me can't you yeah we can actually harry is that a subtle adjustment yeah you can probably hear the banging and abortion but um unfortunately we had a couple of um suspension mounting failures on the car and uh essentially the stud is stuck in the chassis and um we're trying to weld something to the end of the of the stud to basically wind it out with the thread to be able to put a new uh a new bolt in so uh that's my untechnical explanation of it anyway but essentially we've had a surprise suspension failure um not related to curbs or anything like that or any you know no reliability issue with the car but uh unfortunately it means we're well out this one but the proton and multimanic uh guys and girls are doing their best to get the car back out and uh get useful mileage uh for booty and for flooring and for myself maybe for next year let's talk about something else shall we uh you are a busy man you're in the porsche for the first time you've been at former reef with berlin with master in the us you've got everything going on you're in every category yeah it's been super busy i think i did like 60 days on the road recently had like three suitcases traveling all around the world with me but no it's been it's been a really busy year look at the end of the day sports cars is very very exciting what we've got coming up with lndh um i'm doing everything i can on and off the track working as hard as i can to uh put my name in in the frame to be in one of the top seats and uh you know i'll do whatever it takes and um you know we've had great results in the master this year in the states you know we won the watkins uh watkins again six hours second in the championship super super tough over there you know you've got great drivers like fleet albuquerque and uh you know montoya casinos all those all those lads so um to be fighting for the championships fantastic and uh yeah i'll do my best all right so much harry thanks louise well done harry i didn't want to cut him off in his prime but you just saw that that was a battle for position three cars roberto caught the chetala racing car ahead of the 72 hub auto porsche of maxine martin and then alexander sims in the corvette was right behind them and contact there maxine martin on the inside roberto la court on the outside and it is the chetala ferrari in the barriers it's been in the wars that car yeah certainly it's also been right at the sharp end of the class as well so this is bitterly disappointing for these guys it is that is the tunnel at tet rouge where you come in underneath the track so that's exactly where he is now but maxine was well alongside at that point i i mean just didn't understand or didn't see maxine there under underneath him as he turned in for the for the corner and also i'm not so sure he was expecting the outside line to be so sort of damp and wet and greasy and once he got onto it there was very very little return from him i think he did the best to try and get himself out of the accident but clearly the barrier was you know too close yeah it's a quick corner and the exit there there's not a whole load of runoff areas there they're still waiting for 60 at iron links and rajel frey has come and gone so she has continued i'm assuming with a full set of ties they're waiting for raphaeli maria to come in the car just ahead of them absolute racing's alessio picariello who is in 12th place in gte is in the pits at the moment so frey's uh lap then on the way in was a good sort of five and a bit minutes slower than you'd normally expect which is which is about right when you're trying to nurse a car back from that far away the worst thing you can do is drive in really quick quite a bit damage there now isn't it end of the road isn't it that left rear wheel is about half a meter further back from the wheel arch than it should be there should be enough clearance just about to get your fingers between the tyre and the front edge of the wheel arch we could put anna mcnish in that gap so that car is going no further well if it is then the steering is going to be 45 degrees right hand down the real problem is if the wheel's that far back is the drive shaft even connected anymore yeah yeah if you've got a spool diff you'll manage to make it back yeah will they have a spool diff no and if you've got a helicopter you know you can fly it in and he's he's full of helpful things isn't he that mcnish bloke very very helpful a technical solution to the problem they have more thoughts from alan mcnish maybe someone could and then over there just yeah here's a diff you need this to get back so it's wrt one and two in lmp2 now united auto sports third panels racing julian canels jumped in and uh let's drop them down from the podium positions to fourth at the moment i'm sure that's going to run itself out so when the pit stops come interpol enter europol with alex brundle there in sixth place overall in lmp2 as we're sitting behind the safety sorry the slow zone again now they release it we're on board 63 corvette and that corvette is leading lenny katzberg at the wheel now that's a surprise to me as well because you know when you step out the booth and go away for half an hour it seems like the whole you know it's like a snow globe everybody shakes their different categories and different people sort of fall from the top to the bottom and background again certainly that rain what was that about an hour and a half ago ago really made a big difference but the big battles now you can see one two in pro gt is one less than two seconds and then the same pretty much for the am class as well uh five seconds covering the top two there so great battle going on there yeah it's a minute and a half between second place and pro and third place between the two ferraris and the two ferraris were basically leading the charts a little bit earlier on seemed to be having i would say naturally they had the speed although they've got the speed to sort of get back into the game certainly in the third third-place one i'm not sure as the temperatures have dropped to wonder if it's now starting to play back into the advantage of corvette uh with the pace again earlier on porsches were looking really strong with uh yani behind the wheel there was a period when he was really attacking and looked like he had the upper hand on the ferrari but they seemed to have dropped away as well you're right with this snow globe theory as well about how shaken up it all is because although they've now pitted wrt one and two in lmp2 united auto sports for third of the class fabio sharer but so much of that class has been either decimated or thrown around through that last set of dramas when the rain started to fall so what had been a brilliant battle has certainly been shaken up and fair is 31 then but ferdinand habsburg is brought into the pit lane carl drops down and away blasts the bavarian driver back into the stint i've got another yellow flag out on track with a slow zone at marshall's post six that's just yeah i'm gonna settle our car i think still stuck in the right hand side as you exit the corner it was a big hit that wasn't it it's going to take a little bit of retrieval yeah the barrier seems to stand up in the tire bar there as well so it's more of a case of just trying to get that ferrari out of the way and it's bad news for them championship-wise because that of course was the leading uh proam car within the championships don't put that to one side but uh no points out of this unless they can somehow drag it back and get it back into the race but it'll be so far down thoughts at corvette for the moment looking pretty good as we've been saying 63 now leads the class and 64. trying to hustle itself along as well but nick katzberg's car looking good yeah 64 had a long time in the in the pits with that rear diffuser change i think were they now a couple of laps down on the lead you going there on 91 laps and uh yeah they are yeah three laps down so i'll tell you what collado has just latched himself onto the back of nikki katzberg and just the way that he ran into dunlop the car looked as if it was maybe a little bit more stable so me guessing that the tracks coming towards the corvettes is actually the complete opposite well no no you were spot off yeah oh collado it's the they moved into the slow zone went to the inside but that would have been a no-go as to settle our cars just about to be put onto the transporter to be taken away so that's now out but you say that if we had gone back two hours or two and a half hours there is no way in my view that the corvette had the speed to be leading the ferrari yeah so it definitely has the speed to be leading the ferrari at the moment even although maybe the ferrari's slightly quicker it was a chunk quicker before so it definitely whatever reason it sort of swung a little bit more towards corvette racing at the moment well certainly one corvette 63's in the hunt yeah 64 you said was in for splitter yeah that's 39th overall eighth in class and a good level two down the order now so it's become effectively a single pronged attack hasn't it now from corvette yeah just 63 up holding honor ferrari second james collado in number 51 third in the class is 52 which has got miguel molina back at the wheel and then porsche's 91 and 92 fred macko ahead of neil yani [Music] so that's a sorry site the settler ferrari goes behind the barrier and effectively out of the race roberto lacour georgia sergio and antonio and it was roberto lacourte who was behind the wheel when the accident happened so that is out it shouldn't be too long now before that slow zone is removed and then we can get back to a full green circuit at least when it does go green that the track should be fairly consistent now it's not like anyone's going to be surprised they're coming into some zones that have got some rain or anything it should be pretty much the same all the way around what is the forecast for the next little while i've not moved i'll let you do that just to say the gap between katzberg and collado was nine tenths of a second through that last sex point so the class lead battle is for the moment well and truly joined isn't it as you ride with the corvette now whistling down the middle yeah this should be a real titanic battle for a hopefully a whole stint or so um there's no reason why these guys can't sort of uh go hammer and tong now that it's gone dark and you've got limited illumination this section looks narrower than it did in the full daylight it always does doesn't yeah it's surprising because yeah when you get like uh you go to a higher car center and you take a car and you're like oh these lights are great you're trying different cars all the time and then you come to a racetrack and you're always amazed at how bad the lights seem on a race car in comparison to what you would have on a normal road car but i think it's just the speed that you're going through everything that just means that they don't have that same penetration battle on here 22 to the outside trying to gain ground and that is fabio shara in the traffic now he's trying to get himself back onto terms with the wrt cars well they're on an outlap but they've had that notional lead in the class for the moment but we'll drop down presumably at the end of this lap because of the most recent round of stop sir the lmp2 fight will update at the end of the lap and there do we have the change we have so collado has got himself ahead of katzberg ferrari back to the head of the class so that lead for corvette racing was a bit short-lived wasn't it so nick katzberg drops back and now james collada is going to try and build that lead and he looks like he's got the pace to do it straight away out of our nose that gap opens up a little bit yeah the the traction of the ferrari looking really strong there i don't know where they are on tyres in terms of who's on what set someone's uh james has obviously got new sexes he's only just gone out maybe katzberg's uh already a stint hold at this point so it could be you know one of those things that's just going to go ebb and flow as the pit stop sort of shake out with these guys but you're right it did look like he had the advantage straight away once he got into into that position yeah so the corvette briefly the cork in the bottle but now that the ferrari has been released so he tries to get away the next target for katzberg is to fend off any challenge coming from the porsche's behind with fred macaviki currently running third in class and the next retirement confirmed as 47 which we'd seen hit the barrier so the marker of doom is getting through its ink another one crossed out only one car officially retired on the timing screen which is number one but we know of more than that but haven't been officially notified as yet slow zone three under investigation and as we've just seen 52 miguel molina uh go through into the lead into third in class and let's try and catch up from the pit lane uh with daniel sarah who is with louise beckett daniel sarah we've just seen the 51 get the better we've just seen the 51 get the better of the corvette can the 52 do it as well uh i hope so we were a bit unlucky with the safe with the safety car we're growing different safety cars so we have a gap of 1 minute 30 now so we need to push a little bit to reduce this gap and maybe in the next safety car we are all together again but let's see we still have uh 16 hours to go yeah a long way to go but um how is it for the gts on the track i think the car is pretty good it's okay i think we have to pay to fight the corvettes and unfortunately we have this this uh unlucky with the safety car but i think we will have a good fight until the end okay thank you thank you thanks louise so daniel sarah who's had two class wins in lmgte here so he's perhaps not the outright fastest gt racer darren but he's dependable isn't he he does a good job in the campaign that he's racing against even if he's not the ultimate star in gt daniel yeah i think he's amazing i shared a car with him in 2017 um and he was a fantastic teammate to happen and super fast when he needs to turn it on he can put the laps together and one of the easiest uh teammates to have worked with you know me and johnny adam and daniel we we jailed really well in that season and uh it was a real joy to share the car with him but yeah he's he's fantastic behind the wheel one of the sadnesses of this year's race is that there's no johnny adam in the entry as well no i mean you know johnny's run here has been really successful you know a class winning the pro and a class winning in am and you know he's another callback it doesn't work as well on ollie gavin that but yeah i should try it might need to be a bit bigger for ollie but uh yeah i mean johnny's johnny's runs here at uh le mans have always been uh spectacularly you know super super finished to that race in 2017 you know taking away that win from corvette with just over a lap to go so can i say that a bit louder now that oh he's out of the room he's gone yeah hopefully he's listening but you know that win in 2017 against the corvette um but yeah i mean it's a shame that johnny isn't hasn't been able to uh find a seat this year yeah it would be a great addition if he was so you're riding on board number 63 second in class the gap at the end of the previous lap was up to 3.2 seconds so james collado getting on with the job and other cars in the gravel though and that is the first of the chicanes on the malls out so the car has gone off that's the trackside ctv footage that you're looking at so the cctv cameras pick it up and hopefully that won't take too long to get out it's the alpine that's off the road third place car mature victor va yeah at the wheel so there's air off the road and that is very bad news indeed for a car that was going to have to work incredibly hard to stay on the pace of the toyotas yeah it is well it's definitely not uh in good shape there he's two minutes and 11 seconds ahead of the glickenhaus which is in fourth place with durrani at the wheel and uh by the sounds of it they're going to have to lift him out which is going to take approximately i would say a couple of minutes it's going to be a good three or four minutes isn't it by the time they lift it pull it out the gravel and then let them go again well they don't have to take him very far that's a one positive for him but he'll probably have to come into the pit so i would have thought depend if the uh the rescue uh crew are licking house fans they might do a little bit slower taken to the second game before dropping it off the gravel big disappointment so that's going to bring the glickenhaus up into third isn't it imminently and now the team tries to work out what may have put it there whether it was just a driver error or anything more sinister and indeed how much time they're going to lose and there's a yellow now at uh marshall post 34 as well let's uh try and eavesdrop on the alpine conversation because the car is put back down onto the ground massive here has some explaining to do do you think you can move [Music] sounded like he said he was stuck but then reporting no damage he's not touched the wall now here we see replay oh really similar to confetti yeah but he tried to change direction to get to the racing line but very very late i think it's when he crossed the crown of the road with the left-hand side tires that's when he sort of lost the stability of it but quite damp still on the yeah you can see the spray coming off yeah so the tire temperature on the on the right side well all four i would think was probably dropped off here we are on board with them it's back going again because this is the second chicago [Music] so the alpine triggers the slow zone for a moment and that falls away that brings durrani up into third it brings louis delatraz up into fourth place and up into fifth now is number 31 the second of the wrt uh oracas of ferdinand sonoma maria balthaus keith michael otto antal barnum leonard von hasberg lothringam to give him his full name [Music] [Music] close aren't they both the wrts very close out on circuit right now yeah louis delatraz has been impressive again whether it's been in sports cars or single seaters and another replay here on board with the lp [Music] this is actually the incident going into the first chicane i think yeah what's that three gt cars in front yeah [Music] two wheels off the road gets through the traffic and around it goes really unlucky just the front did it just touch the barrier then if it didn't it was mighty close wasn't it and it almost got through the gravel it almost bounced out the other side but new boots are ready and so the alpene it's going to have to be in this time you said michelle is getting ready for mattia vasadir who's now dropped back into sixth we've place back to green slow zone removed so persevere hustles on but the time lost is significant [Music] comes into the pit lane inevitably and the gravel will be dropped out of the bottom new tiles will go on but the car undamaged given the way that he's been attacking the second half of the lap yeah and it was close to the pit stop window for that car anyway so also into the pit lane has cameo van outer in the racing team netherland car that france fritz vanier had dropped into the gravel just as the rain came and also kevin magnussen had just been in the pits he's just gone out in 49 for michael's racing down in 28th overall the team goes to work and there's gonna be a driver change as well of all the alpe now the car 30 f sport with their car 33 considering you know that incident earlier on when it was in the barrier flat tire had to nurse the car back they're still on the on the lead lap only 52 seconds behind the overall leader in gte am so the recovery is going pretty well for for that team right right at this stage [Music] so four mechanics two tie guns to the top side of the operation feelings done driver change is done and so when this part of the pit stop is completed the car can be dropped down and then the car controller make sure that it's safe to release it at the same time they should be checking in around about the brake drum area to make sure there's no stones lodged in there or damaged the cooling ducts bringing in secondary problems yeah that's why you see the the good teams from the knots are good that methodical process it's it's still done to a pattern rather than it being a panic oh the car's been off panic panic still go through that process yeah you know which of the sensitive areas of the car and also you know which of the fragile areas here we see again he went with some speed didn't he there it goes tried to correct it but oh so close to that barrier down yeah he's pretty lucky there not to take off the front splitter and yeah and suddenly that's a a job where the car has to come into the garage and another couple of minutes lost that's a lot of spray there yeah it just got past lauren's van thought and off he went no he didn't i don't think he touched the barrier certainly looked closer from the inboard didn't it yeah did say on that uh on that car radio he didn't touch the wall but it certainly was close right so that is to the pit lane and a bit more of a fight back now nicola lapierre at the wheel the car rejoins eighth and this is lapierre hard at work so he's got a push push push now for the next what 11 12 laps yeah he's a minute uh basically two and a half minutes behind the third place car now in hyper car which is in the glicken house so yeah they've got uh quite a bit of work to do they've got the pace performance to be able to sort of catch that up over the next 16 hours it's just the case of that they cannot afford to have any issues if the clicking house is a clean run to the end so jose maria lopez leads in seven suzuki nakajima second in number eight and he's people in third but two laps back in the leading clicking house right now with louis de la tras still clearing lmp2 and james collado building that gap over nick katzberg in gte pro with inaudible af course and now alessio rivera at the wheel of 83 leading the way and we're just watching the battle for the lead of lmp2 with the two wrt cars delatraz and hamsburg and they're just making their way through a little bit of traffic but now they're lying to stern as they come up into dunlop [Music] and even although they're both in the same team obviously both drivers want to lead the charge they're both young and trying to sort of make their way as charles malaysia's looking on with the rest of the team i'm sure a certain amount of them are looking on a little bit of nervous tension sure about this situation but uh they're one two which uh and they're actually one two and a a minute ahead of the opposition one minute and four seconds as there's another yellow flag out and that's at indianapolis this time which is where we have the drama earlier on for marcus gomez aston martin yeah it's an amcar 55 looks to be having some issues down there at the moment well that's the duncan cameron matt griffin david perel ferrari is that it it is it's off the road it's in sixth place overall well it was second part of indianapolis yeah [Music] i mean hopefully they can just drag that back to the tarmac behind and get them going again duncan cameron at the wheel it was sixth in class certainly so dropping down the order now has it's got to be rescued let's have a look [Music] oh no off it slides bounces off the tires but beached in the gravel now yeah it's not really much of a incident maybe a small lock up and then miss the apex and right now yeah you almost aren't disappointed with that like you're expecting more spectacular well outcomes from that viewpoint that camera that look at the cctv type camera shot it looked like we're gonna get a dramatic entrance from the right and it wasn't quite like they're going to lift it with a grab so it's going to knock them down a little bit someone else has just been off out of lmp two come past our window in a moment darren that won't it so yeah i'm trying to pick it up in a second slow zone is being prepared i think that was 74 that had a right slight off on the way through the porsche curves okay that car was involved with sofia flourish a little earlier wasn't it and it's been repaired and sent back out and it is james winslow at the wheel quick underrated british driver james winslow and he's pressing on but he's got a lot of work to do now to try and make up the lost grounds replay here that's him going off just slightly offline as he came through the corner out on the marbles and lucky that there's so much uh sort of runoff there with the gravel now from what it used to be like through that part of the circuit even when there was no runoff and there was a wall yeah it was that would have been a game over a moment really wouldn't it at that point absolutely i think it would have been a game over a moment for quite a lot of people actually today if the if the circuit hadn't had the expansive runoff areas and the conditions have been very very difficult very tricky i've got to say that when these the rain came the last time and it was just that enough to make it wet but it wasn't obviously clear when they were coming into the breaking areas in the dark then that's i've got it that's not much fun drivers getting themselves ready for their next stint arnold rob out there and duncan cameron's ferrari being hooked out of the gravel it looked like matt griffin was getting ready to uh to jump in once that car comes back to the pit lane he's the gun in that car isn't he matt griffin is the quicker of the three drivers and and we've talked about plug and play drivers that's another one in a ferrari just plug him in and instantly he's quick yeah yeah like solid all year long every racetrack doesn't really it's well i can't remember the last time he he had a mistake you know it happens very rarely doesn't it absolutely and you need those sort of drivers you know they're ideal if you want to have a race and you know being part of the race for duncan it's to see the checkered flag to maximize his driving time then you need to have people that are going to get in the car look after the car make sure it comes around ready for your for your go basically so matt does a great job super fast and consistent david perol the third driver one of the rookies one of the 40 rookies on the grid for this year's race but that car as we've been saying while it's being pulled out of the gravel drops down the gte am order as the race leaders work 106. you can see the traffic here through the porsche curves [Music] into the pits of just campo durrani and number 708 from third place the clicking house is in and that was a 14 lap stint for durrani he's done two stints in the car so he'll be in for one more i would say olivier planted three to start in that car then frank mayo did another three and durrani's just finished his second so we have a slow zone out on track while this ferrari is being retrieved but now that the road is much drier pace is coming back and the margin between the two wrt cars hovering about one second so that's one of the closest fights right now and it's a significant one given that it's for class honours and it's between two teammates the list goes on and wrt a relatively new team to prototype racing but delivering the goods here keeping out of trouble when did those swap around i missed that last lap was it okay next time just give me a little nudge today thanks another shot of coffee 452 last lap for louis de la trout so now 450 for ferdi berg which puts him into the lead of the class for the moment and then third fabio shira for united auto sports still trying to play catch up fourth is union canal uh in fourth in the class and as we're talking about wrt let's hear from charlemagne who has recently got out of the car he's with louise in the pits charm alessi you're looking on watching the action uh it's close between the two wrt cars what's the team orders if there are any no there is no team order for the moment actually we got a bit lucky with the slow zones and safety car uh beginning of the race was a bit tricky for us with the the conditions but no yeah it's starting to looking good for us but i mean it's still like 16 hours left so everything can happen we've seen like two hours ago we gained like one minute or something so it can change at any time [Music] for the team so how are you feeling uh we're feeling pretty confident like how pace is pretty good since the test thursday but yeah i mean it's our first time and we try to do no mistakes for the moment and we'll see how it's going have you been in the car yet uh yeah i've been once at seven i think seven pm okay so you're going to have a late night stint i take it 2 30 something like this well all the best for that then thank you thank you as you can tell he's looking forward to that thanks very much so charming lazy out of the car for the moment looking forward to his next stint and uh you can see the battle still raging on habsburg having jumped ahead of de la trees but he's not getting away especially now they've got some traffic to contend with yeah now just thrown into indy then habsburg's got to be a little bit careful on the braking here whereas for delatraz he'll get a clean run and be able to overtake in fact they'll get past both of the gt cars by the time they get down to porsche without a problem and then for dela tries he's got the issue that he got the aero wash off the back of habsburg car through the high speed section now these two are now third and fourth overall on the last pit stop for the clicking house of durrani so third and fourth overall as well as being the top two in class which is very impressive for wrt but keep saying long way still to go seven and a half hours into the race or nearly seven and a half hours into the race and only being two laps down is super impressive especially with you know with what a changing race this one has been of so many uh slow zones safety cars and everything else and for wrt it's a it's a great effort well it has played a little bit into the favor as malaysia said there and especially with the slow zones safety cars kind of it's difficult to make anything up at all with the slow zone so if because of the length of the circuit if you get a slow zone that you've just passed and then by the time you get back around sort of three four minutes later it's cleared again then you've actually got a clear lap and sometimes you can gain a reasonable chunk of time there dannon yeah especially if the the competition have ended up having to do that zone twice or three times and you've only had to do it uh two it makes a big big difference i can remember when it first came out the slow zones it was it seemed to me to be the fairest way of of stabilizing a zone uh and the race but in actual fact they still like the safety car they're still winners and losers and unfortunately the only way you can get rid of it is everything go to full course yellow yeah that seems to be the only technique of completely neutralizing the race and keeping it fair for everyone yeah just getting a bit concerned about the last pit stop for 709 clicking house that was heading towards being four minutes long so it's a longer stop than some as you look at 80 which has come in calum island racing here for the first time and enjoying the experience as well and a bit of noise damage there yeah alternatively got huge uh sort of little flick up there on the right hand side for front downforce but i think it is a bit of contact in the in the chest that's right so it might be a slightly longer stop for that car as arnold robert gets ready to take over in the pit lane and [Music] the race leaders currently work that number 108 and it's a minute and 20 seconds effectively between the top two right on board here with the racing team netherland entry this is the ever spectacular hedo vandakada at the wheel of it as he heads towards the mall's arm and speed building all the time van der garde is currently running overall 15th and 1.3 seconds up the road is the opposition which is juan pablo montoya for dragon speed 85 which was the iron links or iron dame's car uh had a puncture michelle getting at the wheel of it so that's why that car had lost a bit of time we understand from louise just to clarify that but van der garde here darren he's pushing pushing pushing yeah the gaps closing and uh yeah it must be lovely at this time of night the tracks starting to get cleaned up and you know a bit more confidence in in the in the circuit and being able to push that little bit faster and obviously chasing down montoya so it must be a fun time to be out on the circuit for these guys right now you say it's like you're missing it a little bit right now i am yeah i wasn't earlier on maybe there's been a few occasions in the race so i'm quite glad i'm sitting here with you guys and then there's periods like this when you're on board with someone and you're just like it just looks fantastic out there and and to be out there right now would be would be a a lot of fun well vandega is close but he's not closing necessarily so montoya is all just about out of range for the time being so this is for 14th and 15th overall but 9th and 10th in class and there is debris on track at marshall's post 31 right hand side of the line the race director is telling the teams

Channel: 24 Heures du Mans

Views: 201,487

Keywords: 24 Heures du Mans, 24h du Mans, 24 hours of Le Mans, Le Mans, FIA WEC, WEC, FIA World Endurance Championship, Le Mans 24 Hours, motorsport, racing, ACO, Automobile Club de l'Ouest, #LeMans24, #WEC, endurance, toyota, porsche, ford, ferrari, corvette, ligier, oreca, Aston Martin, Gibson

Id: IYRMLSgvjVY

Length: 480min 52sec (28852 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 21 2021