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The Robert Kubica led #83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P has controlled the opening quarter of the race as the Italian brand unleashed its full pace after a seemingly restrained qualifying. But Australia’s Matt Campbell and his teammates have overcome a traffic-impacted qualifying to drive the #5 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 into second place.
The official factory Ferrari, the #50 and defending race champion #51, are just behind this pair, with both Toyota entries rounding out the top six. However, 15 of the Hypercars remain on the lead lap and still in contention for the victory depending on how the night plays out.
A rain shower has already shaken up the order, with teams opting to split strategies and leave some runners (most notably the #83 and #50) on slick tyres. This paid off when the rain quickly disappeared but overnight rain is forecast so there are likely to be many more twists and turns before the chequered flag falls on 4pm Sunday.
The pace of the race has been intense from the start, as the record field of 23 Hypercars compete for the prestigious race. Porsche’s Laurens Vanthoor took the green flag alongside the Cadillac of local Le Mans hero Sebastien Bourdais and led the first lap. But it wasn’t long before Ferrari revealed its hand and showed a rapid turn of pace and moved to the front.
The challenge of trying to maintain a sprint race pace for twice around the clock has already claimed multiple victims, including the #35 Alpine (an apparent engine failure) as well as off-track incidents for both BMW Hypercar entries and and the #3 Cadillac.
In LMP2 Cool Racing, Vector Sport and United Autosports have established themselves at the front of the class. The trio of Oreca-Gibson are separated by less than a minute after six hours of racing.
The new LMGT3 contest is looking as hotly contested as expected pre-race with the #46 Team WRT BMW M4 driven by Valentino Rossi leading the class at quarter distance, ahead of the Manthey Racing pair – the #92 Porsche 911 GT3 R and the #91 example, driven by Australia’s Yasser Shahin.
The fan favourite Iron Dames are fighting back from an incident, when Sarah Bovy was spun at the Porsche curves, fittingly by the #4 Porsche Penske entry. The Iron Dames Lamborghini was running comfortably inside the class top five but the spin and subsequent pitstop has dropped it to 11th.
Stay tuned to Speedcafe.com for our regular updates.
