The Toyotas, as expected, are in the lead.
LE MANS, France—By leaving the field early at the start of the 90th running of the 24 hours of lemans, both Toyotas lead the rest of the field as the number 7 car, driven by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, and Jose Maria Lopez. They lead their sister rivals Sebastian Buemi, Brandon Hartley, and Rio Hirakawa by less than a minute with 10 hours left in the French classic at the Circuit de la Sarthe in central France.
The duo started the race in great weather conditions as the duo pulled away from the challenging Glickenhaus and the home Alpine teams early.
Alpine suffered right from the start, putting their car into the garage twice in the first four hours. But the French team finally fixed a bad clutch and engine difficulties and fell to 50th, before recovering well enough to be in 19th place by Sunday morning.
As for the LMP 2 class, a battle all race long has happened, with many changes along with a first-lap collision with Felipe Albuquerque getting squeezed by with his United Autosports entry by WRT’s Fredrick Hapsburg-Lothringan and Algarve Racing’s Sophia Floersch. Floersch limped back to the pits, while Albuquerque had to be towed back. Both drivers took a maximum of 30 minutes to return to the circuit. By morning, JOTA cars are first and third, with Roberto Gonzales, Antonio Felix de Costa, and Will Stevens leading the Prema Orlen team headed by Robert Kubica.
GTE PRO was expecting to be a battle between Ferrari and Porsche, but Corvette Racing dominated the early part of the race before one of their cars experienced troubles. The Corvette car, number 64, along with the #51 Ferrari and the Porsche 92, led by Michael Christensen, all battled each other early in the morning before Christensen overshot the turn at Mulsanne. All three have exchanged leads as each entry has been pitted.
In the final category, GTE AM, TF Sport, driven by Ben Keating, Henrique Chaves and Marco Sorensen lead in the morning, following most of this class which had the Weathertech squad dominate the race.
