Toyota is looking very threatening, moving into second place among the Ferraris as we enter the fourth hour of the Lone Star Le Mans, round six of the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship.
In Austin, immediately after the premature retirement of the #51 Ferrari due to a transmission problem caused by contact with an LMGT3 (according to what was communicated by Maranello), the #12 Porsche of Jota also suffered a KO, with Norman Nato stopping and starting several times along the track before limping back to the pits.
There were no major twists and turns in the third hour, apart from a contact in the LMGT3 class between the #85 Lamborghini driven by Rahel Frey and the #81 Corvette of Rui Andrade; the worst was for the Swiss Iron Dames driver, who returned to the garage to fix a problem with the right rear, slipping from 3rd to 16th place in the class, while the TF Sport driver continued despite the Z06 having a damaged front left bodywork.
The collision spread a lot of debris on the track, so a Full Course Yellow of a few minutes was inevitable to clean the track. Here some LMGT3s committed infringements receiving a Drive-Through: this is the case of BMW-WRT #31, Lamborghini-Iron Lynx #60, Ford-Proton #77 and Corvette-TF #82. The latter served a second for exceeding Track-Limits too many times, while the same sanction was received by Peugeot #94 for speeding in the pit lane.
Still in the third hour, Robert Kubica handed over the wheel of the #83 Ferrari to Yifei Ye, who was excellent at driving on 4 hard tyres without taking risks or making mistakes, while the #20 BMW driven by René Rast took advantage of an indecision by Miguel Molina while overtaking to momentarily overtake the #50 Ferrari.
The Spaniard then made way for Nicklas Nielsen, who found himself battling against the M Hybrid V8 of Robin Frijns as he emerged from the pits, overtaking him again and setting off again in pursuit of the #7 Toyota and Cadillac, which in the meantime had climbed to second and third place with Nyck De Vries and Earl Bamber, respectively.
Departure
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
After the third set of stops, Ye remained in the lead with the #83 499P by a handful of seconds on the #7 Toyota, but De Vries closed in threateningly and began to press him. Nielsen moved up to third and is about ten seconds behind the GR010 Hybrid, which also set the fastest lap of the race, while the Cadillac dropped back to fourth, returning to Alex Lynn.
BMW continues its excellent run in the Top 5 with the #20, setting its sights on the V-Series.R and managing a good margin over the #6 Porsche, which now finds itself behind the #8 Toyota, which has climbed up to seventh and is very dangerous against the official 963.
The #15 BMW occupies eighth place, followed by the #38 and #5 Porsches, while Alpine continues to hope for a top 10 finish with the #35, followed at a distance by the #93 Peugeot and Lamborghini.
In the LMGT3 class, the #27 Aston Martin of Heart Of Racing remains in command with an excellent Daniel Mancinelli taking the wheel, extending his lead over the revived #92 Porsche of Manthey PureRxcing and the #55 Ferrari of AF Corse taking the virtual podium for the moment.
Meanwhile, Valentino Rossi had his first turn at Team WRT, first overtaking his teammate Sean Gelael in the #46 BMW in the #31 M4 and then, after a long battle, Grégoire Saucy in the #59 United Autosports McLaren to take 4th place, although he was given a 5″ penalty at the next stop for touching the 720S too often.
Meanwhile, the #91 Porsche of Manthey EMA is fifth after passing the #81 Corvette of TF Sport, seventh is the #59 McLaren-United followed by the #31 BMW-WRT and the #95 720S to complete the top 10 in the category, outside of which at the moment remain the #88 and #77 Ford Mustangs of Proton Competition.
The Aston Martin #777 of D’station Racing and the Ferrari #54 of AF Corse, which had attempted to restart by completing 54 laps, retired due to problems.
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