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LM24 Hour 12: Safety car intervention resets the race
The twelfth hour of the 24 Hours of Le Mans brought the race's first safety car period when Cem Bolukbasi left the circuit in the No. 24 Nielsen Racing ORECA LMP2 and hit the barrier in the Tertre Rouge Esses. The impact triggered the medical light, but Bolukbasi exited the car under his own power. He was checked and released from the medical center. The incident marked the first retirement of an LMP2 car in the race.
Up until then, the race had potentially been on target to come close to the 397-lap distance record, but the safety car period likely put pay to that possibility.
Coming almost at halfway, many teams opted to use the slower pace to take care of some extended repairs or preventive maintenance. The No. 83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P received a new nose, and the No. 87 Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F GT3 got a brake change, among many others.
Green flew again at eight minutes before halfway, with Laurens Vanthoor in the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 in the lead. The safety car period seemed to be good for the No. 8 Toyota Gazoo Racing GR010, now with Ryo Hirakawa installed in the cockpit, running second.
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The still-threatening AF Corse 499P now has Ye Yifei onboard and attacking Hirakawa. Pascal Wehrlein took over the No. 4 PPM 963 in fourth, and the No. 15 BMW M Team WRT M Hybrid V8 of of Raffaele Marciello ran fifth.
Just as the race hit halfway, Filipe Albuquerque pulled the No. 101 Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R to the side of the track with a reported engine failure. "That's us done,” reported Albuquerque over the radio.
The head of LMP2 looks like it has for the past several hours, with the No. 48 VDS Panis Racing ORECA of Oliver Gray in the lead. The No. 9 Iron Lynx Proton entry was second with Reshad De Gérus at the wheel, ahead of the No. 43 Inter Europol ORECA, now with Jakub Smiechowski back on board.
The two IDEC Sport ORECAs occupied fourth and fifth, Mathys Jaubert in the No. 18 heading Sebastian Alvarez in the No. 28.
Manthey 1st Phorm's No. 92 Porsche 911 GT3R leads LMGT3 with Riccardo Pera driving. Ryan Hardwick started the car and seemed positive about the team's chances.
“This race can be really unpredictable, but we've had a really clean race so far,” Hardwick said. “I had a long quadruple stint to start the race, and that helped put us in a good position. My teammates Riccardo Pera and Richard Lietz have been super fast and been able to get up towards the front.”
TF Sport ran second with Rui Andrade at the wheel of the No. 81 Corvette Z06 GT3.R, ahead of Finn Gehrsitz in the No. 78 Akkodis ASP Team Lexus RC F GT3, the No. 21 Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 of Simon Mann and the second Akkodis ASP car, the No. 87 of Petru Umbrarescu.
Team WRT's problems in LMGT3 continued, as the No. 31 The Bend BMW hit a rabbit on track and Timor Boguslavskiy had to head to the garage for repairs.
At halfway, 56 cars remain in the fight, including all the Hypercars except the WTR Cadillac. The latest official retirement was the No. 46 Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 that suffered the power loss while Kelvin van der Linde was at the wheel.
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Richard S. James
Richard James is motorsports journalist living in Orange County, Calif, who has been involved in the sport to some degree for three decades. He covers primarily sports car racing as a writer and photographer, with occasional forays into off-road and other forms of racing. A former editor of the SCCA’s publication, SportsCar, he has a special love for the grass-roots side of the sport and participates as a driver in amateur road racing.
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