It's one of those surreal, visceral moments. After the sounds of the cars, from the whoosh of the diesels to the beastly scream of Aston Martin's V12 and everything in between, accompanied by seemingly-disembodied headlights floating down the roads of Le Mans were the only things marking the passage of the cars, the fire of the sun fills the sky and reveals the scars of the battle through the night. The campers stir to awakening, fire up their grills for breakfast, and prepare to cheer the winning cars home.
On this night, things actually stayed fairly civilized, with most of the cars that were running when sun fell still in the race after the sun circled back to the eastern horizon. The only major casualty of the night was the defending GT2 champions from Risi Competizione, who tried their best to keep their transmission going after a hellish charge from the back to the front of the GT2 standings, but could not.
The other major happening occurred to yet another of the Peugeots; this time it was the ORECA/Matmut Peugeot 908 suffering a driveshaft issue and requiring a stop for repairs. What this did was remove all but one obstacle from the path of Audi Sport's three entries, with the only Peugeot not experiencing excitement being the #2 car. It's been about three hours since ORECA's issues, but with over a third of the race still to go and the other three Peugeots all having mechanical difficulty, the folks at Audi have to be just sitting and waiting for something to go wrong with the leader so they can strike.
Speaking of Audi, the winningest driver in the history of this race, Tom Kristensen, hopped into the #7 car at about 12:50AM and drove on and on into the night until, by rule, he had to get out at 4:40. That's a grand total of three hours, fifty minutes, with four seperate stops for fuel during that run. Very impressive stuff by Audi's veteran champion.
Due to the considerable haze and humidity in the air for this year's 24-hour race, the sky has turned a fantastic set of oranges, pinks, and purples over the eastern horizon beyond Tertre Rouge. Just about nine-and-a-quarter hours remain in the race; my next update will be my wrapup at the end of the race. Being six hours behind France, sunrise at Le Mans coincides with bedtime in Indiana. Good Morning!
Leaders
LMP1: #2 Peugeot; Nicolas Minassian, Stephan Serrazin, Franck Montagny
LMP2: #42 Strakka HPD/Acura; Jonny Kane, Danny Watts, Nick Leventis
LMGT1: #50 Larbre Saleen S7R; Gabriele Gardel, Roland Berville, Julien Canal
LMGT2: #64 Corvette; Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta, Emmanuel Collard
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