#83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman, Yifei Ye
Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt
The World Endurance Championship race has been shaped by a sudden shower at 5:38pm, before which the Nicklas Nielsen's #50 Ferrari led Laurens Vanthoor's #6 Porsche, Antonio Giovinazzi's #51 Ferrari and Sebastien Buemi's #8 Toyota.
The Italian and the Swiss had previously overtaken Sebastien Bourdais' Cadillac, respectively round the outside at Mulsanne and on the Mulsanne straight.
Although the track wasn't soaked, the shower was substantial enough to result in a noticeable loss of grip, with the #8 Toyota, both Alpines and the #3 Cadillac pitting for wet-weather tyres straight away.
It initially seemed like this strategy might work out as they were several seconds a lap faster than their rivals, and most of the Hypercar class emulated them in the following two laps.
However, the #83 and #50 Ferraris, #12 and #5 Porsche, #19 and #63 Lamborghinis opted to brave those tricky track conditions on slick tyres.
This gamble proved to be the right one as the other cars grudgingly came back in to put slick tyres back on – this was their fourth pitstops when the lead cars were on two.
The only exception was the #20 BMW, which the WRT team decided to keep on track with grooved tyres until its next stop – before Robin Frijns lost control after bouncing off a kerb at the Ford chicane and crashed the car at 6:23pm. The right-rear corner was damaged, and Frijns had to go around the lap at snail's pace, taking no less than eight minutes to get back to the pitlane.
Meanwhile, two Ferraris were battling it out for the outright lead, with Robert Kubica making a mistake at Mulsanne in the #83 car and resisting an assault from Nielsen, with the #50 499P having served a ten-second penalty for an unsafe release with the #3 Cadillac earlier. Nielsen found a way past shortly after, taking first position at 5:59pm.
However, the pecking order evolved further as lead cars pitted during a slow zone, with the #50 losing tens of seconds to the #83 and the #5 Porsche as well.
Robert Shwartzman took the lead at the wheel of the #83 Ferrari, gradually increasing what initially was a meagre gap to Michael Christensen's #5 Porsche to more than 25 seconds.
On the other hand, Antonio Fuoco has been the faster of the three and brought the gap down to 35 seconds with the lead car in the #50 Ferrari, setting the fastest lap so far in the process – 3m29.208, more than 1.4s quicker than anyone else. He subsequently pitted just before this report was published, as did the #5 Porsche.
This temporarily elevated the #8 Toyota to second place and the #51 Ferrari to fourth, with Sebastien Buemi's car the first of those which pitted for wet-weather tyres, thanks to a remarkable three-hour stint.
Further in Hypercar, the Peugeot #94 had an early second pitstop and subsequently had to serve a drive-through penalty due to a slow-zone infringement by Loic Duval.
In the LMP2 class, Inter Europol's #34 entry took the lead shortly before 7pm after Clement Novalak overtook Vector Sport's #10 machine driven by Ryan Cullen, with other cars close to a minute behind.
The start of the race was one to forget for Cool Racing's #47 car as Naveen Rao spun at the Dunlop chicane before colliding with Thomas Flohr's #54 AF Corse GT3 Ferrari, which the Swiss driver got a drive-through penalty for.
Flohr also crashed out at the Dunlop chicane at 6:09pm, causing the aforementioned slow zone.
Although Larry ten Voorde built a comfortable GT3 lead at the wheel of JMW's #66 Ferrari, the car dropped back somewhat when Salih Yoluc took over, and the #91 Porsche run by Manthey Racing is now in the lead, driven by Morris Schuring.