Car 48
Currently Running: 10th in class
Lap: 214
Despite closing the gap to Audi in the damp night-time conditions, Toyota were unable to sustain the challenge and have fallen away, giving Tom Kristensen/ Allan McNish/ Loic Duval a healthy cushion of almost two laps over their nearest challengers, Stephane Sarrazin/Sebastien Buemi/Anthony Davidson.
The battle for victory in P2 looks set to come down to a straight fight between the Oak team-mates, with Nissan’s Michael Krumm/Jann Mardenborough/Lucas Ordonez holding third, while GTE-Pro is wide open, with any one of four cars – the no. 97 and 99 Aston Martins and no. 92 and no. 91 Porsches – capable of winning. GTE-Am looks set to fall the way of the no 76. Imsa Porsche of all-French trio Christophe Bourret/Raymond Narrac/Jean-Karl Vernay.
After stellar night stints from Brendon Hartley and Karun Chandhok, Murphy Prototypes made it back into the top 10 in LMP2 and were within reach of the Level 5 Racing team. Mark Patterson had a brief scare when Benoit Treluyer brushed against him attempting to get his lap back from Alex Wurz, but no major damage was inflicted.
Mark Patterson (RSA/USA) : “That was the third double stint, one to go. If we hadn’t had the faulty reading on the fuel pressure gauge we would have been running in the top three of this class. But this feels very good to be climbing on our way back up. We’re 18th now under yellow. Yellows don’t help us, because with these two fast guys, Karun and Brendon, we can really move up. I had a couple of brushes with LMP1 guys. The last one was dramatic. Lee Penn our engineer warned me there was an LMP1 car coming up from behind. I bolted through Tete Rouge and then stayed left, gave him room, he came screaming through and I just bent right a little bit and out of the blue was one of the Audis fighting the Toyota that I didn’t know about. Came on a two-lane highway right between us and hit me on my right side, with his left side and knocked us in towards the barrier and if I had not moved the car out to the right side and taken out some of the blow, he would have knocked us and we would have been out of the race at a mere 140-150mph. Kind of fun, huh?!”
Source : Murphy Prototypes