American Le Mans Series

Petit Le Mans - Hour 6: The LMP2 battle starts again

© Planetlemans

With a big cloud of smoke and a lot of flames the #16 Dyson Lola, with Andy Wallace behind the steering wheel, left the Petit Le Mans race. The engine blow-up also meant the fifth full course yellow of the race. Due to the retirement of the Dyson car the Zytek was promoted into third place overall.
As soon as the pit lane reopened several teams came in for their pit stops. After most teams had made a pit stop and after being behind the safety car, the cars were released again. One of the Prototypes hit the grass, but continued without a problem. Immediately after the green flag was shown, a battle in GT1 between Darren Turner and Johnny O’Connell started on the track. The Aston Martin was quicker than the Corvette but Turner was unable to pass O’Connell and was seeing the yellow car in front of him for about a lap and a half. With 4 hours and 20 minutes to go, going into turn 10, Turner moved to the inside of O’Connell and knocked the Corvette of the track. The #3 Corvette came back on the track fortunately and the #007 Aston Martin was handed a stop-and-go penalty by the race director.

Meanwhile the Porsche RS Spyder of was all over the Intersport Lola and despite being a few laps down the battle was like one for position. Jon Field, in the #37 Intersport Lola, had a 3 lap lead but never even thought of letting the Timo Bernhard in the #6 Penske Porsche by. Lap after lap the two cars were fighting each other.

At the 6 hours mark Field made a small mistake and Bernhard came to his side. The cars went side by side over the straight but Field kept his Lola in front when they turned in to the next corner. The battle was to be continued…