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Le Mans 2016 (Hours 7 to 12): Conway & Sarrazin turn the screw

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At the halfway stage of the 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours, Venturi Formula E duo Mike Conway and Stephane Sarrazin are involved in a thrilling and strategic lead battle in their Toyota. Their fellow Formula E racer Sebastien Buemi is third overall in the sister car.

The seventh hour started with Sarrazin in the #6 Toyota leading the race ahead of the #1 Porsche of Timo Bernhard, and the timing of several yellow flags and slow zones helped Sarrazin eke out a large lead. A few hours later, the #1 car was forced to pit due to problems with Hartley behind the wheel, with the sister #2 car of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb picking up the fight against Toyota. Both Sarrazin, and Conway when he got in the car, put in some scintillating laps and kept up Toyota’s impressive fuel usage, as they managed to stay ahead of Porsche on merit, only dropping behind due to differing pit strategies. The Toyota’s are regularly getting 14 laps out of a tank of fuel (or even 15 under safety car) compared to the Porsche cars mostly doing stints of 13 laps. Kamui Kobayashi is now in the #6 car and leading ahead of Dumas.

The #5 Toyota that Buemi shares with Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima has gone well, but lacked the pace of the #6 car and couldn’t keep the #2 car of Dumas behind at the second of two safety car restarts. Nonetheless, the car is running in a solid P3 at the moment with Davidson behind the wheel. Meanwhile it has been a frustrating time for Loic Duval and Lucas di Grassi, driving the #8 Audi, experiencing a very lonely race in 4th place at the moment. A small vibration caused brief worry within the Audi team but the car was able to keep going with Oliver Jarvis currently behind the wheel. Rounding out the Formula E interest in the LMP1 class is the Rebellion Racing trio of Nick Heidfeld, Nelson Piquet Jr and Nicolas Prost in the #12 machine. After a troubled race with many laps spent in the pits, Prost has shown good pace to move up into P26 overall.

In the LMP2 category, Mahindra Racing’s Bruno Senna has been trying to help the RGR Sport by Morand crew recover from the mechanical problems they experienced earlier – the #43 he shares with Filipe Albuquerque and Ricardo Gonzalez is down in P16 in class however. Meanwhile René Rast has been absolutely mighty in the #26 G-Drive Racing car, taking the class lead and setting the quickest lap of the race by any LMP2 car (a 3:36.793) before handing the car over to Will Stevens. It is currently P2 in class.

Also in LMP2, former Formula E racers Ho-Pin Tung and Nathanaël Berthon are 7th and 10th in class respectively, Tung in the #35 Baxi DC Racing Alpine and Berthon in the #41 Greaves Motorsport machine.

Finally in GTE Pro, DS Virgin Racing’s Sam Bird unfortunately had to retire from the race after team-mate Davide Rigon suffered a wheel rim failure while at the wheel of the #71 AF Corse Ferrari. And former NEXTEV TCR racer Antonio García has gone from 10th up to 9th in class alongside Jan Magnussen and Ricky Taylor, with the #63 Corvette struggling for pace this weekend.

Laurence Thorn and Renate Jungert | e-racing.net

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Images courtesy of Rajan Jangda

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