LeMans Hour 8: Peugeot extends lead

Leading No. 7 Peugeot

The first eight hours of the 24 Hours of Le Mans have lived up to expectations with lead-lap battles for the lead in three of four classes. American Le Mans Series drivers fared incredibly well with three class leads through the first third of the world’s greatest race. Corvette Racing in GT1 and Risi Competizione in GT2 led their groups by mere seconds.

In the class pole-winning Corvette Racing Corvette C6.R, Johnny O’Connell led Aston Martin Racing’s Antonio Garcia by just 38 seconds with the second factory Aston Martin DBR9 of Andrea Piccini on the same lap and within two minutes.

The second factory Corvette lost time with an alternator change and was a lap behind with Olivier Beretta behind the wheel.

“It’s clear it’s going to be a mighty long fight," O’Connell said after his first stint. “So far we’re doing all right. It’s obvious the competition has improved its performance and their cars are getting better, but then so are ours. During the pit stops we adjusted the roll bars a bit to get rid of the oversteer. We’re not double-stinting our tires anymore, because on Jan’s second stint in the beginning of the race the car got too loose. We’ll see what we do during the night."

Jaime Melo led for Risi in the No. 82 Ferrari F430GT by 42 seconds over the Team Felbermayr-Proton Porsche with Wolf Henzler, who drives in the US for Flying Lizard Motorsports, at the wheel. Melo, Mika Salo and Gianmaria Bruni had started fifth in class but had worked their way to the class lead in the first three hours.

The Risi team led for 11 hours at last year’s race before crashing in the rain and terminally damaged the water pump.

Pre-race favorite Flying Lizard suffered disaster early when Seth Neiman and the IMSA Performance Porsche of American factory driver Patrick Long made contact and sent both cars into the gravel. The Lizard entry suffered significant damage including severe bodywork damage on all sides, a broken rear wheel (and the other three badly damaged), two broken radiators and right rear suspension damage.

It took 80 minutes to get the car repaired. Jörg Bergmeister rejoined the race before the car pitted again in the seventh hour with frame alignment issues.

At the front, Peugeot’s Marc Gene held a two-minute lead on Audi Sport North America’s Tom Kristensen in the Audi R10 TDI. The expected diesel duel between Peugeot and Audi had fully developed with all six entries holding the top six spots.

Hour 8 Standings