Communiqué N° 06 - Saturday 17th June

18h00 - 20h00 : Audis battle for the lead

The Audis began, slowly but surely, to tighten their grip on the race and there were also several retirements during this period, mainly due to accidents. Shane Lewis in the No.71 LM GT Porsche hit the wall in the new portion just after 18h00 and a few minutes later the No.30 Debora joined the list of retirements with a blown engine.
Thanks to a triple stint without a tyre change the No.7 Audi driven by Alboreto took over the lead ahead of Allan McNish. When the Scot was replaced by Ortelli the latter immediately set fastest lap in 3 mn 38.485 secs.
 

Second intervention of the Pace car
The main incident took place at around 18h45 in the Forest esses when Patrice Goueslard in the second-placed LM GT Porsche No.77 hit No.78 in the hands of Zadra who had spun, hit the rails and bounced back into the middle of the track.
Both drivers were unhurt but the Pace cars came out again neutralising the race for 25 minutes. Ortelli took advantage of a shorter refuelling stop than No.7 to go into the lead.
At the same time the Konrad Motorsport Lola No. 20 stopped at the Michelin chicane after losing a rear wheel.

A Panoz in the leading trio

After Ortelli Tom Kristensen was the second driver to get under the 3 mn 40 sec barrier but he was the victim of a slow puncture around 19h20 which necessitated a change of tyres. This allowed the leading Panoz No.11 (Brabham-Magnussen-Andretti) to go into third place. The crew of the No.10 Panoz was less fortunate as it had to pit to repair a damaged bonnet and change a punctured tyre after a coming-together with the No.17 Courage C60.
Only the first five cars were lapping under 3 mn 45 secs and the leading Audi opened out a gap of  34 secs until Ortelli spun on the exit from Indianapolis. There was no damage even though the front of the car hit the rail but the Monegasque lost some 15 seconds.
In LM 675 the No.34 Reynard-ROC was slowed by georbox problems which required a box change to enable Boullion-Gene-Policand to continue. Their misfortune allowed the No.32 Lola of Maxwell-Graham-Wilkins to take the lead in this category.
In LM GTS the No.52 Viper was in first spot followed by its sister car No.51 ahead of the leading Corvette in third place.
In LM GT Dick Barbour's 911 GT3 had 3 minutes in hand over the No.73 Porsche with the Perspective Racing entry third.