Communiqué N° 09 - Sunday 18th June

00h00 - 02h00 : Panoz in the top three !

The 3 Audis were still battling among themselves but following the problems met by No.9 the No.11 Panoz was up to third.
Alboreto refulled just after midnight and the gap between Nos 7 and 8 was only 21 secs but when the latter stopped in turn it went up to 1 mn 38 secs. Alan McNish, pressing on, then set the fastest lap in 3 mn 37.877 secs. At 0h33 No.8 punctured costing Frank Biela a lap. At 0h55, No.9 had to have the diffuser replaced. Ortelli took over from McNish but was forced to stop 20 minutes later to refix the transponder and he also had some problems with his helmet (drinks pipe?). He went back out after 2 laps allowing the No.11 Panoz into third and at 02h00 Magnussen was still ahead of the Audi.

Behind the works Audis and Panoz Spyders the Bernard-Collard-Montagny Cadillac was having a problem-free race even if it was not able to match the leaders in terms of speed. The No.22 Panoz in seventh place driven by Tsuchiya-Kondo-Ida punctured just after 1h00 and came back to the pits, where it spent 20 minutes, on the rear left-hand front rim dropping down to sixteenth place.
The Reynard-Judd driven by Stefan Johansson disappeared at the Motorola chicane in a cloud of smoke when the engine blew. This brought the No.16 Courage in the hands of Bourdais-Clérico­Grouillard up to seventh place ahead of the No.23 Panoz. The very quick Courage-Judd No.17 was also battling with the Japanese entered Panoz before losing time for a general check, Gache­Cottaz-Formato falling back to thirteenth place behind the quickest LM GTS. The BMW also lost time when Gounon spun under braking for Indianapolis. The No.10 Panoz of Nielsen-Graf-Baldi, still last, was finally back on the track almost 5 hours after its accident. In LMP 675, the problems of the No.32 Lola-Nissan allowed the WR No.36 of Terada-Balandras-Boulay into the category lead.
 

No changes in LM GT

The 3 Chrysler Vipers still dominated in GTS with Beretta-Wendlinger-Dupuy and Archer-Duez­Huisman swapping places as refuelling stops intervened. The Corvettes were not too far behind keeping up the pressure.
In LM GT the Müller-Luhr-Wollek Porsche was 3 laps ahead of the No.73 Taisan entry and four in front of the No.81 Haberthur GT3-R. In No.79 Romano Ricci hit the guardrail and had to stop at his pit.