Communiqué n° 9 - Sunday 13/6/99 - 2h00

After midnight the no.2 Toyota managed to reduce the gap to the leading BMW before being delayed by tyre vibrations at the front obliging Kelleners to stop earlier than scheduled. Both cars, however, remained on the same lap.

The no.11 Panoz got going again but no.12 had to come in at 1h20 to have the gear cluster changed. The mechanics carried out the repairs in record time but the car fell from 6th to 12th position overall. The No.13 Courage had to have the brakes purged which enabled the Bscher-Soper-Oberlin BMW LM98 to take over 6th spot.: another blow for Nissan whose R391 had already gone out with a blown engine.

The rear left-hand wheel bearings were changed on the no.16 Courage-Porsche which left Pescarolo-Gay-Ferté in 13th place. In the Audi camp the gearbox had to be changed on no.10 while the Autoexe finally went out around 2h00 when the engine gave up the ghost. Before this Robin Donovan had spun it at Arnage. The Chereau-Goueslard-Yver Porsche went back out after over 4 hours spent in its pit to change the flywheel and the gearbox. The Team Goh BMW was obliged to pit just after 2h00 because of defective power steering problems. These several problems allowed the Kremer Racing Lola into the first 10.

The no.80 Porsche spun in the Nissan chicane and the no.64 911 GT2 also revolved several times, while in the Chrysler Viper camp it was all sunshine and jlaughter as the 3 Oreca entries were in the first 3 places in the GTS category with Beretta-Wendlinger-Dupuy leading Archer-Bell-Duez. Fourth was the Belmondo racing Viper in the hands of Clérico-Lagniez-Martinolle leading the first of the Porsches driven by Palmberger-Ligonnet-Kaufmann.