Communiqué n°12 - Sunday 13/6/99 - 12h00

JJ Lehto went off just at the moment choosen by BMW to reduce the pace with the white cars lapping between 3 mn 42 and 3 mn 45 secs. He was stunned by the impact and was unable to carry on. This, of course, left the race wide open again with less than 1 mn 30 seconds between the leading BMW and the Toyota in second spot. Into third came the no.8 Audi in spite of being held up due to an exhaust change. It was followed by the semi-works BMW no.18.

In the leading group the second of the Audis no.7 took advantage of persistent brake problems on the no.21 Nissan-Courage and an oil leak affecting the Panoz to take over 5th place.
In LM GTS, the works Chrysler team had a spot of bother around 10h00 when the gearbox had to be changed on no.52. It was Justin Bell who set off after losing around 10 laps and did a series of very quick laps, his reward being a new lap record for the category in 3 mn 59.100 secs. The other 2 Oreca team cars stopped for a precautionary check of the injectors. The Roock Racing no.63 retired in a cloud of smoke and in the LM GT Category no.81 continued on its merry way in 14th place overall headed only by the 3 LM GTSs !.