No. 83 Ferrari receives heavy penalty after BMW crash – Sportscar365

Photo: Ferrari

Toyota took the lead at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the ninth hour after the No. 83 Ferrari of race leader Robert Kubica was handed a 30-second stop and wait penalty.

Kubica was ordered to pit following his earlier collision with the #15 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Dries Vanthoor, which was eliminated from the race as a result.

The Polish driver made contact with Vanthoor while moving to the right on the Mulsanne Straight while trying to overtake the Belgian driver in the Manthey PureRxcing LMGT3 car.

Kubica led by around five seconds over the No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid of Ryo Hirakawa at the time of the penalty, with Hirakawa taking the lead.

The Japanese driver was leading the #6 Penske Porsche 963 of Laurens Vanthoor by 25 seconds at the time of Kubica’s penalty.

Nyck de Vries put the sister No. 7 Toyota in third, 35 seconds behind the leader, while the No. 50 Ferrari of Antonio Fuoco and the No. 2 Cadillac of Alex Lynn followed in fourth and fifth.

Following Vanthoor’s accident, the first safety car period of the race was triggered, with the intervention lasting over 90 minutes.

The rain started to fall again on the Circuit de la Sarthe just before the race resumed, prompting almost the entire Hypercar field to put on wet tires.

The two favorites to take on the slicks were the No. 5 Penske Porsche of Frederic Makowiecki and the No. 311 Cadillac Action Express of Pipo Derani, which propelled those cars into the top two positions.

But Makowiecki fell behind by around thirty seconds and quickly gave up the lead to Kubica before falling back to just outside the top 10.

Malthe Jakobsen leads the LMP2 class in the #37 Cool Racing Oreca 07 Gibson, while Klaus Bachler recovered from a spin on the restart to take the lead in the LMGT3 class in the Porsche 911 GT3 R n°92 from Manthey.

Jamie Klein is the Asian publisher of Sportscar365. Japan-based Klein, who previously worked for Motorsport Network on Motorsport.com and Autosport titles, covers the FIA ​​World Endurance Championship and SUPER GT among others.