Press Release N° 19
8H00 to 10H00

The rain is back
Sunday, June 17th, 2001
After a short lull, which gave the drivers the opportunity to change to slick tyres, the rain is falling again on Le Mans. The Audis will probably be increasing the gap with the Bentley, which is less at ease on the wet track.

Although the weather was clement in the early morning, the rain started to fall again on the track. The majority of the drivers, who were running on slicks, had to go back to the pits to change back to tread tyres again.
However, this will probably not disturb Franck Biela and Tom Kristensen with their n°1 Audi, in their long march towards victory. The other official Audi follows two laps behind. The Bentley - in 3rd position - has intensified the gap upon its immediate follower, Olivier Beretta's n°16 Chrysler. The Americans from the team Oreca are still two - out of three - in the race, while half of the teams have withdrawn.
Beretta's Chrysler and n°17 Courage took advantage of the n°6 Cadillac's starter problems, to take the 4th and 5th positions. Note Jean-Christophe Boullion's very special stint for the Team Pescarolo Sport's car, before he left the wheel to Laurent Redon. Following its problems, the Cadillac was in 9th position, but it succceded in moving up 2 places to 7th in the rain.
The Ron Fellows' n°63 Corvette is still causing a stir by claiming not only the first position in the GTS class, but also by elevating itself to 6th position in the overall ranking due to the long pit stop of the last running Cadillac.
The 50th anniversary of the most famous sports car made in the U.S.A. might be celebrated fittingly by this car, which was not necessarily expected to achieve such a high position. It is followed in its class by Olivier Gavin's n°60 Saleen, 10th in the overall ranking, who had a good fright with a puncture in the rear right tyre.
Only two LMP 675 class cars are still running, but the Reynard-Roc Auto has shown worrying signs after long stops at the pits to refill with water after having experienced cooling problems. Let's hope that the car won't breakdown. It's still 9th and is first in its class before the WR in 20th position.
In the GT class, the fight is ongoing between the Freisinger Motorsport n°77 Porsche driven by Romain Dumas and the Luca Drudi's Seikel Motorsport n°83 Porsche. In 11th and 12th positions, the two cars have never had more than 5 seconds between them. Finally, the Seikel, driven by the race's youngest participant, Gunnar Jeannette, is ahead of n°83.
Luc Alphand with the n°74 Porsche was in 3rd position of his class before stopping at the pits due to a hydraulic leak by the clutch. Consequently, the car of the former ski world champion has dropped back to the 8th position of its category. But for Luc Alphand, the most important thing is to do it for pleasure.