Release n°8 - Saturday 22h00 - 0h00

Nighttime smiles on Porsche !

Around 22h20 when the no.29 Toyota in the lead came in for a pad change the no.25 Porsche slipped in front ahead of its sister-car no.26. Ten minutes later the Boutsen-Kelleners-Lees Toyota went directly into its pit for repairs to the gearbox. No.29 restarted but fell back to seventh place 4 laps behind the leading Porsche 911 GT1.
At 23h17 Wollek stopped in turn for a pad change and this put no.26 into the lead until it too had to come in, and at midnight no.25 was 1 mn 16 secs ahead of its sister car. Thus both Porsches were battling for victory as the true gap was around 20 seconds.

The Nielsen-Lagorce-Krumm Nissan was running like clockwork in third place but 3 laps behind the leaders, and was under threat from the Courage-Nissan of Cottaz-Belloc-Goossens which was leading the prototype category ahead of the no.8 Porsche LMP1.

Courage ran into problems when the no. 14 driven by Ekblom-Gay-Tsuchiya came back slowly into the pits and retired due to overheating caused by a defective cooling system. The Debora, the only car in the LMP2 Category, also retired with gearbox problems after a good start to the race by Lionel Robert.

In GT2, no changes as the no.53 Viper Oreca was still in the lead ahead of the Roock-Porsche no.64 on the same lap. Three laps behind were the Chamberlain -entered Viper and the Larbre-entered Porsche 911 GT2 no.60.