Ayari pits for repairs

Pescarolo suffered a scare doing the second hour of Le Mans as second-placed Soheil Ayari suffered steering damage and was forced to make an extended pitstop.

Ayari was running comfortably in second place when he hit the Panoz Motor Sports Esperante of Patrick Bourdais and suffered damage to the front of the car. The team pulled the car into the garage and carried out repairs to the steering and replaced the front bodywork. The car lost four minutes and rejoined in sixth place with Eric Helary at the wheel.

Boullion meanwhile continued to pull away in the leading Pescarolo but behind him the Rollcentre Racing Dallara Judd of Joao Barbosa had moved up to second place having qualified in eighth place. Emaneule Pirro was running in third place in the Champion Racing R8 closely followed by Franck Montagny in the Audi Playstation Team Oreca. The second to fourth-placed cars were covered by under five seconds.

The drama continued at the front of the GT1 class when Olivier Gavin picked up a puncture on his Corvette Racing C6R and crawled back to the pitlane. The team changed the tyre but the car had picked up a water leak and lost several more minutes, eventually rejoining in fourth place in the class and handing the lead to Tomas Enge in the #58 Aston Martin.

Rick Sutherland comfortably leads the LM P2 class in the Paul Belmondo Racing Courage Ford by twenty seconds from the Kruse Motorsport Courage Judd of Ian Mitchell. Alex Job Racing lead the GT2 class with Marc Lieb two minutes ahead of the White Lightning Racing of Patrick Long.

The Larbre Competition car came to a standstill in the middle of the circuit near the entrance to the pitlane causing cars to swerve onto the grass in avoidance but Patrice Goueslard restarted the car and crawled into the pitlane. The Rachel Walter LMP2 Peugeot of Yojiro Teradi ground to a halt with a puncture on the left-rear. The car got going again but the smoke became more intense as the car continued a very long slow drive back to the pitlane.