Darkness Brings Troubles to Hour Four
- Sep 20, 2015
- 3 min read
As the darkness fell over the Circuit Of The Americas three of the LMP1 cars suffered some sort of damage to their race. The first was second retiree of the race Toyota #2. He had tried to overtake an Aston Martin down the back straight when he got on too much curb and lost the car, spinning it in the dark. He had a heavy shunt into the Armco barrier which lost him both of his headlights and eventually saw him loosing drive in the car, unable to return it to the pits. Alike #31, the incident for car #2 ended their race. Audi #8 was the next to see an unfortunate turn of events. They were given a one minute stop and go penalty for dropping a tyre during their last pit stop.
The luck for #17 appeared to run out as Webber, at the beginning of the forth hour, completely missed his pit box, overshooting it and having to have his mechanics push him back down the pit lane (putting the car in reverse would have lead to instant disqualification). This slashed the massive lead of 40 seconds that the leading car had down to a measly 8. But the bad luck didn’t stop there. #17, who was also under investigation for a pit infringement, was likewise handed a 1 minute stop and go due to servicing going on on the car whilst the fuel was being put in. This took the #17 out of the lead for the first time in the entire race and they are now one minute six seconds behind teammates #18. Toyota #1 also got a stop/go penalty for the unsafe driving, locking up going into pit lane, earlier on in the race.
The Rebellion #13 again returned to the garage for more work and servicing on the car. They changed the spark plugs twice in the car and the team hope that has now fixed the problems they were having. The car is now back on track, running 22 laps behind the leaders. G-Drive car #26 took the lead in hour four, but the pit stops at the end of the hour saw KCMG taking back the lead. #26 is currently under investigation with the Corvette #50 for an incident on turn two. The outcome of that investigation is currently unknown. Strakka car #42 had a spin down on the main straight. Whether that was his own fault or a race incident is unknown.
The order in LMGTE Pro has stayed relatively the same, with Porsches #91 and #92 still battling for the lead. Currently #92 leads #91. The Porsche 88 that was being piloted by Earl Bamber make decent progress, managing to maintain a Porsche 1-2 for a little while. But the #83 AF Corse Ferrari got back into P2 and has managed to hold the position as #88 is battling to keep P3 from #72.
The big shuffle in the LMP1 class has completely changed what looked like a comfortable lead for Porsche #17. Within just twenty minutes the car went from leading with just over 40 seconds to being securely back in second. It looks like unless the sister car has an issue before the end of the race it will be able to convert the pole they snatched from #17 into a race win.
(image: www.fiawec.com)
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