H6: Toyota ahead, rivals in the hunt

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Toyota continued to control the Le Mans 24 Hours, while the chasing Audis and Porsche kept themselves in the hunt by staying on the lead lap.

Stephane Sarrazin edged the #7 TS040 HYBRID's lead up to one minute over the #2 Audi R18 e-tron quattro of Benoit Treluyer, but that was reduced by around 25 seconds when Audi decided to quadruple-stint a set of tyres towards the end of the hour.

Toyota decided against that strategy, instead putting on fresh tyres as Kazuki Nakajima took over from Sarrazin towards the end of the hour.

Brendon Hartley's Porsche 919 Hybrid and Lucas di Grassi's Audi traded places depending on their pitstops, with the #20 919 being out of sync after stopping with a suspected puncture earlier in the race.

The #35 OAK Ligier has control of LMP2, although Mark Shulzhitskiy brought the car into the pits for a scheduled stop shortly before the one-hour mark.

This gave the lead temporarily to the #46 TDS Ligier of Pierre Theriet, although that car, the #36 Signatech Alpine ORECA of Oliver Webber and the #34 Race Performance ORECA of Jon Lancaster were scheduled to pit and drop back behind behind the leading LIgier.

Corvette's control of the GTE class continued, despite Bruno Senna cutting the lead C7.R's advantage to less than half a minute.

Tommy Milner vacated the #74 car for Richard Westbrook at the start of the hour and the Briton maintained a 30-second advantage after the Aston Martin Vantage driver had slashed 15s from the Corvette's lead thanks to a shorter pitstop.

Senna had edged away from the Ferrari of Giancarlo Fisichella but did not have masses of breathing space as the Italian came back at the Brazilian in the closing minutes of the hour, before making a scheduled stop.

The second Corvette, driven by Jordan Taylor, moved back into the top by splitting the two Manthey Porsches, which have upped their pace but still languish in fourth and sixth.

In GTE Am, Aston Martin moved into formation with Christoffer Nygaard still ahead in the #98 Vantage but David Heinemeier Hansson his chief pursuer in the #95 car. The #53 Ram Ferrari, now in the hands of Mark Patterson, dropped back from second to fourth, behind Alexsey Basov's SMP 458 Italia.

Originally on Autosport.com