Le Mans 24 Hours: Buemi leads first hour as Aitken crashes
10th June 2023Toyota’s Sebastien Buemi leads the opening hour of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, as Cadillac Racing’s Jack Aitken collided with the barrier and crawled back to the pit lane.
How the first hour unfolded…
Ahead of the start of the Le Man 24 Hours race, Race Control had declared the track as wet with pockets of the track being hit by light showers. It will be a case of the drivers just surviving the wet pockets with the rest of the track being bone dry.
As the formation approached the starting line, the Ferrari front row bolted away to signal the start of the 24 endurance race. However, at the Dunlop chicane, one of the Porsche’s locked up into the first real braking zone and made slight contact with one of the Toyotas. Fortunately, both cars were able to continue on.
After the first set of corners, Ferrari remained out in front ahead of the two Toyota’s who looked to be threatening. Even before the halfway mark of the first lap, the two Toyotas had split the Ferraris with a 2-3 running order, and it wasn’t long before one of the Toyotas slipped into the lead – at the hands of Sebastian Buemi on straight heading to Indianapolis.
However, on the exit of the Daytona chicane(turn 10, 11 and 12) down the Mulsanne Straight, Cadillac Racing’s Jack Aitken found himself in the barrier. The British driver slipped on a wet back on the exit which caused his rear tyres to snap out on him. As Aitken tried to correct his slide, the Cadillac overcorrected and smashed into the barrier.
Fortunately, the Briton was able to crawl back to the pit lane for repairs with the hope that they will be back out on track. Due to the amount of the debris and on-track repairs, the safety car was deployed
After 30 minutes, the safety car period was still out, but the drop-back phase had begun as the LMP2 cars peeled off the single-file safety car line to collect the stragglers in the class. This was shortly followed by the GTE Am category who pulled out of the safety car line to complete their own drop-back.
During the safety car period, a total of 26 cars pitted for either repairs, checks or a change of strategy.
With 20 minutes left of the first hour, the safety car was finally recalled back into the pit lane to get racing back underway. This left Buemi to control the pace of the field.
Toyota moved up into a promising 1-2 position in the early stages of the Le Mans 24 hours after Toyota’s Mike Conway moved up into second place after he slipped by – now third-place – Ferrari’s Nicklas Nielsen on the run towards Indianapolis.
In the final 10 minutes, Buemi began to edge out a comfortable lead as his teammate, Conway, began to feel the heat of the Ferrari’s behind. As Conway’s soft tyres began to degrade, it allowed Ferrari’s harder tyres to eek out better performance.
On the run down to Mulsanne corner, Nielsen pulled his car alongside Conway and moved back up to second and this was quickly followed by Nielsen’s teammate, James Calado, who pulled up ahead of Conway. Despite the move, Nielsen peeled into the pit lane.
That’s all for the article: Le Mans 24 Hours: Buemi leads first hour as Aitken crashes!
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