Sunday morning madness at Le Mans

By Andrew Cotton

Sunday morning is traditionally the time when the Le Mans 24 hours result becomes a little clearer. Barring the truly cruel and unexpected circumstances, it is the dawn run that separates those who are likely to make it to the flag and those who will not.

Sadly for British supporters, Martin Short's dream of finishing at Le Mans collapsed shortly after dawn when Sebastien Bourdais' Pescarolo Courage punted him off. The Briton was running in fourth position and preparing to defend himself from a charging Emanuele Pirro when he was hit. Though he got out of the gravel, his rear suspension collapsed shortly after, and the truly remarkable run by the small private team was over.

Rinaldo Capello, Tom Kristensen and Seiji Ara have put on a spectacular recovery from two trips into the gravel to lead the race in their Team Goh Audi after Jamie Davies was forced into a long pit stop to replace a rear suspension arm that has cured a suspected understeer problem.

Davies, who with his co-drivers Johnny Herbert and Guy Smith have led the race since the word go, is currently putting on his own recovery drive, ruthless in traffic as he hunts down his Audi colleague and re-takes a richly deserved lead.

His Veloqx team deserve something from this weekend, having worked so hard to repair the damage caused to Allan McNish's car when the Scot went off on oil yesterday. JJ Lehto, following McNish close behind, hit the Veloqx car hard as the Finn, too went off in his Champion Audi.

Both cars were damaged, McNish was injured and taken to hospital though has since returned to the track, and Frank Biela and Pierre Kaffer are driving their socks off to recover from 46th place to lie 11th at 8am here.

Eric Comas, Soheil Ayari and Benoit Treluyer are currently third in their Pescarolo Courage after an almost trouble-free run. Shortly before 8am, both Comas and Davies were busy putting on their car's fastest laps of the entire race as the air cools. Davies put in a 3m34.264s, the fastest lap overall on lap 246, while Comas put on a 3m39.253 the same lap, but six laps adrift of his rival.

Emanuele Pirro, a further two laps down, has also just put in his fastest lap, a 3m35.981 in the Champion car that was repaired after Lehto's accident.

Ralph Firman has managed to hoist his Dome into ninth position, ahead of the Taurus Sport Lola of Benjamin Leuenberger, recovering from a poor dress rehearsal for the race. A broken clutch and a broken engine meant that he, Justin Wilson and Tom Coronel managed only 27 laps in total during qualifying. The start of the race was no easier when the gearbox needed further attention at 7pm but the ex-GP drivers have given it plenty during the night and at dawn.

Running strongly are the leading GTS contenders, headed by Alain Menu in his Ferrari, which has had the fewest problems of the lot. Both of the Corvettes have crashed, Ron Fellows going off at Arnage on Saturday afternoon, and went off again when he had a puncture at high speed.

His accident caused a huge dust cloud, in the middle of which Paul Belmondo lifted off and was hit from behind. His Courage had a massive impact causing the front axle to penetrate the tub, preventing him from continuing.

Jan Magnussen also had an accident, colliding with the no.88 Audi that has left the Ferrari ahead by six laps with eight hours to go. The second Ferrari of Colin McRae, Darren Turner and Rickard Rydell, had a gearbox problem during the night, a clutch change, and alternator problem and an off by Turner at the Dunlop corner.

Romain Dumas leads the GT class in his Freisinger Motorsport Porsche after the White Lightning Porsche that had run so strongly at the head of the field had a long stop during the night when the car was stuck in fourth gear. Porsche's legendary reliability, coupled with some fine driving by the Porsche factory-contracted pilots as left Kelleners, Ortelli and Dumas ahead of Lieb, Rockenfeller and Patrick Long, two laps adrift of the Yukos-backed car.

One other notable retirement was the Zytek that had shown so well in qualifying. The engine expired at 3:30am on Sunday with Hayanari Shimoda at the wheel.