Six hours down and Papis 'Vette leads GT1.

With the first six hours of the 24 Hours of Le Mans completed, the battle between Corvette and Aston Martin is living up to its billing.

Starting third and fifth in the GT1 class, the twin Compuware Corvettes were first and third at 22:00 local time with the leading car completing 86 laps around the 13.65 kilometre circuit. The #63 Corvette driven by Ron Fellows, Johnny O'Connell and Max Papis had a relatively trouble-free run in the first quarter of the race, while the pace of the #64 Corvette of Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta and Jan Magnussen was slowed by two punctured left rear tyres.

"The car is running like a Swiss watch," said Max Papis after taking the GT1 lead at 9:15 p.m. "We were pushing really hard, and I think this battle is going to go down to the wire."

Oliver Gavin was leading the GT1 class at the one-hour mark in the #64 Corvette C6.R when he had a tyre go down on the fast Mulsanne Straight. He nursed the car back to the pits without incurring additional damage.

"The crew radioed that a tyre was losing pressure and I started feeling a vibration," Gavin reported. "When it went, it wasn't too hard to control the car, but it was very frustrating to drive around slowly because you want to get back to the pits as quickly as possible. It's Russian roulette with the tyres because the gravel thrown onto the track is so sharp."

Olivier Beretta experienced a similar problem one hour later. "We had two punctures, which is just bad luck," he said. "The car is very good, and I didn't have any problems after the puncture."