Celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the full 2023 race in stunning HD and without cuts. This milestone edition marked the return of legendary manufacturers like Ferrari, Porsche, and Cadillac to the Hypercar class, delivering an unforgettable showdown of technology, endurance, and passion. Witness every dramatic moment, from night battles to rain-soaked strategy calls, in one of the most historic races ever held at Circuit de la Sarthe.
#LeMans2023
#24hLeMans
#EnduranceRacing
#MotorsportHistory
#HypercarEra
#FerrariVsToyota
#LegendaryRace
#LeMans2023
#24hLeMans
#EnduranceRacing
#MotorsportHistory
#HypercarEra
#FerrariVsToyota
#LegendaryRace
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SportsTranscript
00:00:00the Aston Martin unusual color for an Aston Martin it is yeah it's quite nice
00:00:05to see it in a different color yeah I don't know I'm still partial to Felton
00:00:13Green myself yeah
00:00:18yeah the the project one car is pulling out like a nice gap now 34 seconds over
00:00:25the second place AF car so doing a great job there Gunnar Jeanette's got a lot
00:00:31of experience as you well know yes you've raised with Gunnar I have and he
00:00:35he's an experienced Porsche racer
00:00:41another guy who is kind of live that that Walter Mitty existence of being a you
00:00:49know what what does Gunnar do for a living he's Gunnar he's gonna that's
00:00:54right that's it's what he does for a living
00:00:58my car going slow there what number is that one is that that is that actually
00:01:02the car crash like yes I think that is actually the Interpol a little damage on
00:01:09the front so I would think that it is and it's about the timing is about right
00:01:13although there's to have set him down it does says 32 car is stopped so maybe it's
00:01:18no it's on the he's moving on the on the map there you can see okay in comes the AF
00:01:27and a B2 car AF Corset number 80 again that's another car that had a pretty good run near the
00:01:37run for a while is now 11th in class 23rd overall Norman Nato behind the wheel of that car work continues on
00:01:44the Jota Porsche the Hertz team Jota Porsche
00:01:49these guys won't give up yeah I think for these guys they've done such an amazing job and the
00:01:55the performance of the car is amazing but they are new to the car so when they have a problem it you
00:02:01know it's perhaps more of a problem because they're not so probably familiar with repairing it or fixing the
00:02:08car certainly at speed so it's going to be you know more of a challenge for these guys to get the car back
00:02:15on track guy for those who like me have just stepped away for an hour and wondered what the
00:02:22heck had just happened to this race what the heck just happened this race what happened to the the
00:02:2538 Jota team Porsche is that legacy of their earlier crash I don't know that they've just come in the
00:02:31pits again they're running really well actually they were solidly in the top 10 back amongst the
00:02:37the other hyper cars but they've they've come back and pushed the car back into the pits and I'm not
00:02:42quite sure what the reason for that is and just saying because they are new to the car it's probably
00:02:48going to take them a little bit more time to get it fixed because they're probably trying to figure out
00:02:52themselves you know they're learning about the car all the time but either way I think that so far
00:02:58they've done a great job and should be proud of their efforts but we've got a real good battle
00:03:03where he's leading now it's only a couple of seconds from James Collardo you've got Menezes
00:03:08who's taken over from Nico Muller who drove a great stint and led I mean arguably you could say
00:03:18that I'd love to know the numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if the Peugeot has led the most laps so
00:03:23far it seemed to be out front for a long long time and then you've got Alex Lynn not far behind him
00:03:29so you've really got those sort of the top four of a solidly in it you know with the with the number
00:03:35six uh Porsche kind of on the fringes but certainly not out of it Francesco Castellacci handing over to
00:03:42Thomas Floor uh I'm getting judging judging by the body shape that is the 54 AF Corsa Ferrari silver car
00:03:49who is currently lying second overall in the GT and second overall second in the GT AM class
00:03:56project one AO Porsche the number 56 car Gunnar Jeanette is that class leader that is Rexy for
00:04:03those of you watching in Technicolor and uh third place Daniel Serra for Kessel Racing Daniel Serra
00:04:10spent a lot of time racing successfully with Paul de la Lana's crew in the 98 Northwest AMR Aston Martin
00:04:17now back where he sort of started his GT career in Ferraris 57 Kessel Racing car looking here at the lead
00:04:23battle between the number eight Toyota Gazoo Racing and the 51 Ferrari Air of course a car
00:04:29Sebastian Buemi and James Collado and that's come right down again it's um Sebastian Buemi is playing
00:04:36around with the roll bars the team had sort of said to him you know what what can they do to help
00:04:40where he was playing with the roll bars he's clearly not 100% happy with that car and um he's
00:04:45trying to find the balance and uh James Collado's gradually gradually chipping away at that lead and
00:04:51uh again Menezes in the in the Peugeot he's they're hanging in there they've got the pace you know
00:04:56they they they they're there on merit um not by luck they are absolutely in the fight and uh you know
00:05:03great to see uh see them there. White flags just being waved there so that's the that'll be the slower 32
00:05:10car on its way back in 63 still at the side of the track so that car has not got back underway
00:05:16and that was at the first was at the first day it's not at the first you came now in fact that's
00:05:22no longer showing a stop so that is moving as well so both those cars on one off down there are going
00:05:28riding on board with Collado you just saw him down into into Indianapolis having a look and
00:05:33going briefly by an LMP2 car which then had the better line and more grip and came back past him
00:05:39because at low speed there's very little at all in terms of performance between the LMP2 car and the
00:05:46hypercars and indeed actually the GT cars that their minimum speed is almost identical I would think
00:05:51um so it's only really when you get up towards north of 150 miles an hour that starts to make a
00:05:57difference. Yeah and sometimes you find with a GT car when you come to a slow corner like a hairpin or a
00:06:02first gear corner they're actually sometimes quicker because they've got more mechanical grip so
00:06:06they they tend to have you know better rotation and quite often better traction because they don't
00:06:11have quite as much power but they've got they've got that extra grip so um yeah in the low speed
00:06:15corners it's um they're quite often quicker. Gap between the lead cars Toyota number eight the 51 Ferrari
00:06:23just seesawing to and fro you can see there in there in a progression from three seconds down to 1.6 down
00:06:29to 1.2 out to 1.8 in fact halfway around the last lap it was down below a full second
00:06:37see their Ferraris uh ENG crew well these are the guys that are producing Ferraris behind the scenes
00:06:44footage as well some friends and colleagues of ours through the gravel goes the number three car of
00:06:49Sebastian Bordet and his colleagues who's aboard the three caddy at the moment that's uh Scott Dixon of
00:06:56this parish and we've got a five second penalty for the 94 Peugeot for a pit stop in Richmond so
00:07:04that's going to cost them well that will be served at their next pit stop rather than a stop and go
00:07:14yellow at Marshall Post 11. and that is at the first chicane
00:07:19oh there we go now is that 94 Peugeot oh that's a replay yeah just a replay of them riding the
00:07:27curves that car in third place the three marker lights red showing it's the hypercar class two
00:07:32marker lights on the 51 car second in class and one red marker light on the number eight Toyota and that
00:07:39shows it is the class leader you'll get the same with the oh 94 has stopped that is sideways that is the
00:07:45third place Peugeot damage to the barriers whether it was that car or another that
00:07:52unless he actually bounced off the barriers i think he might have
00:07:57yeah he's uh on board
00:08:05just ran wide and got on that damn
00:08:07okay that's bad news that you were talking about the Peugeot being in third place on merit not
00:08:17through luck it was probably bad luck in qualifying and the inability to find a clear lap that slightly
00:08:23masked what to expect from the Peugeots we had hoped that they would come good here that their ground effect
00:08:32no rear wing aero design package would work best at Le Mans probably the track that it was exclusively
00:08:40designed for when Le Mans survived the rest but that did he did he get on the damp it looked
00:08:49that's what it looked like yeah and they've all been still telling their drivers stay off the dam
00:08:54yeah and the problem with the curbs you know no matter how much the cars dry out the racing line
00:09:00around the edges of the curbs and in the corrugations of the curbs that's where water lurks so
00:09:06what is a low grip painted surface anyway becomes a very low grip or no grip painted surface when it's wet
00:09:13did you ever guys ever get a report on what was wrong with the 38 car
00:09:18no it was the crash detection the black box it had failed and the aco said you can't run without it
00:09:28it's better that i stopped and removed the front nose this is a journey or do i keep driving
00:09:36you've got a maximum maximum 80 kph
00:09:41all right well we'll forgive him the uh 10 euro fine for front nose
00:09:49in extremis i think we'd all be an americanism but a really valid question from the driver
00:09:54um you know am i going to do more damage by this thing coming underneath the wheels and we think of
00:10:01jose muriel lopez of the toyota at sebring maximum 100 maximum 100 all my lights have gone off i'm so
00:10:13sorry all right well you know he's not the first to make a mistake now is that just the carcass of the
00:10:19tire or has somebody spat a wheel off and where is that and whose tire was it it it looks like it's the
00:10:25exit to karting all right the good news is it made it clear across the track without anybody
00:10:30collecting it but whose wheel is it now a mission i'm engineer might be able to have an a fairly
00:10:42educated guess at what width of tire that was and what would that tell you well it might tell you
00:10:50if it was from a hypercar which hypercar it was from because the peugeot has equal sized tires front
00:10:58and rear and it's unique in the hypercar field most have a narrower front and a wider rear tire
00:11:04including the toyota so all the persio is the outlier there and as a result of of the way that it's
00:11:13had it or that they have chosen to use the maximum tire contact patch that they're allowed
00:11:18persia is actually allowed to deploy its hybrid drive
00:11:21uh above 150 kilometers now whereas for all the others absolutely you think of the toyota being
00:11:28front wheel uh using the front axle for its hybrid it's 190 kilometers now before they can deploy
00:11:35there it's the fact the toyota guys the ferrari guys are telling us um that in a in a lap that in
00:11:40qualifying is three and a half minutes and and in the race is more you know 340 350
00:11:46they're only using about six seconds of hybrid power a lap now the misapprehension or misunderstanding
00:11:55perhaps of the hybrid deployment is that in this rule set in hypercar there is a maximum total amount
00:12:03of energy that the car can produce at any time and that's measured by torque sensors on the drive shafts
00:12:10on two if it's two-wheel drive or four if it's four-wheel driven and when the electrical power comes in
00:12:19then the internal combustion engine power is subtly reduced by the electronics so you don't have
00:12:26more power it just comes from a slightly different source briefly uh reports are that that tire was from
00:12:34the 45 car okay the uh the crowd strike the algrave uh uh entry okay and also uh correct me if i'm wrong
00:12:43but i think this is the first warning we've seen for abusing track limits and it's going to
00:12:50alex lynn yeah in the number two caddy each driver it used to be the case up until the end of last year
00:12:57that each driver would have a maximum of five warnings before incurring a penalty per stint
00:13:06it is no longer per stint which is the entire race driver by driver now the car doesn't earn them
00:13:13so you don't get in with four penalties already on your car and then the first time you
00:13:18geander over the white lines you have to go and do a drive-through it is per driver
00:13:22but it does mean that if you let's say you're a bronze driver and you exceeded track limits three
00:13:28times on saturday didn't drive during the night when you get in on sunday two strikes and you're
00:13:34back in for a drive-through penalty which to a degree sounds like an awful lot of a half harsher regimen
00:13:44but stay within track rules well in the words of the great doc hudson
00:13:49stay in the gray stuff son that's what it's there for pitched up a car 50 under investigation
00:13:56when it's not your race it's not your race that's the second of the a of course a ferraris
00:14:01that's the car that stopped for a cooler change and that was for the ers so the electrical recovery
00:14:09system that systems water cooler had been pierced by a stone and was leaking and so they suddenly had
00:14:18higher than satisfactory temperatures uh in their hybrid system and that is devoutly not to be wished
00:14:26yeah and i wonder if that was the same kind of water leak that happened with the portion
00:14:37well again these things are super sophisticated we heard earlier in the race that somebody had
00:14:43to stop for repairs to a power steering cooling system he's done a great job bringing this car back
00:14:51yeah there's a lot of sparks yeah it's a lot of drama isn't there but you know easily that could just
00:14:58you know what a grinding wheel looks like on any random old bit of steel well it's not on a grinding
00:15:03wheel but at 100 kilometers now the track surface is doing a pretty good grinding job so hopefully it's not
00:15:10actually doing too much long-term damage underneath the fact that he's got four wheels certainly
00:15:16mitigates against that and um yeah i mean i don't know what the underside of the car looks like i was
00:15:23on the wrong side when all these cars were being lifted up i was inside in the scrutineering rather than
00:15:28outside now it's time to go there we go there we go just as he gets to the peatland speed limiter now of
00:15:35course hopefully that's working as well because that would really add insult to injury if you then
00:15:40got ping for speeding in the pits that's a brave cameraman there you go that tire delaminated
00:15:45just as it was coming down pit lane that's why bits started flying off
00:15:50it's such a shame because the car was doing so well they're doing a really great job
00:15:55generating the fight for the win fantastic fantastic had two great stints
00:16:00well now that leaves us with four cars on the lead lap as we get to close on 11 hours
00:16:11and just over 11 hours of the race remaining
00:16:16and we've got a slow zone at marshall post 30. i'm not sure what that's for
00:16:21that would be that's on the engine to the porsche curve now who's gone off that or is there debris
00:16:32while we were looking at something else did uh did the peugeot spit bits off or are they trying to
00:16:40rescue that wheel slash tire yeah ah that's that's true that's where that was okay here's the incident
00:16:45again guy yeah he's gone in carrying a bit of speed he's missed the apex on the left and he's just
00:16:52ran on and it's actually still quite wet actually offline it's um it's really not dried at all so
00:16:58he's just got in a little bit hot slightly around wide and got that uh right front uh
00:17:04tire on the other damn stuff and lost literally lost his steering that front at that first chicane on
00:17:10the mulsanne straight has been the real area of contention for everybody see the bit of debris
00:17:16that he was driving by there yeah and there finally the tidy lamina that's been coming in locked yeah
00:17:23right i mean not locked by the brakes but just not turning and so it's eventually machined its way
00:17:29through the the tread of the tire not luckily the carcass and luckily again because the team allowed him to
00:17:37come back in at up to 100 kilometers an hour not halfway around the lap where it then ripped the
00:17:42piece that ripped the pieces off the car michael molina watching the action from the ferrari of course
00:17:47the garage again this battle between the two very equally balanced cars sebastian bermi in the number
00:17:57eight toyota multiple race winners of world champions james collado also a multiple world champion he and
00:18:02alessandro pierre guidi in the 51 car three-time gte pro world champions when that was the thing
00:18:10as recently as last year last year that's indeed spending three and four seasons i mean they and
00:18:17and it that makes it sound like they were utterly dominant they weren't utterly dominant it was an
00:18:22an utterly utterly tough fight all the way through and they just managed to get the upper hand over their
00:18:29Porsche rivals michael christensen and kevin est and they had a world championship as well that was
00:18:35the missing year for the ferrari trio it was back to us there walking away batistuti pregliasco
00:18:42and get many more sound italian sounding team manager team managers the batty
00:18:48find your marty ferrari's nothing too badly i guess for somebody who's uh who's firm runs ferrari's for a
00:18:54living not related at least not closely related to enzo ferrari at some stage you imagine there's
00:19:02some distant relation but yeah it's not distant it's no offense but it's not like smith
00:19:10no i do
00:19:13goodness gracious i mean you can you can you can barely count the number of smiths who won them on
00:19:19without taking your shoes and socks off well that's right is there another i'm not aware of any
00:19:27i wouldn't be surprised i mean you know it's such a popular name or common name shall say not many
00:19:31clements or duffs i think since the originals not many other hamiltons bonato's yeah a lot of bonato's
00:19:40now the number 93 per show is norland's dessert a bonato 93 per show now becomes the the team's
00:19:50better placed car as the 94 car slips down the order that's how tight the battle still is with
00:19:5812 and a half hours to go because i'm now at that point where i'm subtracting time of day from amount
00:20:04of race left and that's why i brought a studio clock in that still didn't help me because i'm still looking
00:20:10at the wrong counter trying to figure out whether it's counting up or down and whether it means time
00:20:15to go or time elapsed so we're getting close to the halfway point 38 minutes away and each of the
00:20:25teams that started the race has still got a healthy car in the hypercar class one toyota one ferrari one
00:20:32cadillac one porsche and actually the two glickenhaus cars are they laps apart they're they're on the same
00:20:41lap aren't they they're actually 40 seconds apart the two glickenhaus cars libelier apart and frank
00:20:46mayor and in eighth and ninth they're having like an inter-team battle but they're still going and fair
00:20:52play they're both uh they're both going going strong so well look jim glickenhaus's plan when he
00:20:59created these cars for the hypercar category even though the rule set changed underneath him once
00:21:05he'd sort of set sail for the new world or from the new world literally rather than metaphorically um
00:21:12his plan always was to be able to be watching cars bearing his own name that he had made and designed
00:21:19and conceived racing down the mulsanne straight at night just like the cars of his childhood hero
00:21:29and uh luigi kinetti and and he he did that and more than doing that last year one of his cars ended
00:21:38up on the overall podium at le mans so as far as he's concerned that is a huge number of boxes ticked he
00:21:45would love more people to have come and run cars he would love to have have had customer cars running
00:21:54never quite transpired and as a result uh he's got a program that is struggling for funding it doesn't
00:22:03have a big manufacturer oem budget behind it of any kind so he's funding it himself principally
00:22:12they are producing a road car version of the car as well that has now been
00:22:19crash tested and seems to be 100 approved so again now i'm sure there will be a queue for customers
00:22:28for what remains new york's only auto manufacturer
00:22:35little white tabs there you can see on the corner of the windscreen
00:22:38you're used to seeing drivers in single seaters pulling a tear off off their visor to clear the
00:22:44muck off essentially it's a plastic film across the visor of the helmet and the same thing happens
00:22:50here a plastic film is applied across the windshield of the car the windscreen of the car and little
00:22:59white tab there allows the corner to be lifted and it's peeled off and the standard number of
00:23:05uh tear offs on a windscreen now is a dozen so 12 tear offs which means that every two hours
00:23:14you can remove one and get rid of all the oil grime all the dead insects and boy have there been some
00:23:22dead insects on windscreens after even a lap of running and and also guy the thing that you don't
00:23:28really think about which is all the black smears from the little balls of rubber that get fired up all
00:23:34the time and that's probably is causes as much dilution of your visibility as anything else so
00:23:40those tear offs those are a really key part of of keeping the driver in the frame yeah and especially
00:23:48as um you come into the morning and the sun once you get the sunlight on the screen that's when it
00:23:53really really shows on and that's the time where yeah you need you've gone through the night
00:23:58and you'll definitely be uh be asking for a clean uh windshield in the morning you'll often see
00:24:04during pit stops for safety reasons that mechanics are allowed to clean the windshield so you often see
00:24:08them cleaning them up but if it get if you get particularly bad badly peppered by gravel say for
00:24:14instance it's your lead battle again not much in it is there then uh yeah you might want one taken off and
00:24:21there's uh one particular company who have made a massive market for themselves in this field you
00:24:30just saw in the back of the ferrari garage spare windshield hanging from the ceiling 12 tear-offs on
00:24:37that as well everything will have the all the visors all the tear-offs supplied the james collardo
00:24:45lies in second place what's their thoughts he made box the slap box the slap fuel only box and slap fuel only
00:24:57the reliable and calm voice of the race engineer for the 51 car
00:25:08now what about toyota
00:25:09okay box this lap pit confirm box this lap fit confirm you stay in the car new tires
00:25:19new tires though battle just whistling by the garage 56 chevy camaro zl1a no question from the rear
00:25:28light signature what it is also the distance the rear lights are off the ground gives you a fairly good
00:25:32indication as well they're at uh way above driver's eye level number three caddy is in
00:25:41still scott dixon or is that the blue and yellow of sebastian borde no borde got out and dixon got in
00:25:47yeah well dixon was in when it came in so but you know what i'm saying is yeah on the last driver
00:25:53on the last change so he's recently in andre lotterer is in the number six porsche in third place he's
00:25:59just stopped so a fourth uh no fourth place yeah it's number two caddy of alex lin is now
00:26:05cycled up to the top of the pile alex with a penalty hanging over his head doesn't he guy
00:26:10well a warning he's a warning he's got a warning he's on a warning yeah okay yeah
00:26:15so it's going to be interesting so the both leaders are going to be pitting and uh it sounds like uh
00:26:20clardo is going to be uh fuel only and uh when he's going to be taking tires and look at the way
00:26:26that collardo is piling the pressure on the toyota mechanics the gap was 1.2 down to 0.7 now down to
00:26:330.46 they are going to be almost within touching distance coming into the pit entry yeah and there
00:26:42they are there he is and that puts big pressure on both teams to perform and that's an indication of how
00:26:49ferrari are comfortable in their skin with this car with this team with these drivers
00:26:56it's like they've been doing it for a decade and to to a degree a large part of the team has the
00:27:03team is a a melange that's not the italian word but a mixture of a of course a gt engineers and
00:27:13technicians and ferrari formula one engineers and technicians and they came together as this
00:27:18program sort of started to grow less than 12 months ago considerably less than 12 months ago and uh
00:27:26look at that you you don't get a closer battle than that if they're like that still
00:27:31in 12 hours and 30 minutes then oh boy are we going to have a finish and this is you're going to see
00:27:39a little bit of the advantage of having either the first or the last pit stall because
00:27:44you will be able to start the service long you know as you can see right there and then
00:27:55there's collado well it's a little bit like a slow zone the guy who gets in first
00:27:59is going slower and the other kite guy catches him but then he's released from it first and
00:28:04and in in terms of the slow zone that gap should never grow or decrease and the same with the pit
00:28:11lane here the fact that the toyota has started work before the ferrari stops means that the toyota
00:28:17will finish work first but it will have to get this far far up the pit lane before we know whether
00:28:22they're ahead or behind now countdown to what and of course the fuel count on the on the editor no that
00:28:30count was uh we saw that count earlier yeah sure what i'm sure what that is either maybe that is fuel
00:28:37no there's the fuel rig then the fuel man has a little readout to tell him how much it has gone in
00:28:43for uh towards is on his way no tires and there goes the ferrari because he did not change tires
00:28:48wow they have jumped him did the toyota take tires yes it did okay did we see that yes we did we did
00:28:57so i'm not saying that then looking at something guy and i saw all right there we go
00:29:04so fresh tires on the toyota but advantage ferrari out of the pit stall now you would assume
00:29:12how yeah how long does that advantage last because with those fresh tires it seems like
00:29:17he's gonna eat his lunch take his milk money depends how fresh collado's tires are if they've only done
00:29:24one stint they should be relatively good for the first couple of laps though boemi guy will have an
00:29:32advantage that initial bite particularly of a michelin tire will just give you an extra couple of laps maybe
00:29:39even three here with that extra little bit of performance as we go again past the chevy camaro
00:29:46still going there still going strong yeah all the way up to 24th of uh 36th overall and again caddy
00:29:55cycles up to the lead of the race so number three car is in a little bit of a zone of its own
00:30:05one lap off the lead but one lap ahead of the 93 peugeot and then the 93 peugeot which is in
00:30:13sixth position is a further lap ahead of the glickenhaus duo
00:30:17and if he can get if the cadillac number three you can get that lap back
00:30:30then yeah and the kessel cars now moved into the lead of the uh gt battle oh yeah so it has so project
00:30:40one must have stopped recently pj hyatt's in the car so in fact he's their bronze driver yes that car
00:30:47has stopped so uh because governor janet was in it okay so that's driver change there in the last
00:30:54couple of laps we didn't uh see that but that has happened so pj doing nighttime laps you don't have to
00:30:59do nighttime laps there's no mandation that a bronze driver or any other category of driver has to drive
00:31:06at night and some will not or do very little and here in the depths of the night but prime time usa time
00:31:15pj obviously but you know it's part of being part of the team you don't want to to feel that somebody
00:31:22else has done all the hard work for you um the other side of it is you if you know you cannot be as quick
00:31:30as you want to be or as you need to be in the dark then it does make sense to allow your teammates to
00:31:36do the work wrt's van sam vos now so where are they at the moment their best car louis delatras the 41 car
00:31:45is in fourth and the nine car has just stopped 30 habsburg's taken over you saw sean galale 30 habsburg's
00:31:53teammates in that car it's in the lmp2 class which is being led by duquesne engineering's neil jani that
00:32:01car's had a bit of an up and down last time i talked about that car it was skating around a tire wall
00:32:08in the rain number two caddy leads the race
00:32:13box this lap box this lap driver change to richard keep working the front
00:32:25keep working the front now does that mean there's going to be no tire change that that's unusual guy
00:32:31smith for uh a driver to be told to work the fronts on the way in yeah that is very strange i i on the
00:32:39outlet for sure but um maybe they're going to well no they're going to change drivers to say if they're
00:32:43going to keep the tires on they want to maintain that heat but obviously doing a driver change
00:32:47they're going to be changing tires so yeah that is a strange you would think you would think yeah
00:32:53so the gap now between uh buemi and uh uh cladam and uh where me is what eight seconds so
00:33:00you need to keep an eye on that
00:33:01keep pushing alex keep pushing we need to try to get the front tires up you can do it
00:33:14they're keeping the tires on when they hand it over to westy now i think the deal here is
00:33:20that michael were telling us that they confidently expect all of the tires to be able easily to triple
00:33:27and comfortably to quad stint the unspoken underlying thought there was five might well be on if the
00:33:38conditions are right i mean think about this circuit it's actually not hard on tires it's not a
00:33:43particularly abrasive circuit so in terms of doing longer stints it's not really as much of an issue
00:33:49it's more of a structural thing um that they they may call from yeah just from a safety point of view
00:33:56so he may have done a double or even a triple on those tires and they may still be keeping the
00:34:00tires on but yeah they just need him to keep that front tire temperature up you saw nicola pino nico
00:34:06pino the driver from if you didn't recognize the flag on his chest chili we don't get many
00:34:13chilian racing drivers he's just showing off too yeah well it isn't bad enough that he's a really good
00:34:19race car driver he juggled too there's quite a lot that goes on those uh what are the ones with the
00:34:25flashing lights on the boards oh yeah with it yeah you know that yeah yeah of course the reflex
00:34:30stuff yeah yeah quite a lot of that is done on medicine ball stuff there was a tennis balls that
00:34:35yes exactly with a physio there was a time uh during the jaguar era when tom walkenshaw came up with the
00:34:42bright idea of having an exercise bike at the back and getting the guys to do five minutes sprinting on
00:34:47it to really get the adrenaline and the blood pumping we did that eventually we had yeah yeah
00:34:53yeah just just to get you because even if you haven't been asleep and even if it's daytime
00:34:59you know you just want the body to be absolutely red hot and ready to go not in terms of perspiration
00:35:05but just the blood pumping and the adrenaline up and yeah especially this time of night you know you
00:35:11maybe a little lethargic and uh want to get the uh yeah get the blood pumping yeah is that arcadian
00:35:17rhythms or some other rhythm it's arcadian isn't it yeah antediluvian in our case five seconds added to
00:35:24the pit stop for the eight car for a pit stop infringement now that's the one thing that isn't
00:35:31is speeding in the pit lane what it may be is a whole host of other things not having the earth
00:35:38strap connected correctly removed too early too many men working on the car a tire getting loose
00:35:46a wheel nut getting loose various other little things because the pit stops are quite tightly
00:35:52prescribed there's no minimum pit stop time you can be stationary for as long or as short as you want
00:35:58stroke need but obviously there was some infringement there are also safety aspects to it like you must
00:36:05have the guy there with the fire extinguisher visors must be down oh 51 car james collado just
00:36:12out breaking himself there at the top of the hill into the dunlop chicane sebastian bohemi how far back
00:36:196.9 seconds 7.3 seconds collado's really honking on bohemi's on a fresh set of tires
00:36:26and you add that five second penalty to the number eight car and uh it's pretty much uh even stevens
00:36:31right now on board with sebastian bohemi so the screen on the top right there alongside the driver
00:36:38mirror that's part of the car's systems he will have the on-board safety indicator screen also within
00:36:45the cockpit in the cockpit in the last lap there you see that uh uh where where we was he did a good
00:36:53time at 30 30.3 collado 31.9 so he's brought it down a whisker but in two laps i think two laps since
00:37:03they've been in collado's opened up seven seconds now his tires were absolutely ready to rock and roll and
00:37:12deep into a heat cycle so they would have been closer to absolute operating temperature than the
00:37:19ones that came out of the tire warm was to go on to the toyota but nevertheless there's alex lynn
00:37:25with his derrick bell liveried helmet that's what threw me actually i'd forgotten that he'd done that
00:37:31and then i saw the helmet in a car and i thought who's that there's joe bradley morning joe
00:37:36one of washington's finer exports
00:37:44no further action regarding the pit stop for car number 50 so certain elements might be examined
00:37:51and then double checked quite often with video evidence because there are so many security cameras
00:37:56around the circuit and then ah no okay that was fine we've just recounted the heads they didn't have
00:38:01too many men on the field at the at the right time or whatever it was and so often
00:38:07often i think events are reported and then scrutinize them okay no no harm no foul hannis
00:38:14racing shop van oyteten second place ahead of the cool racing car that's a tight battle on track as
00:38:18well as 94's battle against the clock continues trying to get the nose reconnected
00:38:24iron dames now in the lead of uh gte doing a great job they're having a great race those pit stops are
00:38:31cycling through pj hart second place of course as thomas floor and third again quite a number of
00:38:36three cards have been yeah swapping through the pit stops as they go and often from pro driver to
00:38:43bronze driver and back you'll see a change there this is why the 94 is in the pit lane
00:38:49because when you hit things like that you tend to end up with damage and unfortunately for gustavo
00:38:56menezes who was going very strongly at that stage that has dropped them out of the lead three and off
00:39:03the lead lap and that car is now languishing down in 21st place overall only 11th in hypercar so
00:39:12out of the points and how many laps back it is in danger of dropping eight laps back
00:39:20when the 93 comes down in fact if it doesn't get out of the pits in the next 10 or 15 seconds it will
00:39:26lose another lap because the 93 car has just turned into the porsche curves i think it's going to lose
00:39:32another lap which is slightly immaterial because it's never going to get eight or nine back it doesn't
00:39:38really make much difference and there are times is he just going to come back out he's going to come
00:39:50out slowly in front of the leader in fact he will not lose that extra lap they've just sent him straight
00:39:56back out so there goes the 94 car and let's check who's in it gustavo menezes back on the horse that
00:40:03threw him pulled it in fantasy through
00:40:11it's amazing isn't it that car when it came in looked very very second hand and
00:40:15looks as good as you know yeah it's amazing i mean and that's that's the important thing about
00:40:20designing these cars again they need a car that they can repair quickly um you know not it's not about
00:40:26just about performance it's about uh how easy it is to work on the car how quickly they can fix it in
00:40:31in those situations and not lose too much time because speed on the track is one thing guy time
00:40:36in the pit lane is what torpedoes you below the water line absolutely and you look at pretty much
00:40:42every year the audi one the bentley one you'll look at the car that had the minimum pit stop time
00:40:48and you can correlate directly with the car that's on the top step of the podium they're very very rare
00:40:53that is not the case nobody these days has enough of a pace advantage you can afford to fritter it
00:40:58away by standing still there you see molina standing by waiting for the next pit stop for the 50 car
00:41:07which is now 10th overall historic liver on his helmet as well that's the extra silver 5-0 that has been
00:41:16applied to his helmet he hasn't had that in years gone by so he's got the full uh gerhard burger at
00:41:22multi colors of benetton remember those days where he changed his helmet colors to the benetton colors
00:41:28and then reverted later on to the original austrian red and white but yeah miguel's got red helmet with
00:41:34yellow fine and broad stripes that you'll see across the car and the 50 celebrating well his his own
00:41:43car's number but also 50 years since ferrari last race at the top class in the bomb
00:41:50and when he's edging closer to uh clado but he's not making considering he's on uh better tires he's not
00:41:56making massive inroads he's just chipping away probably half a second or so a lap i figured i
00:42:03i figured by now he would have caught him i mean that's really what we thought when he came out of
00:42:07the pits but in fact he hasn't as uh colado his uh last lap was a uh 3319 compared to a 333 for 330.3
00:42:19yeah for um welly and we see molina there he's obviously ready to get in so the next time the
00:42:27ferrari comes in it will be a driver change obviously tires and fuel and this is one of the
00:42:32things that uh rob's drivers of sleep and rest is that when you're in the car you're in the car when
00:42:39you're out of the car you're not always off duty because the driver that's coming out will go for a
00:42:46rest but the driver that's due to be in will need to be in the garage suited and booted
00:42:52as the car leaves because it might come back in at the end of that lap with a major problem for the
00:42:57driver and you don't then want to be running out the back and waking somebody up no so your two
00:43:04driver stint out of the car becomes a one driver session out of the car and for the other stint that
00:43:10you're not in it you're sitting around and again in the wee small hours that's where all the energy
00:43:15levels sort of sag so standing around and chatting to people and looking at data and following the
00:43:21race and all the other stuff that tries to keep you occupied and alert is it's part of the unseen
00:43:27battle of of being on your on top of your game when you get into the car exactly exactly you see
00:43:32they're they're ready for a pit stop quite shortly which seems quite short to me since it was last in
00:43:38i don't well it's the 50 car was in uh ah i said that he's in that he's yeah yeah okay i get it
00:43:47uh 301 yeah well it wasn't necessarily in at 301 but that is why uh that is the last time we had
00:43:54a report from prior and what had happened at their stop and uh luca their pr guy and his cohorts are
00:44:02generally pretty quick you normally find out with a within a lap or so of the car coming in uh what
00:44:09was being done on the other side of that coin toyota when you ask them what tires the car on they'll say
00:44:14michelin so there there are ways of uh of running the information to to the broadcasters and there are
00:44:21ways of running information to the broadcasters um some whatsapp groups are more useful than others
00:44:28it's always interesting to find the uh people's positions when they want to go to sleep they'll
00:44:36sleep anywhere yeah corvette teams seem to be habitual hoggers of uh evening photography and limelight
00:44:50for the antics they get up to yep and none of that's gone away whether they're in gte pro running their
00:44:57own cars or in gtm running the car for ben who remains in the car in the 33 car ben keating that
00:45:06car had a number of problems early on very early on in the race came in with what they suspect was a
00:45:12a defunct damper on the left front corner and has not had the rub of the green so far that car down in
00:45:20ninth place in class worked its way back to ninth it was much further down than that at one point yeah
00:45:28there's mike rockenfeller in the nascar camaro number 24. just that uh you'll recognize that sound
00:45:38anywhere it's funny when you are on board with the cadillac how you don't get the v8 rumble that you
00:45:50get you get from it as it goes by you when you're on the spectator banking it's a whole different sound
00:45:56inside to what it leaves behind it and it's it it isn't it's got a deeper rumble in the car
00:46:04than the camaro does and a lot of that is due to the header configuration the cadillac header
00:46:11configuration is different than than the nascar header configuration and guys used to play with
00:46:18that a lot and you would you could hear the tone of the engine and you knew who was messing with their
00:46:23with their uh with their with their exhaust well yeah the other five and that's what they were doing
00:46:29they were literally tuning the exhaust to uh help with the horsepower the other factor particularly
00:46:36for the drivers is that when you're sitting in the camaro you're driving into the noise when you're
00:46:42sitting in the cadillac you're leaving it behind you the camaro's engine is in front of your feet
00:46:48and the cadillacs is behind your ear rolls so yeah um the noise gets channeled around you and fortunately
00:46:55for the drivers it's a relatively cool race compared to the week or weeks that we've had
00:47:00before here uh to the temperatures daytime highs have been in the very high 20s early 30s since we
00:47:06arrived a week and 10 days ago um up until literally up until today yesterday saturday so uh there was a
00:47:14little bit of a cool down on friday but otherwise cockpit temperatures would be in the 50s in that
00:47:19camaro 60s maybe i mean jim you and i can think back to uh french engines corvettes and vipers in the
00:47:28american le mans series in the early years there where cockpit temperatures would be close on 200
00:47:34degrees fahrenheit yeah and uh yeah used to melt the melty boots drivers right exactly yeah exactly so
00:47:41special boots remember racing labor day weekend in las vegas and uh guys like ron fellows using
00:47:51asbestos insulated nascar boots with asbestos insulation lining that you normally put on the
00:47:57engine bay inside those as well yeah feet in buckets of water lots of problems with core temperature
00:48:04and we won't have that here hopefully this weekend it's a little bit of respite for the
00:48:10drivers and the fans the downside of which is that it has been a degree of rain and that's
00:48:16monkeying with a few races uh and you remember the texas event where uh we raced in dallas on the roval
00:48:24and that was insufferably hot that was unbelievable there were there were a few there were a few
00:48:31so we just had a slower lap from uh where me a lap or two ago maybe just caught some heavy traffic but
00:48:37that's meant the gap now has gone to uh just slightly over eight seconds so it's uh
00:48:46paul truswell the radio le mans stats guru and and uh team manager as it turns out for a number of uh
00:48:54particularly nurburgring 24-hour teams and all-around great guy and all-around great guy always had a
00:48:59theory right from day one that at night cars exhibit group magnetism they clump and and actually
00:49:08if you look at the tracker map we've got there are several clumps of cars that's right you've got as
00:49:14i'm not telling you anything you don't know guy at night you've got less long-range vision than you
00:49:20would do during the day because the lights just can't pierce that far so it makes it a little bit
00:49:26harder to judge all the distances and to figure out where you're going to catch the cars and so as a
00:49:31result you spend oh leader is in in gte and the iron dames car rahal frey is out and who is going in
00:49:40is that sarah bovi i just trying to identify the helmet i believe it probably is i think it is as
00:49:48well yeah it's been i think it's almost as the graphic says fry then bovi then gatlin because
00:49:53earlier bovi was in the car and then she turned over to gatling yeah pit stop for car number three
00:50:00is under investigation that's the cadillac with the dixon okay so rahal frey is their top-rated
00:50:09driver she's a gold driver michelle gatting silver and the bronze in the team is sarah bovi she's had
00:50:16some great qualifying battles with ben keating they tend to be the pair and it was really disappointing
00:50:23actually that none of the porsches got through into hyperpol and particularly that this one didn't
00:50:28because sarah bovi has got great speed ben keating's got great speed as a bronze driver
00:50:35paul d'allana was always a really strong bronze driver there are some very quick bronze drivers
00:50:42and uh she is definitely among them she is in the car now so charlie eastwood cycles uh oh no it's
00:50:49pj high cycles back to the top of the pile project one a o the dinosaur car rexie
00:50:55o rt oman racing team by tf charlie eastwood in that car he's in second thomas flooring third in the 54
00:51:02af course a car it is vista jet uh firm sponsors and scott huffica in the 57 kessel racing ferrari which
00:51:14of the two is that is that battle cats or the yellow car guy car it's the yellow car that he shares with
00:51:22tikeshi kimura and that cycles sarah bovi down to sixth position in uh fifth position in gge am ahead of ben
00:51:33barker the tallest driver in am in the gr racing car that if you're on the outside of the circuit
00:51:41is black with their traditional black and an orange stripe but if you're on the inside of the circuit
00:51:47is the colors that they raced in when they weren't gr but when they were golf racing uh so it's got the
00:51:55blue and orange or something very very close to the blue and orange tk engineering ready for another
00:52:02pit stop hugo de wilder will take over this is uh an all belgian lineup in the car and they had uh
00:52:12they've had a trying time haven't they i'm going to have to flex your hand they have to flick to page
00:52:18two of the timing screen to find how trying their day has been flicking the wrong way so i've gone back
00:52:28to lively there we go eventually dkr our second from last running car because the inter-europol car
00:52:37yeah magnuson the 32 car that seems to be still stuck in the garage that car
00:52:45getting on for an hour ago yeah was in that two car it was a weird kind of crash going to the first
00:52:52she came to kind of it looked like as he was breaking the car turned to the sharp left and uh head into
00:52:58the barriers so i hope it got that car back to the pits but i'm not sure whether they'll be able to get
00:53:04it back on track or not race leader behind one of the two cool racing lmp2 cars in front of him
00:53:10that is the ort by tf aston martin charlie eastwood currently in second place in gtm so as we track
00:53:18up the road with james collardo we will find out just how far ahead charlie eastwood is
00:53:23and the next set of lights at the chicane would be the porsche of charlie eastwood i think
00:53:32struggling to get this isn't actually a cool racing car is it no originally that was gray but
00:53:37it's not might be the jota is that the jota 28 i think you're right yes it is good spot guy smith
00:53:43the mechanics warming up we've seen it habitually with the toyota mechanics doing their japanese
00:53:53calisthenics but these guys everybody seems to be doing just a little bit and actually i have to say
00:53:58looks like it's good to rave actually the uh the henrik motorsport guys all their brake men
00:54:03at the start of the morning they're at the top end they're at pit out
00:54:07their their morning warm-up is as a as a group yep to sprint down to pit in turn and sprint back
00:54:15now that's the length of at least two probably three football fields then they turn and go again
00:54:22and then they then they feel they're loosened up ready for the day whatever the day may brand that that's
00:54:27not immediately pitch stop practice that's just to get them into the field and jim you were saying
00:54:32that uh particularly in the nascar cup series in the top tier their hip guys they're over the
00:54:38wall guys will tend to be division one or college football players basketball players track athletes
00:54:46you know big power and strength athletes they're not just guys who put the car together and then do the
00:54:53the wheel changing as part of their job they have a specific talent and that that is it their speed and
00:54:59their power yeah and it's not it used to be it was just an extra set of mechanics who did the pit stops and
00:55:05in this case they are guys who that's all they do all week yep is practice pit stops they're just like
00:55:12any professional sports team they have practice sessions they have workouts they have film sessions
00:55:19where they dissect all the pit stops from the previous week's races they have data points they all wear
00:55:26gopros during the pit stops so they can analyze their uh their technique and yeah it has become
00:55:34a a real science it's not just i can remember the the video the old days the wood brothers with a
00:55:41with a bolt between their teeth with all the extra lug nuts when it when it was the five lug nuts and
00:55:47the you know it was a revelation when they got the air guns and uh so yeah it's uh it's come a long way
00:55:53baby i can tell you that yeah and the same way that we see tens of seconds hundreds of seconds being
00:56:00four four in the pit lane in formula one same two in the nascar cup series even though the races are
00:56:07considerably longer and and without uh seven guys on each tire yeah you know yeah yeah overall numbers
00:56:15are severely restricted yep that means uh as as with everything in in this sport choreography of
00:56:23how you do things and teams spend ages as you said dissecting what they do and trying to find a way to
00:56:29make themselves better and actually this is the introduction was it a couple years ago three years
00:56:36ago of the pit stop challenge for the teams it didn't happen during covid but it was introduced before
00:56:41and then uh exhumed and and restarted it's a real matter of pride for the teams to be able to win
00:56:49the pit stop challenge to be cock of the walk for the entire week of le mans as a crew never mind what
00:56:54your drivers your car can do we are the best tire change team in the business that's pretty impressive
00:57:02and that was one i believe this week by the peugeot guys yeah yeah i'm not sure which car it was but um
00:57:09might be the 93 but yeah great uh great effort by those boys definitely
00:57:15yeah somebody has got something plugged into somewhere and it's giving us an awful an awful earth
00:57:20hum i have a feeling jim that might be your phone's charger if you put it down
00:57:28no maybe not something is definitely i don't know if you can hear it at home but we can hear it is it
00:57:33your computer i'm not sure nope no because it hasn't been anywhere and that computer's been there all
00:57:41doing into uh uh chinese would come into the pit lane no but it looks like we might maybe not quite
00:57:51ready for some changes yet it was chinese coming into the pit man i haven't i sort of half glimpsed it
00:57:57and then half imagined it there's a glickenhaus in as well esteban coutierrez has brought in car 709
00:58:03quick clean of the lights to make sure that there's nothing that the race officials can complain
00:58:10about in terms of lack of visibility of lights or numbers or anything else
00:58:17and also like your road car when you're driving on roads that have been wet and are drying there's an
00:58:22also awful lot of crime being thrown up um and that's exaggerated here because this is not a race
00:58:29circuit this is public road with a bit of race circuit attached so exactly like your road car because
00:58:36that's what use these roads for the other 51 weeks of the year these are public highways the chicane's
00:58:42been added in you don't come around this bit in your normal road car but you use the rest of it and if
00:58:49you find the road as well on each side of the the white line down the middle because you've got
00:58:53trucks and cars going each day the road actually gets slightly worn away so as you can see we're on
00:58:58this side of the white line and as we go down here you'll cross over to the other side
00:59:04and when you make that cross that transition you can actually feel the car just just touching the bottom
00:59:10of the uh of the road well the same way you make that cross that transition you can actually feel the car
00:59:17just just touching the bottom of the uh of the road well the same way you feel on a normal road
00:59:23yeah you just get the little depressions and they they might only be a couple of centimeters or an inch
00:59:28deep but if you think about where the water stays in the chicane that's where it stays it stays in those
00:59:35little channels and so when you're coming and starting to turn in across them then you end up sort of
00:59:40skating a little further into the corner than you want and suddenly your grip is gone and you're in the
00:59:45barriers and yeah well how did that happen i didn't even touch the curbs you don't have to sometimes
00:59:51touch the curbs to find the water and what do you find uh when you leave the pits with brand new tires
00:59:56that are still coming up to temperatures up to pressure and full tanks so you've got a heavy car you've got
01:00:01tires that are
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