2017 24 Heures du Le Mans

[Alianora La Canta]

The #49 Bratislava and the #13 Rebellion have collided!

[Alianora La Canta]

The #45 Algarve has beached itself.

[Alianora La Canta]

The #13 Rebellion (Piquet Jr P4, 3rd LMP1) has a 10-second penalty from a crash it was in earlier.

[Alianora La Canta]

Leaders at 22 hours and 30 minutes:

Overall: #38 Jackie Chan (Tung)
#LMP1 #2 Porsche (Bernhard P2)
GTE-Pro: #97 Aston (Adam P17)
GTE-Am: #84 (Stevens P27)

[Alianora La Canta]

The #2 Porsche is now the race leader, having overtaken the extremely impressive #38 Jackie Chan LMP2 car.

[Alianora La Canta]

The #24 Manor (Vergne P7, 6th LMP2) is in the pits with a non-starting car.

[Alianora La Canta]

The #35 Alpine (Negrao P3, 2nd LMP2) has gently hit the barrier!

[Alianora La Canta]

11 minutes before the end of the race. There have been no major position changes for the last 20 minutes.

[Alianora La Canta]

There is, however, a pair of battles still on track: the GTE-Pro leadership battle between #63 Corvette (Taylor) and #97 Aston (Adam) and the GTE-Am one for 6th. Or there was until #90 Proton (Hankey) pitted from 6th, giving the #77 Proton (Dienst) the position.

[Alianora La Canta]

2 laps left including this one, and the #97 Aston nearly succeeded in passing the #63 Corvette.

[Alianora La Canta]

Last lap - and the #63 Corvette has cut a corner...

[Alianora La Canta]

Heartbreak for the #63 Corvette. Oliver Gavin looked certain for a top 2 result in GTE-Pro but is slowing. The #97 Aston overtakes it and wins the GTE-Pro class.

[Alianora La Canta]

The race is complete, and the #2 Porsche is the last LMP1 standing to take victory!

Second is the intrepid #38 Jackie Chan LMP2 car, which is the highest an LMP2 has finished in Le Mans for as long as I can remember.

The #97 Aston Martin won GTE-Pro after a glorious battle that almost literally took all day.

The #84 JMW took a masterful class victory in GTE-Am, rarely challenged.

Sorry that Fisico, Toni, Pierre and Risi never got a proper chance to test their mettle against them.

[Alianora La Canta]

Fisico was clearly still furious after the race - it took over a day to respond on Twitter/Instagram, and the words were still sharp:

[It] is unacceptable to finish the most important race of the season just after 6 hours! Especially when you know that the driver with the prototype was 3 laps behind the leader of i[t]s category and he was just on [h]is out lap after his pit stop! 7 minutes of penalty it's nothing considering what we lost... bravo @matt_vaxiviere....

(Note that this is before Risi withdrew from the next three races. It is arguable that Fisico might not have been angry enough...)

It turned out that Matthieu had apologised after the race to Risi, though I get the impression Fisico was not aware of this at the time he wrote on the social media since Matthieu's public response only appeared there on Wednesday:

"Further to the different posts I have read on the internet after the accident I had at Le Mans, I must be humble toward my motorsport family and my fans.

My first concern is to apologize again to Pierre Kaffer and to the team Risi Competizione, which I did personally after the race. I know I did wrong and I am sorry about this, and to be honest when I passed Pierre I really thought I was ahead of the Ferrari when I came back in my racing line. I misjudged the action and be sure I did not do that on purpose.

"I can understand the great disappointment for the team and the fans, and again I apologize from the bottom of my heart, and my first concern when I saw the video was to have medical news [about] Pierre, [whom] I found out was doing OK, and that's the most important [thing] now.

"I have learned from this mistake, and now I will go on with our team work to pursue my race career. Of course these kinds of accidents are really bad, but unfortunately I am not the only one to whom this has happened. My goal us to not do that ever again."

Pierre, who apparently did know about that initial post-race apology, quickly forgave Matthieu. He has a good heart.