The #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Robert Shwartzman leads the 92nd running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans after the first four hours of running at the Circuit de la Sarthe.
Miguel Molina, having recently inherited driving duties of the #50 Ferrari 499P is in second with Matt Campbell third in the #6 Penske Porsche 963.
An astute strategy call as the rain fell just before two hours gone elevated the #83 AF Corse Ferrari into the fight for the lead and the yellow 499P rose to P1 through its next pit stop cycle as Robert Shwartzman inherited driving duties from Robert Kubica.
Shwartzman drove into a handy lead which grew to 10s over the #5 Porsche of Michael Christensen with the #50 Ferrari of Antonio Fuoco in third.
One driver who’d been steadily ascending the order after the rain and into the third hour of the race was Robin Frijns, but his hard work in the #20 WRT BMW M Hyrbid V8 was undone with an error at the Ford Chicanes that caused him to hit the wall hard.
To make matters worse, Frijns missed out on the pit-lane entry and was forced to drag his way around the whole circuit before returning for repairs, relegating the #20 BMW to the back of the Hypercar class.
WRT were able to turn around Frijns car in approximately half an hour, sending a repaired #20 BMW back out last in class and five laps down on the rest of the Hypercar field.
40 minutes into the third hour, Shwartzman’s lead had practically doubled over Christensen.
The Porsche driver also enjoyed a sizable gap back to Fuoco of around 20 seconds but as the laps ticked by, the Italian at the wheel of the #50 499P started to slowly reel Christensen in, slashing the gap by five seconds across a 10 minute period.
Fuoco’s pace was impressive and he set the fastest lap (3:29.208) just before pitting for fuel with approximately two hours and 55 minutes of the race run.
The #50 Ferrari rejoined in fifth and immediately had to cope with pressure from Callum Ilott in the #12 JOTA Porsche right behind.
Kamui Kobayashi soon joined in on the fun in the #7 Toyota GR010 Hyrbidm making it a three-way battle for fifth place.
As the race entered its fourth hour, Christensen elected to pit from second on the road and was followed shortly by race leader Shwartzman.
This allowed Buemi in the #8 Toyota to split the duo and inherit second on the road, with fears of rain looming, although only a light shower was predicted.
Fighting hard and with the potential rain looming, Kobayashi was called into pit and he did so after successfully passing Ilott and Fuoco to take fifth.
Fuoco then found himself at the back of the trio which he’d led after pitting as Ilott picked him off to take sixth.
As Kobayashi pit, Buemi snatched the race lead from Shwartzman down the Mulsanne and the Toyota driver was showing impressive pace having pitted five times to the AF Corse car’s four.
Buemi’s lead was short-lived, as the Swiss driver came into pit half a lap on from passing Shwartzman.
Brendon Hartley assumed driving duties of the #8 Toyota from this point on as James Calado (#51), Ilott (#12), Andre Lotterer (#6 Penske Porsche), Jack Aitken (#311 Whelen Engineering Cadillac) and Mick Schumacher (#36 Alpine A424) all came down pit lane.
The offset nature of the field thanks to the earlier rain was in full effect, with Christensen and Fuoco moving back into second and third.
Fucoco was closing in on the #5 Porsche, with the gap between second and third down to four seconds after three hours and 23 minutes of racing.
Shwartzman meanwhile had grown his advantage out front to 25 seconds.
The race was then neutralised by a one-minute Full Course Yellow (FCY) with the likely culprit being Clement Novalak in the #34 Inter Europol LMP2 Oreca-07 Gibson.
Novalak was pictured returning to the pits on three tyres, losing grip on his top three position in class that he’d maintained for the majority of his stints in the car.
Shortly after the FCY came to an end, Fuoco had managed to work his way onto Christensen’s tail and a fight for P2 on the road commenced.
Fuoco made light work of getting ahead of Christensen, making it a Ferrari one-two, albeit 20s behind Shwartzman out in front.
Another Full Course Yellow came into action at 19:34 local time, lasting for two minutes and presumed to be caused by the need to clear up gravel from another LMP2 incident.
Fuoco and Christensen continued their battle, with the former looking to be winning that particular contest by gapping the #5 Porsche by nearly two seconds and closing to within 15 seconds of leader Shwartzman.
Amid his impressive pace, Fuoco came into pit, taking on fuel in the #50 Ferrari 499P and handing over driving duties to Miguel Molina.
Christensen pitted a lap later than the Ferrari and he made way for team-mate Matt Campbel to assume driving responsibility in the #5 Porsche.
Race leader Shwartzman was able to run his stint a few minutes longer than his pursuers and stayed at the wheel of the #83 Ferrari, keeping his tyres for an extra stint after a bout of refuelling.
This meant he was able to remain in the lead by a few seconds over the #8 Toyota, which was out of sync on pit-stop strategy.
With the latest pit-cyle complete, Shwartzman’s lead has grown to a steady 40 seconds over Molina, with Campbell a further 1.2s back from the Ferrari.
Nick Tandy found himself running in fourth aboard the #4 Porsche with Hartley completing the top five in the #8 Toyota.
In LMP2, Vector Sport’s Ryan Cullen has maintained a strong grip on the class lead ever since Novalak had his incident triggering the earlier full course yellow.
The #10 entry leads Ritomo Miyata in the #37 Cool Racing machine and United Autosport’s Nolan Siegel in the #22 car, but the young American has a drive-through penalty lingering over him due to an il-fated attempt at lapping the #33 DKY Engineering LMP2 Orecao-07 Gibson.
Kyffin Simpson sat in fourth in the #24 Nielsen Racing car with Francois Perrodo fifth in the #183 AF Corse entry.
Things haven’t gone well in the #23 United car, with Ben Keating spinning off into the Turn 2 gravel at the beginning of his driving duties, causing damage to the alternator that prompted extensive repairs, relegating the American to a position 17 laps back from the rest of the LMP2 field.
Shortly before the fourth hour came to a close, MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi made his 24 Hours of Le Mans racing debut by taking to the wheel of the #46 WRT BMW M4 LMGT3 for the first time and the Italian was the class leader after four hours of racing.
Second was Salih Yoluc in the #66 JMW Motorsport Ferrari 296 LMGT3, with Yasser Shahin completing the top three at the wheel of the #91 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R LMGT3.
Aliaksandr Malykhin sat in fourth in the #92 Manthey Porsche with the Iron Dames’ Sarah Bovy rounding out the top five in the #85 Lamborghini Huracan LMGT3 Evo2.
