Le Mans Series - 6 Hours Of Le Castellet - Final Hour

The GTE Battle to the flag is on - Fisichella pits with 58 minutes remaining and comes out right in front of Bell!

The pair are baulked by the Kessel 430 with a battle for the GTE Am podium slots in amongst this lot, Bronisewski ahead of Cioci who has just relieved Klaas Hummel of third.

The Kessel man though pits this time around - Cioci now second (behind Felbermayer Jr) Phillip Peter climbs aboard the #70 car - This battle isn't done yet either!

Enge pits out of sequence in the third placed YD AMR Aston - Trouble?

Trouble too for Aguas in the #72 AF Corse 430, a front left puncture

Bell is all over the back of Fisichella as Farnbacher moves past the stationary Aston to make it a 458 1,2,3 again.

Collard makes his final stop

Genoa meanwhile lead FLM with a 20 second advantage over Julien Schell in the Pegasus car.

Melo is now up to 4th in the #71 AF Corse 458  - A Ferrari 1,2,3,4 as Farnbacher ahead makes his final stop.

Kimber Smith makes his last stop from third overall - Kaffer meanwhile has handed the lola pover to Russo and Leventis is now ahead - 15 seconds clear of the Argentinian.

#13 stops again - driver change - Bellicchi climbs aboard

The GTE lead battle is still nose to tail and now the pair have Philipp Peter, himself chasing a class podium, to deal with - Fisichella gets by on the Mistral - Bell into Signes as a Rebellion gets by both. Excellent stuff

RML are in the box for the HPD to have the louvres replaced - they tumble down the order.

Bell leads GTE with a sublime outbraking manouevre into turn one on Fisichella - Fisi pits immediately and he's getting out of the car after a very short stint!  Bruni's aboard once again but that must be it for this battle?

GTE Am is still very much alive - We think the leader can go to the end but Cioci has pitted to hand over to Perrazini, that drops the car back behind Hummel - The AF Corse car 20 seconds back but much quicker and Peter a further 45 seconds back and faster than both.

Elton Julian makes Genoa's final stop - Pegasus lead FLM - 12th overall.

5:33 The Boutsen Energy car is crawling after going very wide - the car was lying in 4th in class - 6th overall - He pits and is being closed down fast by both Prost and Garofall - The Oreca rejoins quickly though - possibly a puncture - Leventis too pits and Russo is away and clear second in class

Hummel pits and drops to 4th in Am - Peter is closing on Perrazini at the rate of around 4 seconds a lap and looks set to take second before the flag.

Belicchi posts the fastest lap of the #13 Rebellion's race - a 1:48.080 - no chance with 20 minutes to go of doing anything on pace here. 

Garofall is ploughing on but is being caught for overall position by Pla and for class position by Ebbesvik - these 3 separated by 5 seconds with 15 minutes remaining.

That might get more interesting still as Prost ahead is about to have a splash of fuel with 70 seconds in hand over Pla for 7th overall and the final LMP1 class podium slot.

The stop done the gap is 34 seconds - 10 minutes remain

The troubled #71 AF Corse 458, currently lying in an unchallenged 4th in class - is running in slowly with a rear puncture - Melo rejoins after a new Michelin is bolted on

Ebbesvik took Garofall on track but then pitted for a new nose on his Oreca - Garofall back up into 5th in class.

Peter is still reeling in Perrazini - It's going to be tight for second in GTE Am

Pegasus are gambling on fuel we believe - they have a 21 second lead on Genoa but must be on fumes by now.

Final lap - Russo Pits fr a splash -

Pescarolo team win - 9th LMS race win for Pescarolo - 8 LMS wins for Collard - A fairytale finish for Henri, Judd, and Michelin

Rebellion will be frustrated with a 2,3 finish after silly problems with a door on one car and a gearbox compressor issue on the other - but a double podium for the Toyota engine on its European debut is a worthy headline.

Kimber-Smith brings the Greaves Motorsport Zytek Nissan home on the overall podium and almost a minute clear in LMP2, Dunlop take the class win.  The Orecas all faltered so it was Pecom Racing and their new Lola Judd that came home second - 4th overall and an unlikely Oreca free podium was completed by the reliable and economical (but still slow!) Strakka HPD

JMW take a fine win in GTE Pro, the first class win for a Ferrari 458 falls to a Dunlop shod car with AF Corse and Michelin and Hankook Farnbacher completing a Ferrari 458 clean sweep.

Felbermayer Proton come through the Porsche carnage to take GTE Am - with Perrazini fending off Peter by just 0.061 of a second at the flag to take second for AF Corse from Kessel

Schell's fuel gamble paid off - 18 seconds the gap between Pegasus and Genoa with Neil Garner Engineering completing the class podium, all three teams on their class debut, Genoa with their first LMS start and Neil Garner Engineering their first ever ACO rules race.

After all of that this was far from a classic - Some great runs and some fine battles - but this race will be remembered for some of the wrong reasons, certainly by the Porsche camp - We're lucky to be talking about damage and not injury after the farce on the start line.

We'll have reaction from some of the winners (and losers!) in the next 24 Hours - and that will include a brief examination of what happened during that disastrous start procedure.

It's not our place to apportion responsibility or blame, and the regulations make it clear that the person blamed by many in anger here at Le Castellet might well indeed be personally blameless

But whoever or whatever happened - if a mistake was made then the correct and decent thing should be done, an explanation and/ or apology issued to the teams, who are, let's not forget, the customers of the Series!, and an investigation conducted to ensure that the same thing cannot happen again.

Happily in this case we are talking about damaged cars rather than physical injury.  

GG, PS & MtC