Alliot eliminated, the Courage makes a come-backThe Italian-entered F40s ran into problems at nightfall. The Olofsson-Della Noce-Ohta car went out with a broken gearbox after being stopped on the circuit for four hours. The gearbox was repaired on the Mancini-Monti-Ayles entry but eighty minutes were lost in the operation. The blue Pilot Aldix entry was slowed by a spin by Carlos Palau which required repairs to the rear bonnet.
Philippe Alliot, in the lead ahead of Mass went off at 22h30 in the new section. It seems that Alliot was hit in the rear by another car. His retirement let the West Mclaren into the lead over the Mach One car of th Bells and Andy Wallace. In third wa the Dalmas-Letho-Sekiya car.
The Nismo GTR-LM no.23 stopped for forty-five minutes with gearbox problems and at 23h15, the Porsches nos 37 and 79 collided at Mulsanne due to Andreas Fuchs missing his braking because of a hard pedal before hitting Emmanuel Collard. Thus, all 3 Larbre Competition Porsches have been eliminated by accidents. No.79 (Calderari-Bryner-Fuchs) was in the lead of the GT2 Category at the time.
Having got up to 4th place, Franz Konrad spun just before midnight necessitating repairs to the rear of his Kremer. However, the other Kremer entry (Stuck-Bouchut-Boutsen) and the Courage of Andretti-Wollek-Helary continued their come-back battling it out for sixth. (IR(BI(IU(Bve never experienced such difficult conditions at Le Mans(IS(B, said Bob Wollek after a good double stint.
The fastest lap of Patrick Gonin of 3 mn 51.41 secs has not been equalled.
