2016 24 Hours of Le Mans
It was the 84th running of the 24 Hour race organised by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) as well as the third and flagship round of the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship.
The Signatech Alpine-Nissan of Gustavo Menezes, Nicolas Lapierre and Stéphane Richelmi won the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) category after it led the final 196 laps of the race.
Americans also led the Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance Amateur (LMGTE Am) category, with Scuderia Corsa's Townsend Bell, Jeff Segal and Bill Sweedler edging out the fellow Ferrari of AF Corse, driven by Emmanuel Collard, Rui Águas and François Perrodo.
André Lotterer, Benoît Tréluyer and Marcel Fässler moved from eighth place to fourth and Alexandre Imperatori, Dominik Kraihamer and Mathéo Tuscher fell to fifth after not finishing the race.
A new entry run-off area was constructed at the Porsche Curves in response to a major accident sustained by Duval during practice for the 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans although the turn's alignment was not altered.
In the ELMS and ALMS, the Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance (LMGTE) class invitations could choose between the Pro and Am categories.
The second Porsche of Mark Webber followed, ahead of the two Audis of Marcel Fässler and Duval and both Toyotas of Anthony Davidson and Kobayashi.
Oreca vehicles led the LMP2 category with six cars at the top of the timing charts, with the Signatech Alpine of Nicolas Lapierre ahead of Eurasia Motorsport and Manor.
The session was temporarily stopped halfway through when François Perrodo beached his car in the Porsche Curves gravel trap and required extraction.
The Michael Shank Ligier-Honda of Oswaldo Negri Jr. had a heavy accident in the session's final hour at the left-hand barriers entering the second Mulsanne Chicane, bringing a premature end to the test.
Richard Bradley of KCMG led the LMP2 category ahead of the Signatech Alpine of Lapierre and Paul-Loup Chatin's Panis-Barthez Ligier-Nissan.
Separate crashes by Bruno Senna of RGR Sport and Inès Taittinger of Pegasus Racing at the Porsche Curves and Indianapolis corner led to stoppages in the session.
[30][31] Risi Competizione's Ferrari brought out the only red flag of the session as Giancarlo Fisichella became stuck in the gravel trap at the Porsche Curves after a spin.
98 Aston Martin; two AF Corse Ferrari cars driven by Matt Griffin and Emmanuel Collard followed in third and fourth positions.
[41] The French tricolour was waved at 15:00 Central European Summer Time (CEST) by actor Brad Pitt to start the race.
[44] Duval passed Bernhard for third place while Lotterer began a sequence of pit stops to change to dry compound tyres soon after.
Duval retook first by passing Hartley on the pit lane straight but lost the position to him at Mulsanne corner when a short rain shower fell.
98 Aston Martin broke up the monopoly midway through the seventh hour when he overtook Christian Ried for second and began to draw closer to Long.
47 KCMG car suffered an apparent power failure and pulled off to the side of the circuit on the straight linking the Mulsanne and Indianapolis turns.
1 Porsche was forced out of contention for the victory when it went to the garage for two and a half hours to rectify water pump and engine temperature problems, losing 39 laps and falling to 53rd.
That caused the third deployment of the safety cars as marshals worked for 28 minutes to dry the spilled oil by scattering an oil-neutralising compound across the track.
[60][62] A series of incidents in LMGTE Pro and LMP2 during the first hours of the morning prompted localised slow zone procedures and later the fourth deployment of the safety cars.
He crashed into the end of the right-hand side tyre barrier at the entry to the Dunlop Chicane after losing control of its rear on the kerbs through driver error under braking.
28 Morgan Pegasus repeated its earlier excursion into the right-hand side gravel trap at Mulsanne Corner and retired a few minutes later with a right-rear tyre fire.
The all-Russian SMP Racing BR01 of Vitaly Petrov, Kirill Ladygin and Viktor Shaytar, which came four laps behind in third, completed the class podium.
82 Ferrari were provisionally one minute adrift in second position with Fisichella, Vilander and Malucelli after they and the category winning Ford had led all but 26 laps of the race.
82 Ferrari had twenty seconds added to its total time and fined €5,000 for ignoring multiple black flags with an orange disc that were deployed to instruct the team to rectify a faulty leader light board after Ford CGR filed a protest over the technical problem in the final hour of the event.
[82] Toyota team principal Hughes de Chaunac was visibly distraught and tearful over the manufacturer being denied a first Le Mans win.
[80][84] Following the completion of an initial investigation into the failure five days later, Toyota denied any connection to similar engine problems the cars had at the preceding 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps held the month before.
[86] The result increased Lieb, Jani and Dumas' advantage over the new second-placed trio of Duval, di Grassi and Jarvis in the Drivers' Championship to 39 points.
