Porsche Team Manthey are pleased with their progress in the early stages of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The factory team for the Porsche 911 RSR LM GTE Pro entries ended the first hour of the race in fifth and sixth in class.
The #92 machine, started by Frederic Makowiecki led the two Porsches away, carving his way through to fifth place and preparing to hand over to his team mates Marco Holzer and Richard Lietz. Patrick Long started the #91 who followed his team mate through traffic to secure sixth place. Long shares his car with Joerg Bergmeister and Nick Tandy.
On the other hand Porsche Motorsport’s LMP1 effort struggled in the opening ninety minutes. Neel Jani started the #14 car from second place with the #20 in fourth under Timo Bernhard’s control. Soon after the start however they fell prey to the trio of Audi Sport Team Joest R18 e-tron Quattros .
Jani shares his car with Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb while Bernhard will hand over to Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber.
After half an hour a fuel flow problem was identified in the #14 machine, which required an unscheduled stop to rectify. The #20 suffered turbo boost issues, dropping the car to last of the LMP1-H runners. By the time the safety car was put out for problems relating to a monumental downpour, Timo Bernhard had recovered third place.
The incident which prompted the safety car also saw to the retirement of the #3 Audi R18 e-tron Quattro. Damage to the #8 Toyota also left this rival languishing down the order.
