After a good night's sleep I still think this was one of the best races in WSC so far. I basically knew going into qualifying that the 250GTO wasn't really pole-material, because its top speed is just too low, so P3 was sort of expected, as was
@Andil on pole. The start shuffled the positions around a bit as always at Le Mans, and I found myself following
@R0ssingt0n in 4th, then after
@Yeratel84 's first problems, in 3rd, and then after Andil's in 2nd. Lout then went wide and head on into the barrier at Arnage and I found myself in the lead. Andil was coming up strong from behind and after passing me (I knew I wouldn't be able to keep him behind as he could just drive by on the straights) I wanted to settle in behind him, but soon after touched the grass on the left going into Tetre Rouge and only narrowly avoided the gravel there. The 2 or 3 seconds I lost there were enough for Andil to pull away gradually though.
Everything went according to plan for a while then, until Andil pitted after lap 11, and on lap 12, shortly after nightfall, I lost concentration and ran wide in the Porsche curves, smashing into the wall. When I got the car going again,
@raceorama123432 went by to take the lead for the first time, and fortunately the pits were not a long way away to get my car repaired and filled up for a slightly earlier than planned first stop. My plan had always been for a 2-stop race with the first stop at lap 14, so nothing big had happened that would have required me to change anything. I was down in 6th when I came out again, but I knew some of that was due to pit strategies, but I probably had lost about 20 seconds in the crash.
True to what I had expected, I soon found myself in 2nd again as I was running a 14-lap stint to lap 26. Andil was clearly on a 3-stopper, coming in at L22 for his second stop. My last stop on Lap 26 dropped me to 4th temporarily, although I knew all 3 ahead of me (Andil, O'rama & Lout) would have to pit one more time. As I saw Lout on track before me and O'rama not far ahead of him, I thought that I at least had a shot at 2nd. Andil was further ahead, although I was not quite clear about how far. From what I saw on the map, he was probably more than a minute ahead, but that included the pitstop he still had to make. I was cursing myself for the earlier crash as I would have been a lot closer to him otherwise.
It was a couple of laps into my last stint when I first saw a little yellow speck in my rear view. I deliberately up'd my pace a little again, which had dropped quite significantly during the night, but O'rama kept inching closer each lap. A couple of laps from the end he was finally there and we started trading positions back and forth. I first thought he would pull away, but some little mistakes of his and the slipstream made it possible for me to hang on and fight back. Sorry for the one tap in Arnage, by the way! I braked a little late and touched you on the right rear, but fortunately you caught it, so I backed off a little before trying my next attack. And then suddenly Andil was in the pits after his mishap with DK and our fight was for the win. In the end, I didn't even realise that Andil was coming up again behind us as I was so busy trading positions back and forth with O'rama.
I basically knew that the race was over when we passed start/finish for the last time, as Furi was not far behind us on the track, so we probably wouldn't be able to run another lap inside the grace period, but this is one where I really didn't mind coming in second. Well done everyone, great race!