The opening laps

The crowds along the pit straight emit a tingling atmosphere only Le Mans can provide as the cars start their engines for the first parade lap around the famous circuit.

A dive into the pits for race fuel and tyres to be added is followed by a formation lap into their grid starting positions. Air horns, orange smoke bombs (LNT Panoz supporters or the Dutch…?) and the sound of whistles ricochet in support of the 54 car field.

One more lap of La Sarthe behind the safety car is the final ‘green flag’ lap before the Audi safety car peels off into the pit lane and the new Peugeot LMP1 car crosses the line to start the clock’s countdown and the start of the 75th 24 hours of Le Mans.

Tom Kimber-Smith and Richard Dean are the two starting drivers for Team LNT in their respective cars.

Both make up two places apiece and the first 5 GT2 cars being covered by just 5 secs. Kimber-Smith is lapping consistently in the 4:12’s – approx. 1 sec off the pace of the cars in front, but consistently nonetheless.

Dean’s taking a little longer to get into the higher laptimes; he’s having a battle with Carl Rosenblad in the #83 Ferrari going down to 9th and back up to 8th. Dean hold his place and laptimes reduce down to 4:15.520 as the cars spread out on track.

Tom Kimber-Smith is on a charge with a 4:11.330, followed up by a 10.994 on lap 9 as Danny Watts and Lawrence Tomlinson prepare to pilot their cars.

48mins gone, Dean hands over the #82 car to Tomlinson and 4 minutes later, Watts climbs aboard his chariot.

Just past the first hour mark, the safety car is on track because of a rain shower. DW in 7th and LT in 9th and cars dive into the pit lane for wet tyres. Except the Team LNT Panoz’s. Wets are ready in the garage, but it looks like it’s only going to be a shower so the Orange V8 machines stay out on track.

This takes Watts up to 4th. Cars 76, 80 and 97 are already shown as having 3 pit stops to Team LNT’s one apiece.

#81 Watts is up to third but Tomlinson 10th as a result of pit stops and the safety car.

No sooner had racing begun, and it gets held back again at 16:30 hrs because of a couple of cars going into barriers – notably an Audi - #3 at Tertre Rouge – and the barriers need fixing.

The safety car situation is very different here to most circuits; there are two! Because it is such a long lap, for safety reasons, the cars are split into two groups; but it means that one group of cars may be two or three minutes behind the leading pack.

Unfortunately for Tomlinson, he’s in the second pack and 3 minutes down the line.

44 minutes gone by, and under safety car conditions, Tomlinson comes in for fuel only. As other cars also pit, Watts goes up to 2nd.

At the two hour mark, the GT2 order is numbers 93, 81, 97, 76, 80, 87, 86, 71, 85, 82, 83, 78, 99.

17:11hrs and heavy rain descends again, creating puddles in the pitlane and a sea of umbrellas around the edge of the track but it only lasts a few minutes; enough to drench the tarmac and sending a few cars off onto the green stuff.

17:17hrs – Watts comes in for fuel and intermediate tyres from 2nd position. Tomlinson, still out there on slicks, stays out and the two Panoz cars line up 4th and 5th – only to then move up to 2nd and 3rd as a result of pitstops.

The race is given the green light once again at 17:50hrs with Tomlinson still in 2nd place but Watts gets jumped by the Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari at the restart to demote him to 3rd.

The GT2 order at 3 hours passed and only 21 hours to go is: 93, 87, 97, 81, 76, 82, 86, 85, 80, 71, 83, 99, 78. Tomlinson obviously struggling on a still damp track on slick tyres, but the Team LNT crew are getting ready to remedy that.