Le Mans 24h, H8: Safety car blows race wide open

The safety car has blown the 2026 Le Mans 24 Hours wide open, with no fewer than 14 cars gathered in the lead after the eighth hour of racing.

Up until now, the race had turned into a four-way battle between the #8 Toyota, the #20 BMW, and the #12 and #38 Cadillac, whose driver Earl Bamber has set the fastest lap of the race so far.

On-track battles featured Jack Aitken (#38 Cadillac) overtaking Sheldon van der Linde (#20 BMW) at the Ford Chicane, while Robin Frijns (#20 BMW) only just held off Sebastien Buemi (#8 Toyota) later on.

Buemi had a slight edge over his rivals despite slightly shorter stints when, at 11:38pm, the GT3 cars of Francesco Castellacci (Ferrari #54) and Giammarco Levorato (Ford Mustang #88) collided, with the former stuck in the gravel.

Race control brought out the safety car, meaning all 14 cars on the lead lap will soon be reunited behind it. That’s all hypercars but the #009 Aston Martin, both Peugeots – the #93 got a drive-through for a yellow-flag infringement – and most notably the polesitting #15 BMW, which has been having somewhat of a nightmare race.

Kevin Magnussen displayed poor pace in the race’s opening stint, and polesetter Dries Vanthoor went on to clip the #3 DKR Engineering LMP2 car in the Porsche curves shortly before 10pm, damaging his right-rear bodywork and ending up with a delaminated tyre. The #15 machine is therefore four laps down by now, and most likely ruled out of victory or podium contention.

In the LMP2 category, the #30 Duqueine entry driven by Andlauer-Pin-Verschoor now leads the #343 Inter Europol machine (de Gerus-Garg-Mueller) and the #26 Vector car (Cullen-Fittipaldi-Lomko), with the polesitting #29 entry from Forestier Racing by Panis down to seventh.

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