Le Mans hour 18: Buemi extends #8 Toyota's lead

The Swiss driver ended the 18th hour of the race 42s head of the sister car, a net gain of around 10s over the 60 minutes.

Buemi, who shares the #8 TS050 HYBRID with Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima, had been as little as half a minute ahead of Conway before extending his advantage in the closing stages of the hour.

The two Rebellion Racing entries continued to run strongly in third and fourth positions, albeit 10 laps behind the Toyotas.

Andre Lotterer had closed to within just over 20s of Mathias Beche in the sister Rebellion-Gibson R-13.

The only other privateer LMP1 on track at the top of the hour was the delayed SMP Racing BRE BR1.

Mikhail Aleshin was lapping significantly faster than the Rebellions in the AER-powered car.

The DragonSpeed BRE-Gibson BR1 was still in the pits undergoing repairs are Ben Hanley crashed in hour 17.

The remaining Manor-run Ginetta-Mecachrome G60-LT-P1 driven by Mike Simpson, Charlie Roberston and Leo Roussel was in its garage with gearbox problems.

No change in LMP2

For a fourth hour in a row, the leading five cars in the LMP2 class remained in the same order with the G-Drive entry still a lap clear.

Roman Rusinov continued in the #26 ORECA 07-Gibson and was consistently faster than the chasing pack.

He remains a lap clear of the Panis Barthez Ligier that occupies second, with Pierre Thiriet third in the #36 Signatech Alpine.

The IDEC Sport ORECA and #22 United Autosports Ligier remain fourth and fifth respectively, two laps down, as the gap between the two increased slightly to 27s in the 17th hour.

#92 more than two minutes clear

The status quo was maintained in a GTE Pro contest that looks increasingly likely to yield victory for Porsche and its two Manthey-run 911 RSRs.

Michael Christensen took over the lead #92 car from Kevin Estre and maintained a lead of 2m28s over Gianmaria Bruni, who replaced Richard Lietz at the wheel of the #91.

Dirk Muller took over the controls of the leading Ford GT, the #68, but failed to make any impression on the leading Porsches and was 32s down at the 18-hour mark.

In a rare change of position, the #63 Corvette moved ahead of the #69 Ford in the fight for fourth when Antonio Garcia and Ryan Briscoe took over those cars respectively.

The #52 Ferrari, now with Toni Vilander at the wheel, suffered more misfortune when Antonio Giovinazzi picked up a drive-through penalty for pitlane speeding in his stint.

In GTE Am, Giancarlo Fisichella reduced the advantage of the lead #77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche of Christian Ried to just under three minutes in the #54 Spirit of Race Ferrari.

The Italian ex-F1 star has 30s in hand over the third-placed Keating/Risi Ferrari.

Positions after 18 hours