Hour 9: Boullion Climbs Up

His lead is close to two and a half minutes over the sister car of Frank Biela, Allan McNish and Emanuele Pirro, which has just pitted for Biela to hand over to Pirro who is rested and ready for more after his quadruple-stint opening run.

Audi's domination of the race was interrupted by the Jim Gainer International Dome with Katsutomo Kaneishi at the wheel, this having just moved up to third place when the ORECA-run R8 driven by Jean-Marc Gounon, Franck Montagny and Stephane Ortelli came in for a scheduled stop.

But Montagny's pit stop was a lengthy one and there was a sudden flurry of changes on the leaderboard at the top of the hour as the Racing for Holland Dome that had been fifth, lost time when John Bosch had to limp back to the pits with a flat left rear tyre.

In a flash, Jean-Christophe Boullion's fast recovering Pescarolo was past both to move up to fifth place - and after the hour to fourth, with Bosch also demoting Montagny.

Showing tremendous form, the highest placed GT1 car is the number 58 Aston Martin in seventh place overall, with Tomas Enge handing over to Pedro Lamy to leave it 1:10s in front of Jan Magnussen - who has just assumed the driving duties of the number 64 Corvette Racing C6.R, with the sister Corvette a further 20 seconds back in the hands of Max Papis.

The cars in LMP2 have had a troubled past hour or so and you have to look down to 21st to find the best-placed car in class, this the Paul Belmondo Racing Courage-Ford with Belmondo himself at the wheel, with Gregor Fisken being frustrated first by a leak from the car and then a vibration, perhaps from a misfiring engine.

GT2 is being led by Alex Job Racing, with Marc Lieb in 18th overall, 1m15s up on Jorg Bergmeister's White Lightning Racing Porsche.

Cars officially retired:

Number 13 Courage Competition Courage-Judd C60H;
Number 20 PiR Pilbeam-JPX MP93;
Number 23 Welter Racing WR-Peugeot 2003;
Number 39 Chamberlain-Synergy Motorsport Lola-AER B05/40;
Number 51 BMS SCuderia Italia Ferrari 550 Maranello;
Number 52 BMS Scuderia Italia Ferrari 550 Maranello;
Number 69 JMB Racing Ferrari 575 GTC;
Number 77 Panoz Motor Sports Panoz Esperante GTLM;
Number 85 Spyker Squadron Spyker C8 Spyder;
Number 93 Scuderia Ecosse Ferrari 360 Modena.