After nine hours of untamed motion, Toyota's Ryo Hirakawa was leading in his No. 8 automobile after former leader Kubica was handed a 30-second stop-and-go penalty for causing an enormous crash on the Mulsanne Straight.
The seventh hour began with a brief but heavy rain as darkness fell, and the #83 Kubica AF Corse Ferrari overtook the #5 factory Porsche by over 45 seconds. Kubica was sliding into the wet because the factory Ferraris remained on slicks, and such were the conditions that Kubica even lapped the No. 51 Ferrari because it slid across the track while waiting for the track to dry.
Full yellow was soon required because the #60 Claudio Schiavoni drove his Iron Lynx Lamborghini GT3 hard into the barrier on the second Mulsanne chicane.
Kubica raised an alarm in regards to the gearbox temperature but was advised to proceed on wet tires, already well ahead of Hirakawa within the No. why the #50 Ferrari returned to second place and Niklas Nielsen gave Kubica the lead, making a net profit while remaining on slick tires.
The first full safety automobile of the race was required when leader Kubica collided at high speed with the delayed No. 15 BMW of Dries Vanthoor, who hit the barriers hard at the top of the Mulsanne straight, with the Belgian limping off complaining of foot pain.
Vanthoor tried to remain on the leading lap and each of them lapped the Manthey Manthey PureRxing Porsche 911 GT3 automobile with the number 92 – “he was racing me and pushing me in the wet,” Kubica complained.
After an extended period of over 90 minutes of safety automobile repairs, during which the dog became loose on the track, the rain returned and commenced again at the top of the eighth hour. The race was green with a lot of the cars running on slicks, with Fred Makowiecki's No. 5 Porsche and Pipo Derani's No. 311 Cadillac remaining within the lead while a lot of the remaining cars pitted to get wet.
Wet Kubica quickly overtook Derani and chased Makowiecki, overtaking him just before the top of the following lap. However, Kubica was given a 30-second stop/go penalty for the clash with Vanthoor.
He increased his 6-second advantage over Hirakawa, who took the lead after Kubica's penalty kick.
After the ninth hour, Laurens Vanthoor was second within the #6 Porsche, 15 seconds behind Hirakawa and 10 seconds ahead of the #7 Toyota of Nyck de Vries.
Kubica returned to sixth, behind Alex Lynn's No. 2 Cadillac; Makowiecki dropped to eleventh place on slicks after his stubborn play went horribly flawed.
Lynn passed the No. 50 Ferrari of Antonio Fuoco to complete fifth, pushing the previously dominant Ferrari back to 5-6-7.
In LMP2, Stephane Richelmi's #10 Vector Sport Oreca lost the category lead throughout the safety automobile phase, which put the #37 Cool Racing automobile in front – despite the incontrovertible fact that Lorenzo Fluxa had earlier spun when entering the pits within the rain. The No. 22 United Autosports and No. 24 Nielsen Racing entries also benefited.
There was more confusion when the No. 30 Duqueine Team automobile caught fire on the Mulsanne straight within the hands of Jakub Śmiechowski.
At the ninth hour Malthe Jakobsen was leading in thirty seventh ahead of Fabio Scherer in twenty fourth and Ben Barnicoat in 183rd AF Corse, with tenth catching them in fourth.
There was drama in the brand new LMGT3 class early within the seventh hour when Maxime Martin, within the leading #46 BMW that he had just taken over from Valentino Rossi, clumsily sent Ben Hanley's badly delayed #23 United LMP2 automobile right into a spin. Martin escaped dry warning for the incident and was driving the No. 92 Manthey PureRxing Porsche, which had a grandstand view of Vanthoor's huge sidebar.
The winning number 70 McLaren then entered the garage in a cloud of steam after Brendon Iribe appeared to have hit something solid.
On the restart after the long safety automobile, Klaus Bachler spun the #92 Porsche into the pits and dropped significantly lower within the order.
This gave the advantage to Richard Lietz's #91 sister, who was not running slicks, but Bachler atoned by charging back to the front of the category in Dennis Olsen's Proton Ford Mustang. Jordan Taylor also stars within the Ferrari 296 Spirit of Race.
Just before the top of the hour, Ahmad Al Harthy turned off Esses within the No. 46 BMW, completely excluding him from the fight for honors.
