Laurens Vanthoor grabbed the lead from polesitter Joey Hand in the #66 Ford GT, with Jan Magnussen up to third in the Corvette Racing C7.R ahead of Patrick Pilet’s Porsche, the second Corvette of Oliver Gavin and Richard Westbrook’s Ford ahead of the two BMWs.

However, there was early drama as Hand’s Ford was seen towing loose bodywork under yellow, with Joey desperately trying to shake it off before the green.
A replay showed the Ford having been thumped up the backside by Pilet as the field stacked up, and the bodywork was from the Porsche
The incident went under review.

If Hand’s handling was affected with diffuser damage, he showed little sign of it, remaining tucked under the rear wing of his assailant’s teammate, Vanthoor, throughout the early stages.
Connor De Phillippi pitted his BMW M8 to hand over to Alexander Sims still with 70mins to go.
It paid off with the second yellow of the day, with all the other cars stopping and the #25 BMW cycling to the front.

On the restart, Garcia spun the wheels in the #3 Corvette and fell to eighth, but teammate Tommy Milner had the #4 Corvette up to third, behind Sims and Earl Bamber (replacing Vanthoor in the #912 Porsche) and ahead of the #66 Ford, now piloted by Dirk Muller.

Bamber and Sims had a door-banging battle all down the pit straight on Lap 34, with the Porsche only edging ahead after four corners of side-by-side action.
Just a couple laps later, Sims went out wide at Turn 9 during the frantic scrap for second, third and fourth, and he clouted the wall hard and was out of the race.
Bamber’s Porsche now led Muller’s Ford, but Milner’s Corvette went up to second on Lap 43 with little more than half an hour to go.

Ryan Briscoe lay fourth in the second Ford, with Garcia’s Corvette up to fifth and Jonathan Edwards in the #24 BMW in sixth.
At the restart, Bamber’s front right suspension suddenly sank down, allowing Milner’s Corvette to sweep past into the lead at Turn 9, with the recovering but lapped Tandy acting as a buffer behind him to the #66 Ford of Muller.

Then Briscoe made a great pass on teammate Muller, through Turns 6-7-8 to take second in class, but had just 15mins to try and hunt down Milner, but was now five seconds down.
Milner took it easy over the final lap, but the Ford GTs were still two seconds back at the checkers.