Ferrari scored its first GTE Pro class victory since 2014 thanks to the efforts of James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Daniel Serra in the #51 AF Corse 488 GTE.

The vagaries of the safety car periods had essentially turned the battle for honours into a two-horse race between the #51 Ferrari and the #63 Corvette of Antonio Garcia, Jan Magnussen and Mike Rockenfeller heading into the morning hours.

However, the 21st-hour intervention caused by Nyck de Vries’ high-speed off in the Racing Team Nederland Dallara at Indianapolis led to the #63 car getting held at the end of pitlane, which handed the #51 Ferrari a one-minute lead it would never lose.

Any chance of Corvette salvaging a podium finish was lost when Magnussen spun at the Porsche Curves, making light contact with the barriers, which cost the car two laps. A further 15-minute trip to the garage left it five laps off the pace.

Corvette had already lost one car when Marcel Fassler hit the barriers at the same part of the track with force towards the end of the sixth hour, the result of contact with the #88 Dempsey-Proton Porsche of Satoshi Hoshino for which the stewards judged Fassler to blame.

Behind the winning Ferrari, Porsche filled out the remaining spots on the podium, with the #91 car of Gianmaria Bruni, Frederic Makowiecki and Richard Lietz beating the best of the IMSA entries, the #93 of Nick Tandy, Earl Bamber and Patrick Pilet, by under 20s.

Ford’s quartet of retro-liveried GTs filled out the next four places, led by the #68 machine of 2016 class winners Sebastien Bourdais, Dirk Muller and Joey Hand.

Exhaust problems in the night cost the #92 Porsche crew any of chance of defending their 2018 victory, but 10th and fifth among the WEC points-scoring cars was enough to ensure Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen came away with title honours.

Both BMW and Aston Martin had races to forget, BMW’s top finisher finishing six laps down in 11th and both Astons suffering incidents in the night.

Marco Sorensen’s violent crash at Indianapolis in the #95 Vantage GTE, which had started on pole, made it one of three non-finishers in the class, along with the #64 Corvette and the #71 Ferrari, which suffered engine troubles.