Into The Night – Leading Aston Martin Hits Trouble

9pm local and more major dramas as the #90 Aston Martin tumbled down the order, Nicki Thiim reporting he had crashed at the Kleine Karrusel – The car visible on the left some way along from that point but remorselessly stationary. A Tweet some time later confirmed the car was a retirement and that Thiim is unhurt.

Just a few minutes later and the #98 ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3 was pitched into a big impact with the barriers after some sort of failure on the right front, the car heavily damaged but Sheldon van der Linde apparently unhurt.

The #44 Falken Porsche meanwhile was struggling back around on an out lap after suffering a puncture soon after leaving the pits.

All of that left Alexander Sims in the lead in the #20 Schubert BMW, though his pit cycle saw him cede the advantage to Fred Vervisch in the #15 Phoenix Audi, Maximilian Götz 22 seconds back in the #3 GetSpeed AMG after around 7 and a half hours had elapsed.

It had all looked very much more positive for the Aston Martin going into darkness, the car having great pace, able to close in on and pass a number of cars to grab back ground lost to an earlier switch of pit strategy.

In trouble a little earlier was the high-flying Lamborghini, a long pit stop dropping the car back out of the top ten, but Jordan Pepper was then back up to speed.

The most bizarre incident of the event this far came before nightfall with the #160 Cup-X KTM of Felix von der Laden puled off the circuit with the rear of the car well alight, the driver quite correctly baled out with a marshall initially doing a good job of fighting the seemingly fuel-fed blaze from behind the armco, an intervention vehicle rapidly on the scene.

From there though it all went very wrong, the car rolling away on the grass, back onto the track, still ablaze, before veering off to hit the barrier on the right, then careering back across the track to hit the barrier on the left hard, happily two cars in the vicinity were able to avoid the rogue runner.

Dennis Olsen meanwhile reported on social media that the #18 KCMG Porsche was forced to pit for repairs after multiple hits from the #20 BMW leaving the car close to catching fire.

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