"They see what he can't." "Data rolling in front of their eyes all through the night." "Three seconds left out of them." "Thousands of numbers every minute." "The arc of every curve, the pressure on every pedal." "Their eyes are his eyes." "Unfocus." "Stream." "The moment they stray... is the moment he falls." "Le Mans is a car race like no other." "It's an endurance test for drivers and cars that literally takes 24 hours to complete." "Fiftyfive cars will start, but many fewer will reach the checkered flag." "With unprecedented access to six of the teams and the event itself, this is the story of a race that pushes technology to the limit, but where the ghosts of the past, are never far from the present." "We have got big news." "A oneminute stopandgo penalty for car number 17 for overtaking under the yellow." "And this is the Porsche car that's leading the race, so that is really handing the advantage to Audi." "With the penalty and the extra time spent driving in pit lane, that's gonna cost them nearly two minutes." "Mark Weber is coming into thepits." "And would you look at that!" "Marcel Fassler, the Audi number 7, just a second behind Webber, is coming in to refuel at the same time." "So Fassler will carry on making his pit stop, but Porsche mechanics are not allowed to touch the number 17 car." "The penalty Webber's having to serve was caused by Brendon Hartley overtaking while the yellow flag was out a full two laps before Webber even got into the car." "I was trying to prove to the team that I could do a good job, and I was getting so frustrated with the traffic." "And I thought I saw the green flag." "Unfortunately, I was still in the yellow zone." "I should have been more patient and waited to really be sure about it." "I was absolutely gutted to lose those two minutes and, um..." "And that was a pretty swift refuel." "Audinumber 7... and gone." "So everything okay down in Audiland, it looks like." "This is the first big problem for Porsche." "It'sselfinflicted." "We had to talk a lot with... with Brendon just to keep him up, because, obviously, he was the one causing the..." "Causing the penalty, and there was still more than half of the race distance to go." "So Audi now 25 seconds ahead of Mark Webber's car" "Porsche Comms:" "With 15 hours to go, this thing is as wideopen as we have seen in many, many years." "And it's Audi 7 now looking to stretch their advantage." "The two minutes Mark Webber's car lost with a penalty has pushed them back into 4th place." "And they're behind not only the two Audis, but their sister car, the Porsche 19, driven by Le Mans rookies" "Nick Tandy, Earl Bamber, and Nico Hulkenberg." "Dear!" "Looks like the bonnet has completely ripped off the Nissan number 22." "In 20th position, that was their best placed car." "That's gonna be a real worry, given Nissan's bold frontengine strategy." "I was out on track doing just over 330 km/h, when suddenly out of nowhere, I hit something, which ripped the bonnet off, which ripped all the lights off, which meant I was then stuck in fourth gear" "with a puncture with no lights, trying to work my way back to the... to the pits." "Um, I knew that if I stopped on track then it was game over." "But if I got it back, there was a chance we could get it back out." "I had a few hairy moments on the way but managed to..." "To get it back to the pits." "Well, when it rains it pours for Nissan's new LMP1 fleet." "The number 23 car has ground to a halt now at Arnage, driven by Olivier Pla." "And marshals in attendance with fire extinguishers." "It is smoldering gently." "Things are sort of unravelling for... for Nissan." "Nissan Comms:" "And that, of course, is Jann Mardenborough's car." "Jann Mardenborough:" "Well ahead of the Nissan team are the privateers from Rebellion." "Rebellion Comms:" "With a budget a fraction of the size of a manufacturer team like Nissan, and all the problems they've had with their new engine, that's going to make Bart's team very happy." "I feel for the guys at Nissan because they've obviously been working extremely hard." "They've bitten off an enormous amount to bring three cars." "That could have been us." "Yeah, we're just over half way." "Car 13 is in ninth place." "It managed to recover from the early incident where it got clouted by another car and ended up in thegravel." "12 is a few places further behind." "We broke a drive shaft just around the halfway mark, and it took us about 40 minutes to replace that and fix it." "And there we see Nico Prost coming out of the Rebellion car number 12." "The son of the great Alain Prost." "His dad never competed at Le Mans, but was a Formula One world champion." "Nico Prost in French:" "Nico trying to live up to hisdad's legacy here at Le Mans." "Nico Prost:" "When it gets to a strange time in the morning, sort of 3:00," "I always feel a bit more nervous at that time." "Bart Hayden:" "You tend to feel the change." "Not many people are about in the paddock." "And that's the time when the drivers on the track are most at risk." "When I get into the pits, I mean, first I have to be standby for like half an hour, one hour, because I'm gonna be the next driver." "I go to the front with the crew." "I get into the mood." "I actually don't think about the outcome." "Its incredible how long the body can stay awake for." "I'm going to do a quadruple stint, which means like three hours in the car." "I know it's going to be pitch black, and I have no time to adapt." "And in the night it's a different kind of driving." "You have less vision for sure." "I mean, you drive much more with feeling and much more with knowledge." "Your visibility is 40% of on daylight." "It always amazes me that we do around the same lap times than in daylight." "I think there's something almost illicit about watching racing in the dark." "Because in some ways, it really shouldn't happen." "Anybody who's studied warfare will tell you that the best time to attack is during the night." "Because of the cooler temperatures, the tires can last longer." "That means the drivers stay in the cars often longer during the darkness hours than they do in the day time." "That means that their concentration levels have to be sustained for a longer period of time." "That takes a very specific type of driver to want to do that and to be able to put themselves through that." "I still hark back to 1995 when Jay Jay Leto was driving a McLaren." "It was pouring of rain, and during the night he made up a couple of laps on everybody else, and the car goes on to win the race." "And at the front of the pack, we've got a bit of a surprise." "Nick Tandy in the number 19 Porsche has managed to get ahead of the number 7Audi," "He's been able to consistently lap faster than anyone else." "And that's why he's now leading the race." "Wolfgang Hatz in German:" "Porsche Comms:" "Down in the pit lane, it's timefor Earl Bamber to take over from Nick Tandy." "These guys have never raced in LMP1 before." "Bit of a fairytale so far." "Only a couple years ago, Earl was working as highspeed driving instructor in Malaysia, and you've gotto just wonder what's going through his mind right now." "We're going to do the push, we're going to go onto a plank, then we're gonna come back down, ready?" "I grew up on a farm in New Zealand." "I learned to drive when I was two or three years old on my dad's knee." "Then I got into go karting." "After that, I moved into racing cars." "In the beginning, I didn't really like the idea that people with more money can go further places than you because of their financial backing." "We never had the funding to be able to go to Europe or the means to go there, so I did a lot of my primary racing in New Zealand and Asia." "With the financial crisis in like '08,'09, ran out of money, so had no sponsorship or anything like that." "You need to keep fighting, you need to sleep on people's couches, and you know, just never giving up on the dream." "Five, four, three, two and one!" "Adrian's a very good friend of mine." "I have to say he's the guy that started off this whole Porsche journey." "I think without Adrian's help" "I would have never got into a Porsche racecar." "When I first met him, he was my driver trainer." "And he was young kid." "Just 21." "Teaching me the simple stuff about getting into a car, driving a car properly." "One day he gave me chance to drive his car, he sat in the passenger seat." "He was fast!" "That's what I noticed." "Because he..." "I sat next to him and he showed me the lines around the track and I thought, "My God." "This guy..." ""First time driving a Porsche," ""never in his life driven a GT3 car, and he's so bloody fast."" "Two!" "And one!" "Unfortunately, nobody knew Earl back then." "It was impossible to sell him." "Impossible!" "We went out and got a three year old car, or four year old car." "Starts first race..." "I can't remember." "Did we win the first race?" " No, third." " He came out third." "And a long story short, by the end of the season, he was the champion of the Carrera Cup Asia." "In 2014, there was a third car for Le Mans that was going around, and they'd been testing a few drivers." "I was in my apartment in KL, and my boss called me, and he said, "I have a Christmas present for you from Porsche."" ""You need to write in the dates for Le Mans this year." "You'll drive the 9/19 hybrid."" "Well, off goes Bamber." "And there's a driver change over at Audi." "Andre Lotterer, thereigning champ is out of the car." "He just couldn't keep up with that rookie in the Porsche." "I wonder how he's feeling right now." "Yeah, I mean, it's a big challenge always to fight any car at night." "And it looks like, even though they're rookies, they know what they're doing there." "And for sure, they're a bit fast at night." "Who knows why." "Maybe the engine concept works better in the cool conditions." "We lost a bit of ground, but I'm confident we have a good car to beat them in the daytime." "Good morning, sleepy heads!" "Well, it's been an intense night of racing here at Le Mans." "When darkness fell, Mark Webber in the Porsche number17 was leading the race, but then he got served a penalty for his codriver, Brendon Hartley, overtakingunder the yellow, and that pushed him down the leaderboard to 4th." "Well, he's in the car again now and desperate to win the race, back in the hunt, up to third place." "It's incredible how long the body can stay awake for." "You had the warmup on Saturday morning." "So you've been really awake for 30 hours." "People say, "What's the most important thing?"" "How do you keep your concentration?"" "The most important thing for me, generally, is the next corner." "Dunlop, boom." "Tertre rouge, relax on the straight." "First chicane, next chicane." "Very rarely putting your mind in another point of the track." "Ahead of him is the Audi number 7 with Benoit Treluyer at the wheel, and their car's been getting noticeably quicker as the ambient temperature has increased." "They're beginning to put pressure now on the rookie Porsche number 19 driven by Earl Bamber." "To finally see the sun rise, you know where you are in the race then." "You can sort of guess where you are with the time." "You know the position." "We need to hold on for the rest of the race." "That's the 7." "That's the number 7 Audi." "Did he hitsomething there?" "It looked like his engine cover just flewstraight off." "And the car is still shooting around the track." "Audi Comms:" "Fässler on Comms:" "I don't think Fässler realizes he's lost that bodywork." "The whole back of that car has been shredded by something." "Audi Comms:" "It will be a miracle if we get two or more cars home." "Two hours to go is two hours to go." "It's been a tremendous car race, unbelievable." "Sébastien Buemi in French:" "Speaking French:" "It's not over until you really cross the finish line." "At Le Mans, you never feel safe."