The witching hour at Le Mans came for seemingly every other prototype team as the 2006 Le Mans 24 Hours entered its seventh hour with only a lucky few spared the dramas.
Often considered the hours of high attrition as the combatants try to get all their night time equipment working correctly, the first major contender to strike trouble was the #16 Pescarolo, which was eventually wheeled into its garage for a proper sort out at roughly the six and a half hour mark while the engineers went to work on the troublesome Judd engine.
By this time a host of other prototypes and enjoyed a first hand relationship with the walls of their pit garage, allowing GT1 contenders to suddenly flood the top 20 as the race clock ticked passed the maximum length of your standard LMS race.
The Rollcentre Radical was stationary for more than half an hour while the team tried to assess whether their water leak was terminate. Cautiously Rollcentre boss Martin Short took the Judd powered car back out, down from second to sixth in class and mindful that he was now driving the new Radical further than it has ever been before.
Zytek driver Phillip Anderson found a GT2 Porsche in his path on the run to Indianapolis and wound up in the gravel where the car refused to start. Eventually the Danish driver was able to coax the car back to the pits where it was taken straight into the garage having already plummeted out of its former residence in the top 20.
The Binnie Motorsports Lola spent time in the garage while the team tried to get its sidelights to display correctly while the rapidly recovering Intersport Lola had its fine run ended abruptly with a half shaft failure on the seven hour mark, potentially leaving Liz Halliday on the sidelines for the rest of the race.
The LMP2 Courage's run by Barazi Epsilon, Miracle Motorsports and the surviving Belmondo example all spent time in the garage between hours five and seven while the LMP1 Chamberlain-Synergy Lola lost many laps with an oil scavenge pump problem.
