OAK Racing’s chances of winning this year’s 80th running of the Le Mans 24 Hours suffered a serious setback after nearly ten hours at Circuit de la Sarthe with the retirement of its front-running #24 Morgan-Judd 2012 LMP2.

The car, shared by Jacques Nicolet, Matthieu Lahaye and Olivier Pla had been leading its class by nearly two-and-a-half minutes, as well as lying seventh overall, at 12:30am when a sudden loss of oil pressure forced it into the pits. Frantic and lengthy efforts by the team to rectify the problem were ultimately in vein and at 01:45 local time the decision was taken to retire the car.

Despite the obvious disappointment of losing its leading contender, OAK Racing can at least take some comfort from the knowledge that its Onroak Automotive designed and built prototype had been comfortably leading its class at the time of the problem, which was related to an oil pump issue.