Then, around the two-hour mark, things took a strange twist. The No. 2 Audi, which was leading and being driven by Rinaldo Capello, who replaced Allan McNish, suffered a puncture on one tire and pulled into the pit.

Then the No. 7 Porsche, driven by Romain Dumas of Basel, Switzerland, encountered mechanical problems and pulled out after 53 laps. That put Pirro in the lead and Luhr, in the No. 6 Porsche, in a battle for the win.

Pirro took the lead with only nine minutes left in the race.

Rinaldo Capello, who was driving the No. 2 Audi, finished 4th.

The twin Audi diesels were the pre-race favorites. They qualified 1-2 for this event and have been the cars to beat in the four earlier series events.

McNish, of Monaco, took over the lead from Biela and deftly stayed there for the first hour, increasing his lead with each new lap.

After the first hour, 22 laps into the race, McNish had extended his lead to nearly one minute. Biela managed to move up from 6th to 3rd at this point, but was still nearly a minute behind the leader.

On the 25th lap, McNish pulled into the pit, fueled and turned driving duties over to Rinaldo Capello of Italy. The stop put Biela, who chose to delay his pit stop, into the lead and dropped Capello into third.

The two Porsches share leads in the second half of the race.

Sascha Maassen of Belgium, the No. 6 Porsche, took the lead 1 hour, 15 minutes into the race. After the pit stop, Luhr took over driving and pressed Pirro to the finish.

Winning the Grand Touring 1 class was Tomas Enge of the Czech Republic and Darren Turner of England. Winning the GT2 class was Mika Salo of Finland and Jaime Melo of Brazil.

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