Ferrari’s di Salvo was moving in the other direction. The Italian climbed up to seventh before handing over to Tonizza at the first pit stop around the hour mark. Tonizza emerged in fifth partly thanks to the overcut but also a five-second penalty for the #23 McLaren, while title rival Rogers remained in his car to jump the #62 BMW Motorsport car into third, before passing Giorgio Simonini in the R8 for second.
With Simonini taking an early stop, the championship top two were now together on the same piece of track, and hit the pitlane together for their second stops. However, Ferrari made the quicker stop, and di Salvo emerged ahead of Bakkum, with the two still placed second and third overall.
The two biggest race-changing incidents both happened in the fifth hour. Firstly the #18 VRS car was caught up in an incident involving the sister #88 machine. Martin Kroenke in the 911 came into contact with the #286 Honda NSX of Team BUSR’s Juuso Helvio through Blanchimont, and Bakkum had nowhere to go but grass and the outside barrier. The Unicorns car then suffered a huge pit stop, dropping around 40 seconds and gifting the lead to the Ferrari, now driven by di Salvo.
That was a lead that Ferrari would keep for almost the rest of the race. A pit stop just after the halfway mark, during which the Ferrari team changed the 488’s brakes, saw the #88 VRS Coanda car, with Charlie Collins at the wheel, and Samir Ibraimi in the recovering #22 GPX Racing Porsche move past, the latter making contact with Tonizza in La Source and picking up a drive-through for an ill-judged inside move.
However the Ferrari was soon back at the head of the field and drove practically unchallenged through the final 11 hours. A late braking issue saw Laurito running a very conservative pace through the final stint, but as the FDA squad had already lapped the entire field, there was little danger.