With 10 hours left to run until the chequered flag, the #15 Phoenix Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II shared by Kelvin van der Linde, Dries Vanthoor, Frederic Vervisch and Robin Frijns holds a slight advantage over GetSpeed's two Mercedes-AMG GT3s contenders.
That was thanks to a strong stint by Frijns in the early morning hours that gave the Phoenix machine a 30-second lead over the #3 GetSpeed Mercedes of Adam Christodoulou, Maximilian Gotz and Fabian Schiller and the sister #4 machine of Maro Engel, Jules Gounon and Dani Juncadella.
Phoenix's #5 car, in which van der Linde was also entered along with Vincent Kolb, Frank Stippler and Ricardo Feller was eliminated from the race shortly before 1am due to a collision with a lapped car.
The last remaining candidate for victory from the BMW camp is the #20 Schubert machine of Jesse Krohn, Alexander Sims, Jens Klingmann and Niklas Krutten, which is on a different pit strategy to the leaders.
Schubert's chances however took a blow with a 32-second time penalty for driving too fast under yellow flags.
Porsche looks to be out of the fight for victory. The best-placed 911 GT3 R, the Dinamic Motorsport car of Christian Engelhart, Matteo Cairoli, Come Ledogar and Thomas Preining, had to come into the pits to change the steering gear after a collision at just after 5am and was withdrawn shortly afterwards.
Best of the Porsches is now the #33 Falken entry of Jaxon Evans, Sven Muller, Patrick Pilet and Marco Seefried, which is running in ninth position after an early unscheduled tyre change.
Two other BMWs have dropped out of the running. The #101 Walkenhorst car dropped out in the night due to an accident, while the #72 RMG car retired after Max Hesse spun and hit the guardrails twice at Klostertal.
The pole-winning Octane126 Ferrari was also finally withdrawn. The Swiss team gave a broken tie rod as the reason.
The #7 Konrad Lamborghini has clawed itself back inside the top 10 after an accident and pitstop for repairs on Saturday evening, but is one lap behind the leaders.
Two laps down is the #706 Glickenhaus SCG004C, which also had to pit for an unscheduled repair stop on Sunday morning.
