Why Ferrari Is Taking on Le Mans. Again.

Ferrari is returning to compete for outright victory at the famed Le Mans 24 Hour race this weekend. As motorsport moments go, it doesn’t get much bigger than this; it’s been 50 years since a factory-backed Ferrari lined up at the pointy end of the grid at La Sarthe. “We feel the weight of history,” acknowledges Ferrari chairman John Elkann, whose grandfather, Gianni Agnelli, was instrumental in Fiat’s acquisition of 90 percent of Ferrari after founder Enzo’s death in 1988.

Comebacks are always risky, but the signs are good for Ferrari. Team driver Antonio Giovinazzi set the quickest time of last weekend’s six-hour test session at Le Mans in the new Ferrari 499P Le Mans Hypercar. This follows the 499P capturing pole in qualifying for the 1000 Miles of Sebring in March and finishing second outright in the 6 Hours of Portomão in Portugal in April.

As its name suggests, the Ferrari 499P has been designed and engineered to meet the Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) sports racing prototype regulations for this year’s FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). LMH cars share the WEC’s top billing with the Le Mans Daytona Hybrid (LMDh) racers. In addition to Ferrari, the combined category has this year attracted LHM entries from Peugeot and Toyota, and LMDh-specification cars from Cadillac and Porsche, as well as cars from America’s Glickenhaus Racing and Britain’s Floyd Vanwall Racing Team.

In simple terms the key difference between the two categories is the LMH cars are completely bespoke machines while LMDh cars have a specified hybrid powertrain configuration and are built on chassis from one of four specified suppliers with a common rear axle and hybrid transmission system. The FIA uses a balance of performance formula ensure both the LMH and LMDh cars are capable of similar lap times.

Crucially, the LHM regulations allow all-wheel drive hybrid powertrains. (The Glickenhaus and Vanwall LMH cars are non-hybrids, and so rear-drive only.) Total system output is limited to 671 horsepower, but the e-motors in the hybrid powertrain can put up to 268 hp through the front wheels, the balance between the outputs of the ICE and the e-motors controlled by complex algorithms that ensure no more than the allowed 671 hp gets to the track surface at any time.

As the actuation of the e-motors is not allowed at low speeds to prevent the all-wheel drive cars having a traction advantage out of tight corners, the main advantage of the hybrid system is that the energy recouped during braking and stored in the battery can be used to by the e-motors to reduce the power demand on the ICE, improving fuel consumption. The hybrid cars are can this be lighter in race trim than the pure ICE cars, says Mauro Barbieri, performance, simulation, and regulation manager of Ferrari’s endurance race cars operation.

The 499P revives an old Ferrari tradition of using the displacement of an engine’s single cylinder to create a model name. The ICE that anchors the 499P’s powertrain is based on the 120-degree, 2.9-liter V-6 that powers the plug-in hybrid 296GTB and 296GTS, though the block has been strengthened to account for the fact that the engine is a stressed member of the car’s structure. The engine drives the rear wheels through a seven-speed sequential-shift transmission. The hybrid system’s electrical architecture is 900V and has been designed using learnings from Ferrari’s Formula 1 cars.

The last factory Ferrari sports prototype to race at Le Mans was the open-top, V-12-powered 312PB, one of which finished second outright in 1973. Since then, Ferrari’s front-line motorsport activity has been entirely focused on Formula 1. So why return now to top-level sports car racing?

“The two factors which gave us the courage were the regulatory framework and the certainty of rules in the years to come,” says John Elkann, referring to the fact the LMH rules fix the basic specification of the category’s cars for five years. “The regulations have been thought through.”

What’s more, Elkann says, Ferrari believes the LMH category offers the opportunity for genuine technology transfer to the company’s production cars beyond what is already happening from the Formula 1 program. “We’ve been very deliberate about the technology transfer that we have from our motor racing activity,” Elkann says. “We view the 499P as a way for us to innovate and as a way for our innovations to be part of our sports cars on the road.”

The fact the Le Mans 24 Hour this year celebrates its centenary also played a part in Ferrari’s return to La Sarthe, Elkann says. “We felt that had made the preparation to be able to come in, and the context was there.” But he’s keenly aware of the potential downsides of Ferrari officially participating in what is arguably the world’s toughest and most demanding race. “To go into a new adventure 50 years after we’ve left definitely needs courage,” Elkann says.

Elkann says motorsport is core to the Ferrari brand. “Ferrari started in racing and has evolved from racing,” he says. “Racing really is very much linked to what we do, very much linked to how we function. And the nice thing about motor racing is that there are always new adventures, new categories coming up, and new evolutions.”

“Electrification is an incredible opportunity to be able to experiment at the boundaries of what is possible and being able to think about sports cars that are completely electrified has been incredibly energizing,” says Elkann, who notes Ferrari’s experience with electrification extends back more than a decade because of the complex high-performance hybrid powertrains of its Formula 1 cars. “In Formula E it seems that battery management is really the key to success, and I don’t know if that’s a skill we feel would be a differentiator.”

That said, Elkann is careful not to categorically rule out Ferrari’s participation in Formula E in the future. “Formula E is an evolving category and I feel that one needs to understand more clearly how it is evolving.”

Though Ferrari last year celebrated its 75th anniversary, it is still a young company in an old business, says Elkann. “Ferrari has remained very agile in terms of how the primary focus goes to building the best sports cars possible, and it remains free in being able to do that in an unconstrained way. We were born in racing, we evolved in sports cars, and coming back to Le Mans with the 499P is very exciting.”