Once the 6h of Spa has ended, the FIA World Endurance Championship is preparing to turn the page and the next stage of the 2024 season is what everyone in the paddock calls ‘The Big One’, that is, the legendary and highly anticipated 24h of Le Mans.
Ferrari comes to us as the reigning winner after last season’s historic feat and in Maranello they know very well that the spotlight is obviously on the 499P, which among other things is still without any successes since that incredible weekend spent on the Circuit de la Sarthe.
In reality, the Prancing Horse Hypercars had the opportunity to win at Spa and Imola, but for various reasons the success did not arrive and the failure to do so on the Santerno track for weeks caused much discussion.
“We did a so-called analysis ‘post-mortem’exchanging all our ideas and impressions in total transparency, without filters”, explains Mauro Barbieri, Ferrari Coordinator for Performance and Simulations, in the meeting which took place in Belgium with journalists, including Motorsport.com.
“This will ensure that we can improve both the software that supports us in making certain decisions and in implementing operating procedures, so that similar errors do not occur again in the future.”
“The team is constantly growing and improving, regardless of the number of races we have under our belt in the WEC and with the Hypercar. We learn continuously and sometimes losing gives you a good opportunity to understand something and learn, innovating and also changing your approach improving yourself.”
“It’s disappointing when you make mistakes, especially if you find yourself in front of your fans in your home match, but you shouldn’t get discouraged; you analyze what went wrong and try to understand how to improve by finding the solutions that allow you to be better every time. strong”.
#51 Ferrari AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi
Photo by: Emanuele Clivati | AG Photo
In 2023, the debut year for the 499P, the finger was often pointed at Ferrari for the excessive tire degradation suffered in the various events, which was due not only to the burdens imposed by the Balance of Performance on the Reds, but also to the many experiments that the technicians of the Emilian company and AF Corse were implementing to understand and learn every detail of a prototype as sophisticated as an LMH.
Michelin offers three compounds (hard/medium/soft) for dry, in addition to the wet ones of course, and in these first races of 2024 the Ferraris performed well in every situation, showing themselves to be competitive, especially when fitted with the medium tyre.
“Michelin always chooses the compounds also based on safety, it’s a factor that doesn’t depend on us, like the BoP does. Certainly last year with the hard ones we were very far from the fastest, but on certain tracks they are certainly more suitable “.
“Warming them up on the out lap is clearly more difficult and we saw this at Spa in 2023; when we put them on it was very hard at the start and they lapped us. At that moment, however, there was the belief that it was the better choice, as well as that of mounting the intermediates at the start on a wet track”.
“In the end it’s always experience that you take away and that comes in handy to do better in the future, as was the case at Spa in 2023 and at Imola a few weeks ago.”
#50 Ferrari AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, Nicklas Nielsen
Photo by: Emanuele Clivati | AG Photo
This year at Le Mans there will be no systems for pre-heating the tyres, so France will arrive with a further unknown for all the teams, who will have to choose compounds and strategies well during the very long transalpine challenge.
“Going out on cold tires will make everything much more complicated because Le Mans is a track with a very smooth surface and the temperatures will be low, so the exit lap to warm them up will be really challenging.”
“But it’s also the first time it’s happened to everyone, so right from the test day we’ll try to understand how to behave and adapt, there are no worries. The soft compound will probably also be fitted during the afternoon of Saturday and in the morning of Sunday, not just during the night, but we won’t have a chance to try it before going there.”
“Undoubtedly the low degradation on a circuit with those characteristics will push the majority of competitors to use the softer compounds. Usually the hard ones are not suitable, the medium ones are better during the day and the soft ones at night, which is why without systems to pre-heat them it will be more useful not to use the hard ones”.
#50 Ferrari AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, Nicklas Nielsen
Photo by: Marco Losi / KAPPAEMEDIA
As we said at the beginning, Ferrari presents itself at Le Mans to defend the trio signed by Pier Guidi/Calado/Giovinazzi with the #51 a year ago, a very demanding challenge considering that the rivals in the Hypercar Class have grown in number and experience, as the Porsche guys showed for example.
“If we didn’t have the belief that we could win or try, we wouldn’t take part in the races. We always try, I think that last year the performances gave us confidence, we have a month to prepare well and I don’t feel like saying that we won’t be in the game.”
“Last year we arrived at the 24h with a car that probably performed a little higher than what we expected, also seeing how the previous events had gone. The hope is to be competitive also in 2024, but we are still there there are many things to define and sort out, so it’s too early to say how we will fare, but we will certainly go there confident that we can do well.”
“The desire to win and grow at every race is there, we always try. But the approach remains very humble, like last year when we were making our debut and had to learn many things. Probably, if we want to be superstitious, make our debut in Le Mans without victories behind us has done us good!”
“I believe that the fight will be with many cars, already in 2023 several cars led the race or were competitive, such as Cadillac and Peugeot, at various moments of the event, which for me was wonderful. There will be more cars and it will be even more of a lottery, I honestly don’t feel like excluding anyone.”
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