Ferrari, Cannizzo: “Le Mans teaches us how to improve the 499P”

Twelve months later, Le Mans is still tinged with red, like the color of Ferrari. If last season it was the #51 that won the victory, this year it was the #50 that took home the most coveted trophy, entering the history of the most beautiful endurance race in the world.

The 499P gave an encore with an exciting race, with hearts in our mouths until that checkered flag that turned the dream into reality for the crew of #50. A triumph achieved with a thrill, because just over an hour from the end, on the very car that then crossed the finish line in front of everyone, the right-hand door opened, forcing an unscheduled pit stop.

A scenario that forced Ferrari to overturn the strategy, even if the AF Corse Cavallino garage was not unprepared, managing to contain the comeback of the Toyota #7 at the end. Ferdinando Cannizzo, head of Maranello’s Endurance cars, also spoke about this and other aspects in interviews at the end of the race, also explaining what the problem was on car #83.

Last week you said that you weren’t very optimistic and that you didn’t have a very competitive car. But it was. Maybe not the most competitive, but what have you done to make it competitive? You were very close to Toyota, perhaps they had the advantage in the wet and you in the dry.

“Exactly, I wasn’t very optimistic before the race. We knew that we were missing something, compared to Toyota in particular, but also compared to other competitors. At the same time, I also underlined the fact that we knew our strengths. Our task was to try to explore our strengths and minimize our weaknesses. The important thing was that we knew what our weaknesses were first. Since then we have been working all week to try to minimize the gap that there are two different sides of the coin. The Toyota was definitely the faster car, without a doubt, clearly they probably had a lot more load. They did an excellent job in the dry, I think we were a little more competitive of them. Our package wasn’t bad and, particularly with the medium tyres, we were able to make the most of the car, even better than with the softs. Our package was probably better than the Toyota’s, and especially with medium tyres. Furthermore, at the end of the race, we decided to take a risk because if we want to create or close the gap, we had to play for it even if the weather didn’t suggest medium tyres.”

Do you think this was the best race to understand where and when to spend some jokers?

“I think this race gave us a lot of lessons and we certainly know what areas we would like to improve for the next stages. We need to get to be much more competitive in all conditions. I think, probably, this time the way we worked was to be perfect, if I may say so, in dry conditions I think that we probably weighed more on the rider in the wet, whereas in other cases or last year, for For example, we were very fast even in the wet. Le Mans is certainly a perfect lesson for us to understand where to get our hands on the 499P.”

During the final splash, we saw a clear difference in performance between the #50 and #51. What was the reason for this difference?

“In the end the two cars had different tyres, because the #50 was using the soft tyres, while the #51 was on medium tires and at that moment, in dry conditions, it was faster than the #50. But then, when we switched to wet conditions, I think the #51 was also quite fast. The difference in this case and in the last part of the races was that the #50 had a gap, so you could concentrate on the traffic without worrying about someone attacking you, so it becomes much easier. While the #51 was always in the mix, with some cars attacking and that made the difference. So it seems like the car wasn’t as good, but if you look at the lap times they were sometimes very good.” .

#50 Ferrari AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, Nicklas Nielsen

Photo by: Emanuele Clivati ​​| AG Photo

What happened to #83?

“It’s a shame for us. What happened was that we identified a problem with the electrical system of the car that made us lose control of the electric motor. At first we didn’t understand why, so we continued. We still have to analyze it and I can’t give an answer precise, but it’s definitely something related to the front part of the car and probably something that lost the connection or a temperature problem. The smoke you saw was only due to the brakes, in the last laps we didn’t use the engines electric brakes, so all the effort was on the mechanical brakes and that’s why they were very hot. It was a shame that we tried to continue until the end.”

Were you worried that the problem you encountered on #83 would also be repeated on #50 and #51?

“No, because we haven’t had the same problems. And I think, again, I don’t have the full picture right now, but I can argue that it could be some sort of assembly problem. I don’t know, maybe a screw not tightened properly or something like that. A very small detail, but something that has loosened, so the race has been very tough. And if you go over the curbs sometimes, you can run into some small problems. Up until now we have had a reliability very good. But once again, when it happened, luckily this time we had three cars and not just two. We lost one, but two got on the podium. We definitely have to understand and change the parts of the car that broke for to improve. We are very calm because we know that it is part of our job. And we have to take it as a lesson for us, to review when we correct. We know that we are not perfect, that the car is not perfect and the team’s job is only to work on this and try to improve the points that we will discover race after race.”

What was the problem with the lock on #50?

“Nothing, the lock was stuck. Since it was stuck, it didn’t fit. We unlocked it and fixed the problem.”

The winners of the 24H of Le Mans #50 Ferrari AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, Nicklas Nielsen

Photo by: Emanuele Clivati ​​| AG Photo

Antonio Fuoco was saying a little while ago that with the points obtained today perhaps you can get back into the game for the world championship. Taking this into account, what are your prospects for the upcoming races against Porsche and Toyota?

“I think so. I never looked at the standings, but for sure we recovered a little and we’re probably back on the right path to win the championship. As for the next races. I think it will be difficult. It will be difficult because I think we have to digest the victory quickly. We have to focus on Brazil because it is very close, so we have to rest and focus on the new race. What I can say is that we have to do the work we did today for Le Mans, Spa or Imola on the simulations and trying to understand how to exploit the car for a certain track. I don’t know if we will be competitive at the moment but, of course, we will work hard to be competitive in all the last races of the season, because otherwise we could say goodbye to the championship. but our goal is always to end the season with the title and we will work hard to bring it home.”

Have you suffered more from the slippery conditions of heavy wet weather?

“In the heavy wet, we were fine. Evidently in those conditions, let’s say mixed, the balance of the car led to a car that was a little too oversteering, so the boys struggled to attack the corners or braking and we lost a lot when going along the sequence of the Porsche or in braking at the Mulsanne, where there is more important braking, which is also combined, where you have to brake and steer at the same time. We tended to have good performance on the straight, but we suffered elsewhere, especially where you couldn’t brake straight.”

This because? Maybe because the set-up was more dry?

“Probably the tire balance on this track had brought us to a set-up where the mechanical balance was a little more on the front. The aerodynamic load was almost minimal which, clearly, suited the dry conditions better. We made a lot of overtaking with the dry on the other side the conditions in which we had to compete were with a significant power delta compared to the Toyota, even with few MJs per stint. For this reason we necessarily needed to have an aerodynamically unloaded set-up, because otherwise we didn’t have any strong point, we would have wasted too much energy to reach certain speeds. So, in that case we aimed everything in that direction. Then it’s clear that you can optimize the setup.”

How much did you tell Nielsen to save? How did you specify the amount of energy to use?

“When we fixed the door, we saw that there were 27 laps to go. Clearly we knew that, if the conditions were wet, we would be able to get to the end without problems. We started saying let’s do 14 laps, generally now that we know it’s wet and we manage to do them. We have a quantity of energy per stint, so we divided it by the number of laps we had to do and told him exactly the MJs to use”.