The Ferrari AF Corse Hypercar team is set to run on home soil at Monza, in what will be the team’s final test before its Le Mans debut with the 499P in June.
Giuliano Salvi, the Ferrari GT & Sports Race Cars race and testing manager, confirmed to DSC last week that it will run both cars, with all six full-season FIA WEC drivers at the world-famous Italian circuit. This isn’t the first time the team has tested at Monza, as it took its 499Ps to the Autodromo back in February for some pre-season running.
“It will be a good training session for everyone,” he said. “The circuit is closer in terms of lift-to-drag ratio to Le Mans. It’s a low-downforce circuit. So we are going there to test different setups and settings for running at high speed, this will help us prepare for Le Mans.”
In the past, LMP1 Hybrid teams tested at Monza without the first chicane to increase the time spent at top speed at the circuit. However, Ferrari, which will share the venue with Porsche for the test, has confirmed that it will use the traditional layout.
“In the past, I have seen videos, but I don’t think we can do that, it’s not our choice,” Salvi said. “It’s dangerous.”
The test at Monza will come after the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps next week, where the team hopes for another strong outing with its new challenger. So far this season Ferrari has had a car on the podium at both Sebring, and Portimao, and has proven to be the closest challenger to Toyota in the new-look Hypercar field.
The only negative was the significant issue the #51 developed with its brake-by-wire system, which ultimately saw the front right brake disc fail, costing the team a double podium finish late in the race. The team, particularly Antonio Giovanazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi, were forced to take a cautious approach to their stints. Behind they wheel they were tasked with managing the brake temperature and driving around the issue as best they could, with Pier Guidi’s pace suffering badly as the problem worsened.
Still, despite that setback in Sunday’s race, Salvi feels the team has made significant progress since the WEC Prologue in Sebring, with a new car and a newly-assembled staff, which have only raced together twice.
“The team in Sebring was working together in a race environment for the first time,” he explained. We were testing a lot but it’s a brand-new team with younger, bright brains, but that is inexperienced. We still need a lot more time working together.
“The workflow was smoother (in Portimao), we improved massively. We had more control over what we were doing on track. We were better at fuel management too.
“We need another step like that for Le Mans, we need to be ready to face big endurance races.”
Interestingly, Salvi revealed that the team had opted for a conservative approach in Portugal, to preserve both cars, reduce tyre degradation (which it struggled with in Round 1) and make the finish.
He hinted that the team will become bolder as the season progresses, once it becomes more comfortable with its package.
“Every time we put the car on the ground we learn something,” he said. “In Sebring we were probably not nursing the tyre enough, here at the end of the day we probably could have pushed more at the beginning and during the race. We were trying to cure the front-left corner which was critical here. We could have pushed more. We still need to improve.
The car is brand new, it’s fragile and complicated. We needed to nurse it
“If we didn’t have the issue we would have been second and third which would have been an exceptional result. Unfortunately, we couldn’t achieve that, but we take the positive of the second position of car #50.
“At the moment we need to put kilometres on the car, to learn. Every time we see the checkered flag we get tons of data. Testing is limited, we don’t have many days to spend on track. These races are like tests, we can use them to understand the weaknesses.
“The car is brand new, it’s fragile and complicated. We needed to nurse it. We can push more. Every time we race we go on track we will be more aggressive.”
Next up on the calendar is the round at Spa-Francorchamps, a circuit that Ferrari has tested at before. However, when it ran the 499P at the Ardennes circuit, the weather turned and limited the team’s opportunity to run in the dry and work on the set-up.
“The lift-to-drag ratio of Spa will be closer to Le Mans, that will be interesting to see,” Salvi added.
“(When Ferrari tested at Spa) We had two runs in the dry, the rest was wet, so we don’t have a baseline.”
Featured image courtesy of Ferrari
