Speaking with the WEC media pack today in Bahrain, Antonello Coletta, Ferrari’s global head of endurance and corse clienti, spoke more about the recent reveal that Ferrari is willing to support a third 499P Hypercar for the FIA WEC.
“Regarding a third car, I explained last weekend in Italy that now we are ready for the potential third car,” he said. “We consider that our knowledge is ok to manage another car. I don’t know if we will have a third car or not, but we are ready for a third car. If we have the right conditions for next year, it should be an option, it could be 2024 or 2025.”
In addition to reiterating that it will not support a 499P for an IMSA GTP programme, he also stated that Ferrari isn’t interested in adding a third car exclusively for the Le Mans 24 Hours.
“If we consider a third car it will be for a whole season, not just for Le Mans,” he continued. “It’s not interesting for us to manage a third car for one race. It will probably be a customer (rather than a factory car).”
Will the third car be run by its Hypercar partner team AF Corse, or a Ferrari customer from elsewhere?
“It depends on the circumstance,” Coletta added. “If AF Corse has a budget then it should be an idea to manage it with AF Corse. In any case, we need to manage all the engines and electronics. This is normal, like in F1 for customers.”
Regarding the prospect of the effort being backed by Richard Mille, like the current #83 GTE Am 488 EVO effort, Coletta said is a possibility. “At the moment it should be an option, but it is not confirmed,” he said.
He also clarified that Lilou Wadoux (who currently drives in the Richard Mille AF Ferrari) sampling a 499P in Sunday’s Rookie Test has nothing to do with driver selections for a third car.
“If Lilou Wadoux or Robert Schwartzman are in the Rookie Test in the Hypercar it’s because they are official drivers of Ferrari. It is normal to organise the Rookie Test with our drivers. It’s completely separate,” he pointed out.
Later in the round table, Coletta also shed more light on Ferrari’s plans to improve the 499P for 2024. As it stands, he said, Ferrari still hasn’t decided whether or not it will bring significant upgrades for next season. The answer given was similar to that of Giuliano Salvi, the Ferrari GT and sports race cars race and testing manager, when he spoke on the subject at Fuji.
“We will have some news on the car,” Coletta confirmed. “But for us, it is not clear, we have not decided if we will spend the budget for the improvements on our car, or if we improve little parts without changing the homologation on the car.
“If we decide to change some consistent parts of the car, we will decide probably before January, but at the moment this is not in our plan.
“At the moment the car, we consider that it will be exactly the same for next year. For us our car is ‘ok’. We had a chance to demonstrate in the first part of the season that the car is probably not the best car, but it is not a bad car.”
