Ferrari is hoping to bring a suite of upgrades to its 499P Hypercar before the end of the 2024 FIA WEC season according to Ferdinando Cannizzo, Ferrari’s head of endurance race cars. This will include a ‘Joker’ focused on performance and additional tweaks to improve its reliability.
Speaking with DSC, Cannizzo wouldn’t be drawn into specifics, in order he said, to prevent “the competition from getting an advantage”. But he did reveal that the changes to the car, which in its current form is identical to the model that debuted at Sebring last March (bar a change to the endurance lights for 2024), would not affect its looks.
“We need to explore the real potential of the car,” he said. “There are weak points that we need to take care of and improve. We have started work on some evolutions for the car, and we will probably arrive with some form of ‘Joker’ modification before the end of the season. We cannot say when exactly, but we are working and the process in some areas is already progressing. We started testing some modifications that have proven to be effective on track and we are close to signing it off.
“These changes are not related to aero, for example, it’s more within the “dress” of the car. We are trying to offset some areas in which we identified a lack of performance. There are a lot of things we can improve in the car, which require ‘Joker’ updates, and we are prepared to do it.
“We will see if (the first set of updates) this arrives by the end of the season. Then we have something else that will follow this in the future, but we don’t know if it will be for next year or two years time.”
The aim, he continued, is not to improve the car’s ability over a single lap. Instead, Ferrari hopes these changes will improve the car’s performance over the course of stints during a race.
“We want to express our performance in a better way,” he said. “It’s more to strengthen the car, not in a single lap time but more in robustness. So to be close to the margin every lap. We will not improve the peak performance, but probably we will improve the car’s consistency at some specific circuits where we needed to be more conservative in operating the car.”
Is tyre wear an area of concern with the car’s performance that Ferrari hopes to improve with these developments?
“No,” he responded. “For tyre life, we have improved because it’s more related to the fact that we needed to work on understanding the car and define a proper set-up at certain circuits, in specific conditions. We are able to approach tyre management during a stint and during the race.”
As for the reliability upgrades, Cannizzo said these would come alongside the performance improvements.
“The whole team is never satisfied with the car’s reliability,” he said. “We do believe that the reliability of the car is still our big concern, it’s something we need to take care of every day. Small details can destroy an entire race. So we need to pay attention to the detail.
“The work is very hard, we are working a lot. The difficulty of having homologated cars is that you can change things for reliability, but you have to show you have a problem, and that’s not easy.”
Hypercar commitment effectively open-ended, IMSA GTP debut not expected in short term
As for Ferrari’s general outlook on the 499P programme, Cannizzo believes that the Italian marque is pleased with the current ruleset and is committed to competing in the WEC’s top class for the foreseeable future.
Currently, the factory programme is confirmed for five years, meaning Ferrari expects to continue racing through to the end of the 2027 season in the WEC.
When asked about the future of the current Hypercar ruleset, Cannizzo explained that an extension – something that is widely expected – would be welcomed. However, he did suggest that in the future he feels that the most sensible option would be to move forward with a Hypercar category open to a single platform.
“I am happy with the technical regulations. The philosophy of having a performance cap on the regulations is the right way. Because inevitably you can guarantee the fact that as long as you achieve the performance you don’t need to make a lot of developments to make yourself competitive. We can argue at some point about BoP, but if I look at the way we are running now we are close in weight and power. The regulations are the right one and for the future, we will have to see what will happen to Hypercar.
“I am in favour of extending the regulations. What I will work on in the future with the other manufacturers and the FIA and ACO is probably to have one single platform in the long term, instead of two different ones racing together. This is one of the targets that we should achieve.
“It could be a regulation that is a combination of the two (LMH and LMDh). We have proven the car, whichever platform, is performing well. So I think we can go with one clear decision, but this is a personal view. And that would help a lot to strengthen the championship.
“At the moment we approved the programme for five years but we are still working on what will come after. Of course, in a company, everything needs to be approved at some point, but I don’t think that Ferrari is going to stop this commitment to endurance.”
What about the 499P’s prospects in IMSA? No GTP programme is imminent. The size of the current programme is a barrier, as Cannizzo rightly points out that committing to an IMSA season is no simple task due to the number of races on the schedule.
So what are the chances of a factory effort from the ‘Prancing Horse’ stateside? While there is no firm plan to race in the USA with the 499P any time soon, Cannizzo provided an interesting insight into how likely a GTP programme for the car is.
“The only thing stopping us is resources,” he explained. “We are a small team, and it’s not easy even to manage three cars. We would like to do better in the World Endurance Championship first, and then at some point when we will be ready we will see what our commitment will be in the USA.
“It is clear this car deserves a factory team to race it because it’s so complex, that has to be taken into consideration. But apart from that it’s too early to say at the moment what will be the future plans on top of the WEC.
“The wish is there (to race in IMSA), but we need to be aware that we need to be well prepared. If we make a commitment to have a second championship to race in, you need to prepare properly because the number of races are quite a lot. This is what we need to be sure of. We push in the right way, and now we need to have the same approach and step in when we are really ready.”
