Ferrari may have two Le Mans 24 Hours victories under its belt in two attempts with the 499P, but it is not resting on its laurels.
This weekend in Brazil it is debuting the first ‘Joker’ upgrades for the car, which it hopes will improve its form in Hypercar throughout each WEC season going forward. Remarkably, the pair of Le Mans victories are the team’s only trips to the top step of a WEC podium. As such, its next target is to start winning races more regularly and clinch the WEC Drivers’ and Manufacturers’ crown.
The modifications on the cars for this weekend’s race at the Interlagos circuit include a redesign of the brake cooling ducts to alter the flow distribution and ensure better cooling efficiency, as well as a “flick” under the front headlamps to help the aero balance.
These, according to Ferdinando Cannizzo, Ferrari’s head of endurance race cars, are “minor” changes, which count as a single ‘Joker’ update and will help optimise the car’s consistency at circuits that are hard on brakes such as Imola, Fuji and Bahrain.
With the championship managed by Balance of Performance, there is no reason to target gains in peak performance. Instead, Ferrari, and other manufacturers like Toyota and Peugeot that have updated their cars, are focused on making gains in reliability and consistency.
“At the front, we were pretty healthy, the limitation was at the rear,” he explained, revealing that the changes affect the rear brakes.
“These cars are sensitive to modification and this changed the overall balance of the car, so we have readjusted it. We touched the floor and the upper body, to adjust the aero balance. The most visible changes are the front ‘flicks’.
“We are working on efficiency, not making us compromise on set up choice. As long as you bring the car back in the same position in the performance windows, we do not expect changes in peak performance.
“This (Joker) will not change that much but we may have some advantages maybe in removing some constraints on set-up, not at all the tracks, but some specific tracks.”
Why introduce these changes immediately after winning Le Mans?
In part because “the sooner the better” and in part because introducing the update in time for Le Mans would have meant debuting it for Round 2 of the season at Imola. The rule-makers require manufacturers to complete two rounds with new updates before Le Mans, to avoid disrupting the Balance of Performance process for the most important event of the year.
As it happened, the 6 Hours of Imola was too soon, as track testing for these new components began in April at Paul Ricard, the same month as the race.
“There were no reasons to push for this (to be introduced at the start of the season) because Le Mans is not stressful for brakes,” noted Cannizzo.
“So we said let’s start here (in Brazil) and see if we can gain experience so that it will be better when we race on tracks that are really stressful on brakes like Fuji or Bahrain.
“The championship (in a wider sense) is one of the reasons we have introduced it now,” he added.
“As long as we had this improvement in the pocket, why not start immediately? It gave us the possibility to get familiar with this modification. We have tested on track, but not on every track, so we need to learn more and the sooner the better.”
The task of refining the 499P does not stop here. Further down the road, Ferrari plans to bring additional updates for its Hypercar, Cannizzo confirming that work is already underway.
“We are already working on improving at the moment,” he revealed. “I will say that we are very prudent and cautious to change things on the car. We would like to understand first whether we really need something, but this is not impeeding us to keep working and try to find areas to improve the car.
“This work is going on, when we will arrive with something new I don’t know. We need to take into consideration that as long as the car will still be quite competitive it will be the FIA that approves our changes.
“Our job to improve the car will never stop. The point is we need to decide the right moments to bring modifications.”
Images courtesy of Ferrari AF Corse
