It seemed improbable enough that Ferrari and AF Corse would score a victory in the first 24 Hours of Le Mans for the 499P Hypercar. It seemed even less likely that, having not scored another win in the interim, Ferrari would back it up with a second victory at La Sarthe last year.
However, having now added four more victories to the 499P’s tally – one for the #83 “privateer” entry at Circuit of the Americas last season and sweeping the first three races of the 2025 season (one for the #50, two for the #51), Ferrari enters the 2025 24 Hour classic as a clear favorite.
Ferrari AF Corse’s focus, though, may have shifted to a longer game.
“When you win three races in a row, and you won twice at Le Mans, you know that it’s difficult to do it again, declared Alessandro Pier Guidi, driver of the championship-leading #51 499P with Antonio Giovinazzi and James Calado, as the team prepared for Le Mans.
“So we need to score as many points as we can, thinking about the championship, and of course, if we can win Le Mans, do it. But we also need to be cool and understand better everything, all the environment, how things go. And so I think to us it’s important to score points and don’t make make crazy things to try to win something that maybe you cannot. I think our approach is to try to maximise all the points that we can get in Le Mans, and then we see if we can win. Why not?”
The Drivers’ standings heading into the fourth round of the season paint a picture of dominance that the Italian brand hopes it can maintain.
The three Ferrari crews in the Hypercar class – the two factory-entered cars plus the privately-entered #83 – sit first through third, with Pier Guidi, Calado and Giovinazzi 38 points clear of Toyota’s Brendon Hartley, Sebastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa in fourth.
In the Manufacturers’ standings, it’s the same story, with Ferrari on 136 points, almost double that of its nearest rival, Toyota, which has racked up 71 despite the lacklustre pace of the Toyota GR010 HYBRID compared to Ferrari.
Winning the first three races of the season in Qatar, Imola and Spa was an impressive – and to many, even within Ferrari and AF Corse, surprising – feat. But success leading up to Le Mans doesn’t guarantee victory. And as the weekend has proven so far, the Hypercar field is stacked and close.
Antonello Coletta, Ferrari’s global head of Ferrari Endurance and Corse Clienti, assures that none of the victories were a walk in the park. Other teams challenged the AF Corse squad, and either through their own mistakes, such as Cadillac in Qatar, or slightly different strategies playing to Ferrari’s advantage, failed to deliver.
But the knives are sharpened for Le Mans, especially for those teams not sitting in Ferrari’s envious position of dominating the championship and which may believe a 24 Hour victory is their best shot at glory for 2025. For those reasons, Coletta tempers expectations of a third consecutive win.
“It’s clear that we have a special situation, because we are going to Le Mans with the last two victories, but three victories in the first three races of the championship is another matter of fashion for all of us,” he says.
“But in any case, our target is to win in each race, and we need to maintain our calm. We need to go ahead with the same strategy. Our target is to do well in Le Mans, and why not to win? But in any case, we know very well that it is not possible to win each race, but it will be important to get the maximum points we can.”
And that rings true for both factory cars. There may be a shift in strategies following Le Mans, but for now, there are no favourites within the team.
“We have the same target for 50 and 51, and after, we will see. But at the moment, with 15, 20 points of difference, there is no intelligence if we divide the strategy at Le Mans; it creates a real complication. We can have some different situations, and we need to put our maximum efforts into both cars. At the end, we will see. Probably after the 24 hour, we will have a different situation,” explains Coletta.
The running so far, with four different cars occupying the top four positions in qualifying, has shown that certainly other manufacturers have caught up, and the times have dropped significantly from last year. Ferrari certainly has a fight on its hands to claim a third-straight win.
“I have the impression that it will be a race where it will be very different leading cars in the race,” says Miguel Molina, defending 24 Hours of Le Mans winner with Nicklas Nielsen and Antonio Fuoco in the #50 499P.
“I have the impression that it will be Porsche, it will be BMW, even Peugeot, showing sometimes. Cadillac, with the numbers that they have, they should be there. They have four cars this year, I think, one very strong, which is WTR with Filipe [Albuquerque] and the Taylor brothers. They have experience at the track. So it will be a race where different colours are on top.”
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