It’s a huge weekend for the Ferrari programme on home soil, it starts the season as the reigning Hypercar World Champion and is defending its crown in 2026 with a near-identical trio of 499Ps, up against a suite of manufacturers bringing significant Joker updates to their cars.
The trio of 499Ps have looked quick all week and carried their Prologue pace into Friday morning’s FP1 session. FP2 later in the day saw Alpine take charge, but the factory cars remained very much in reach of the top of the time sheets. Will that translate over to tomorrow’s race though? Ferrari is been keeping its expectations in check.
“It’s clear that we need to maintain this competitive compatibility,” Antonello Coletta, global head of endurance and Corse Clienti, told reporters yesterday. “It’s difficult, because our competitors went and changed their cars, spent some ‘Jokers’ to improve the competition of their cars. But in any case, we worked during the winter to maintain our speed, our competitiveness, but we know that it will be very complicated.”
Alessandro Pier Guidi, driver of the #51, also attempted to temper expectations ahead of qualifying and the race.
“Everyone is doing a different programme. We don’t know what the other did. Of course, to be quick is positive. It’s better than being slow, but it means nothing,” he said.
“The new tyre, in terms of performance, is not as great as the other one in the past. It’s better in terms of the warm-up, but maybe we need to understand even a bit better still. Because, of course, we didn’t have a lot of mileage on the new compound. The manufacturers that are racing in IMSA as well, they have more knowledge than us. We need to account for this, let’s say gap or late knowledge.”
Ferdinando Cannizzo, head of endurance race cars, doubled down on this coyness in his time with the press.
“The point is that I think we are one of the teams that did the qualifying simulation both at the Prologue and the free practice. Not all the other competitors did the same.
“But as long as you look at the race pace from the other cars, I think you clearly realise that the Ferrari is not the fastest overall, or at least not the favourites.”
Ferrari did not intend to make any significant changes for this season’s car, and instead is assessing whether or not developing a Joker update for 2027 will be necessary to keep the team at the sharp end.
Very little has changed on the 2026 Ferrari 499P aside from a few small aerodynamic tweaks at the behest of the FIA’s homologation process, but the overall surface of the car remains untouched from the 2025 iteration.
“We were forced to change some things in the car, to reposition the car in the performance window,” Cannizzo said.
“We could have done so by changing the car completely, but it was not in our scope for this season. And so we just changed it, some flicks, some gurney flaps or diffuser fences, just to protect the strength of the car and trying not to take a fall in the performance.”
With several manufacturers opting to cash in their Jokers to make significant changes to their cars coming into 2026, there are new measuring sticks to judge the 499P’s performance against. A crucial indication of where the car stands will come in qualifying today.
Although Sunday’s debut race of the 2026 season is six hours long, it’s a short one by WEC standards. A good starting position is viewed as a crucial piece of winning this race, as Imola tends to be a difficult track to overtake on.
“It’s clear that, in my opinion, it will be important to have a good qualifying, because Imola is complicated to overtake, and if you have the chance to start at the front of the grid, it’s better than starting behind,” Coletta explained. “But, I mean that the quality will be very, very complicated for all of us. The [pace] of the car at the moment is not easy to understand.”
Look no further than last year’s race for evidence, when the #51 took pole and won, while a track limits violation stripped the #50 of its qualifying result, putting it at the back of the grid. The #50 crew managed to fight back up to fourth before they were hit with an unfortunate combination of being caught on the wrong side of a Virtual Safety Car and suffering a puncture, eventually finishing in P15.
