Charting Ferrari’s moonshot back to the top of Le Mans

“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

No manufacturer or driver goes into this brutal assault on senses and machinery thinking they can win it. Not even as storied a team and manufacturer as Ferrari. The Scuderia’s last win came in 1965 in one of the strangest races in the event’s history, securing an improbable victory even a seasoned Hollywood script editor would dismiss as ‘too on the nose’.

Ditto the 2023 edition. Despite securing pole position, there was still uncertainty as to whether they could compete with reigning champions Toyota. “The question is, are we the fastest?” Brit James Calado told TopGear.com before the race. “We were as fast as we could be in qualifying. But the Toyotas have got performance in hand. They're not using the kerbs and things like that, so let’s see.”

That the team were closely monitoring Toyota drivers’ use of kerbs during qualifying suggests a certain level of caution and realism as to their chances. Heck, of even making it to the end of the 24hrs. “In June [last year] we were still testing the chassis in Maranello, then we had the [factory] shutdown in July. The work was intense, and in nine month’s time, no one was sure that the reliability [of the 499P] would be there,” explains Ferdinando Cannizzo, Ferrari’s head of endurance race cars.

“Our project started two years ago,” added team boss Antonello Coletta, explaining the infancy of the entire endeavour. “After a year we saw the first design of the car. In July of last year we organised the first test at Fiorano,” he added, speaking about the car’s first proper shakedown. “Then we were in Sebring for the last two tests in January and February [ahead of the 499P’s first proper race in March at the same track], so as you can imagine the time has been very, very short.

“The other competitors had a chance to organise many, many more tests than us. I like to remember that when we had just the design of our car, our competition were already on the track.”

The development process was intense, and a complicated car – the 499P marries a 3.0-litre turbo V6 to an electric motor and generator – threw up complications. “The areas that proved most challenging were the electronics, the part related to the hybrid powertrain and the 4WD system,” Giuliano Salvi, Ferrari’s sports car testing manager said of the car’s pre-season testing period, “but test after test, we improved their operation.”

So much so, it flew out of the blocks at the WEC’s first race in Sebring, nabbing pole position and an eventual podium finish for car #50 (#51 would finish seventh after contact). Portimao produced better results, with both Ferraris finishing 2nd and 6th. The race before Le Mans – the six hours of Spa – gave #51 a third placed finish, but car #50 had to retire. All season long both cars were behind the Toyotas.

Then came the big one at Le Mans, and an untested 24 hours of intense battle against the championship favourites. Not just them, either, but Porsche. And Peugeot. And Cadillac. Before the race, Coletta was mindful of his team’s chances. “We are approaching this championship with maximum humility. I don’t know if we have a chance to beat Toyota – I believe it’s not easy. But in any case I can assure you we will give it the best from our side.”

Ferrari locked out the front row in Hyperpole qualifying, and then went to war. This year’s Le Mans was extraordinarily tough, and one-by-one, each of Ferrari’s main rivals wilted, leaving just a mighty back and forth between car #51 and Toyota’s #8. When disaster struck for the Toyota, it gave Ferrari a precious bit of breathing room. Which was tested when – in the final pit stop before the race’s conclusion – Pier Guidi’s 499P refused to start back up again. Those electronics Silva noted in testing had come back to haunt them.

While the audience held its breath, Ferrari very calmly walked Alessandro through the start up cycle – indeed they’d suffered this already during the race – and once the lights flashed on and PG was back out in front, that’s the point Coletta thought he could pull off the impossible.

“I had the sensation that OK, we can win the race when the car started in the last pit stop, 15 minutes before the end of the race!” Coletta said. And after that heart-stopping moment, car #51 crossed the line to take Ferrari’s tenth outright win.

Former F1 driver Antonio Giovinazzi expressed the mountain the team had climbed. “We first drove this car last July, so to have achieved this result, pole and victory, after just under a year, is undoubtedly fantastic. It was by no means a given that we’d make it.”

Maybe Dante's onto something.