Ferrari 499P Le Mans Hypercar Revealed

• The FIA WEC Staying power Championship Hypercar category continues to develop, now with the addition of a newly advanced Ferrari race automobile.
• After pronouncing in February 2021 that it will sign up for the category that changed LMP1, Ferrari has printed its access, the 499P.
• The 499P will input festival as a Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) kind and represents Ferrari’s go back to the highest tier of staying power racing some 50 years after the 312P’s closing run.

Ferrari tooks the wraps off its newly advanced Le Mans Hypercar racer at Imola lately, signaling its go back to top-class staying power racing, and we had been there because the automaker printed the 499P. The general public will see it in motion in an issue of months, as it’ll contest the 1000 Miles of Sebring, which takes position in mid-March 2023.

Since it is an LMH kind, Ferrari used to be ready to increase its personal chassis for the 499P, versus the LMDh varieties in the similar category whose chassis should come from both Dallara, Multimatic, Ligier, or Oreca. The 499P meets the category’s steadiness of efficiency requirements through topping out at a mixed 670 horsepower, and regardless that LMH kind laws don’t mandate a hybrid machine like the ones for LMDh, it does have one. And in contrast to LMDh vehicles, the 499P is permitted to be four-wheel pressure, with an Xtrac seven-speed sequential transmission sending energy from the gasoline engine to the rear wheels whilst a differential splits torque from the only ratio electrical motor up entrance.

The 499P derives its identify within the Ferrari racing custom, referencing the displacement of its 2992-cc twin-turbocharged V-6, which stocks the structure of that discovered within the 296GT3 however has been transformed no longer simplest to scale back weight however to satisfy its distinctive position as a load-bearing piece of the 499P’s construction. The electrical motor on the entrance axle is powered through a 900-volt battery pack, charged through Ferrari’s Power Restoration Gadget (ERS), which recharges all through deceleration and braking and calls for no exterior energy supply.

The hybrid machine within the 499P is purpose-built for the auto however used to be closely influenced through generation utilized in Ferrari’s System 1 program. Chatting with the assembled press, the pinnacle of GT racing automobile design and construction, Ferdinando Cannizzo, laid out how the more than a few Ferrari racing techniques contributed to the 499P’s construction; that whilst technically it is a lot more of an F1 automobile within the design of its chassis and aero, it used to be the GT facet that had the heaviest have an effect on at the ultimate automobile—that they are necessarily from “the similar guide.”

Extensive Routine of Trying out

Cannizzo additionally spoke of the serious trying out routine that has introduced the 499P alongside so briefly—or no longer so briefly, because the case could also be. Whilst it used to be simply over a yr between the February 2021 announcement of Ferrari’s LMH program and preliminary observe trying out, Cannizzo stated the crew had its preliminary thought operating within the simulator some 3 months previous, in December 2020. A lot of simulator time—prior to and after every observe take a look at, a complete season’s price of digital lap time, in addition to bringing two prototypes to trace days that specialize in efficiency and reliability—helped get the 499P the place it’s so briefly. So did trying out alongside Ferrari’s GT groups, in addition to a 488 (probably both a GT3 or GTE) operating along as a reference.

Whilst dominance on the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June is surely a concern, the 499P is slated to make its racing debut in this facet of the Atlantic first, with the 2023 1000 Miles of Sebring this coming March.