The 499P: Meet Ferrari’s beautiful new Le Mans hybrid prototype

Ferrari last won Le Mans in 1965; it hopes this car will change that.

IMOLA, ITALY—After a break of 50 years, Ferrari is returning to top-level endurance racing with a new hybrid prototype race car. It's called the 499P, and in 2023 Ferrari will campaign a pair of cars in the World Endurance Championship, a series with the 24 Hours of Le Mans as its crown jewel.

As I've written before, 2023 is going to be an exciting time for fans of prototype racing. After the cubic megabucks-era of LMP1h collapsed under the weight of unsustainable budgets, the top class of the World Endurance Championship has spent a few years in the doldrums as Toyota faced minimal opposition from much smaller teams. But the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (which runs the Le Mans race) has a new ruleset now, called LMH (Le Mans Hypercar), designed to attract the interest of automakers by keeping costs sane—€30 million versus the €80-200 million that LMP1h cost—and, with less reliance on aerodynamic downforce, allowing for a closer visual link to their road-going products.

*The 499P might be the prettiest LMH car to date. You'll detect styling cues from cars like the new 296 GTB at the nose.*

And so far, it's working. Toyota was first to LMH with its GR010, followed by boutique manufacturer Glickenhaus, then this year saw Peugeot ease its way back into to endurance racing with its new 9X8—still not sporting a rear wing—ahead of a full campaign in 2023. But none of those brands have quite the same magic as Ferrari. Even though it last won Le Mans outright in 1965, it still has more of those overall wins (nine) than Toyota (five) and Peugeot (three) combined, trailing just Audi (13) and Porsche (19).

The fact that the new ruleset has brought Ferrari back to the sport means it should be considered a success already, though the Formula 1 cost cap might have played a part as the company found itself with resources it could no longer employ towards that championship.

Sorry, but this is about to get complicated

Now, it wouldn't really be sportscar racing if it wasn't needlessly complicated, and so in addition to LMH, there's another new ruleset for hybrid prototype endurance race cars written for the International Motor Sports Association's championship here in North America called LMDh.

LMDh is more technically proscriptive; each automaker is required to use one of four approved carbon fiber chassis or spines as their starting point, and the gearbox, electric motor, and battery are all spec components. But like LMH, there's much less reliance on aerodynamic downforce and so the cars can look more like the ones you might find in a showroom. It too has worked, with new cars racing in 2023 from Porsche, BMW, Acura, and Cadillac. Audi's planned return has been shelved in favor of a Formula 1 program, but Lamborghini will arrive in 2024.

Two competing sets of sportscar regulations usually works out badly for everyone, but happily in this case the ACO and IMSA are allowing both LMH and LMDh cars to enter their races, with performance balancing to ensure as level a playing field as possible.

Why choose the more expensive one?

Since it has many more controlled or specified components, LMDh is a significantly cheaper option than LMH. But for Ferrari, LMH was the only way to go.

A modern hybrid race car is a complicated beast to manage, with a multifunction steering wheel and an array of switches and buttons as well.

"Well, this is our car. So, basically, we can optimize everything we want in the chassis, on the suspension, everything—basically we can transfer all the know-how we collected with GT racing, with Formula One, which was not possible in the other case," explained Ferdinando

Cannizzo, head of Ferrari GT track car development and technical director for the 499P. Simply put, starting with someone else's chassis, gearbox, battery, and electric motor was just a non-starter.

Both rulebooks cap power output at 670 hp (500 kW) to the wheels, policed by sensors in each car. The LMH rules allow for but don't require a hybrid powertrain, although given the road relevance it's no surprise that Ferrari, like Toyota and Peugeot, has designed one.

Unlike the LMDh cars which send power from both internal combustion engine and electric motor to the rear wheels, in LMH the electric motor is connected to the front axle, and only engages above a certain speed threshold to avoid having a real advantage over any rear-wheel drive LMH and LMDh cars.

Downforce and drag levels are required to be within certain ranges, so Ferrari's aim has been to make the 499P's aerodynamics as stable as possible.

In fact, the combined power output of both engine and motor can be greater than 670 hp, even if no more than that can be sent to the wheels at any one time. As is the case with the 499P: the front electric motor can deploy up to 268 hp (200 kW) from the 900 V battery (and harvest the same under braking), and the mid-mounted V6 generates a peak of 670 hp (500 kW).

The V6 engine also gives the car its name—499 in this case refers to the capacity of each engine cylinder, and the P is for prototype. The engine is related to the one Ferrari has just designed for its new 296 GT3 race car, with the same 120˚ degree V-angle and hot-v configuration where the twin turbochargers nestle on top of the engine between the cylinder banks (rather than to either side). But it differs in other regards, like the fact that it's a fully stressed part of the chassis rather than being mounted to a subframe as in the GT3 car.

I asked Cannizzo whether there was much crossover from F1 with regards to the 499P's hybrid system, considering that F1 has run hybrid powertrains since 2014?

"Definitely on the high voltage system, there is a lot of transfer of know-how," he told me. "The battery is basically collecting all the experience we gained in Formula 1. And the on the rest, on the control [strategies] clearly as you know, the system is completely differently, we're all-wheel drive with just one electric motor, the Formula One regulation is different so we can not transfer too much there, but something of course yes in terms of the way you control the electronic energy recovery," Cannizzo explained.

Downforce:drag

A perennial concern of the ACO's is that the fastest class of prototypes always ends up going around the Le Mans circuit faster than it's entirely comfortable with. A 3 m 30 s lap is the new target compared to the LMP1h lap record of 3m 17.297 s In an effort to keep the cars from getting too fast and the lap times getting too short, and so the ratio of the cars' downforce to drag is set at 4:1.

With that in mind, I was curious whether the priority on the 499P was to generate more downforce at the expense of more drag, which would mean higher cornering speeds but a lower Vmax on the long straights, or lower drag for a faster top speed but with less aerodynamic grip through the corners?

*The 499P looks distinctive with three upright elements for the rear wing.*

*Ferrari*

"Easy question. If you analyze the performance of LMH regulations you have a range of downforce and drag. The range is not that big. So what is important in this case is to minimize as much as possible the aero sensitivity; how the car is stable through the corners and under very different attitude to the to the car will see on track, and of course guarantee the stability in terms of setup. So that was the major job and I think as long as you're constraining the [aerodynamic] efficiency of the car, this is what can give you the biggest step," Cannizzo told me.

It'll race at Le Mans, but what about Daytona?

The US buys more Ferraris than any other country, and IMSA's own 24-hour race at Daytona has played its own special part in the brand's history. So it's logical to expect the 499P to turn up to play in IMSA's sandbox. Rival Porsche is taking that approach, entering a pair of factory 963 LMDh cars in WEC next year and a second pair in IMSA, with up to two more customer cars each year in both series as well.

*The factory is being realistic about its chances in 2023. With so many new cars on the grid, I wonder how many LMHs and LMDhs will even make it to the end of Le Mans?*

*Ferrari*

But for now, Ferrari is only prepared to discuss its plans for 2023, and those only involve a pair of 499Ps, run by AF Corsa and entered into the WEC. So we'll see the 499P race in the US at Sebring in March for the WEC race, but my guess is a partial or full IMSA campaign might follow in 2024.

As for the chance of victory, everyone involved is being realistic considering this is a brand new car. "We're pushing up to the maximum we can, and to be ready for the first race and to be ready to finish the race, but not just to finish, to finish first. But then of course to finish first, first we have to finish, so the work is not easy. We have started as we said just three months ago testing. But we are pushing hard, as you can see we have arranged that very busy development work with two testing cars," Cannizzo said. So far Ferrari has completed more than 7,456 miles (12,000 km) in the 499P.

"I think we can do quite good, but we need to be humble for sure, which doesn't mean that we will not push. We need to be aware of what we have in terms of time. We are aware of our capacity, but also we highly respect our competitors and I think they deserve it," he said.

The 499P: Meet Ferrari’s beautiful new Le Mans hybrid prototype

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The 499P: Meet Ferrari’s beautiful new Le Mans hybrid prototype

Ferrari last won Le Mans in 1965; it hopes this car will change that.

Sorry, but this is about to get complicated

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