The stars have aligned for Ferrari. It is heading back to the very pinnacle of sportscar racing after a 50-year absence in the centenary year of the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2023. Those anniversaries were not lost on the Italian manufacturer when it sat around the table as new rules began to be thrashed out back in the spring of 2018 for what we are now billing as a golden era. But it was the realisation of what was to come – just how big sportscars can become once again – that tipped Ferrari into bringing to an end its long hiatus from the big time in endurance.
“All the numbers have come in a magic moment,” says Antonello Coletta, Ferrari’s sportscar racing boss and the architect of its return to the prototype ranks as a factory with a hybrid prototype that since its launch at the weekend we are now calling the 499P. “When we made some discussions in the last years, our vision was open, but when we understood that the occasion was great, we took the final decision.”
But Ferrari’s return to the top of the sportscar tree next year with a two-car attack on the World Endurance Championship is not just about the numbers 50 and 100. It is about some much bigger numbers with many
