Ferrari wants to officially present its new Le Mans Hypercar next June, as confirmed by the Italian team’s sportscar racing chief Antonello Coletta.
The special event will most likely take place at Ferrari’s home Fiorano test circuit and will be followed by many testing sessions ahead of its race debut in the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship.
It will end a five decade absence for the team from hypercars. Ferrari is a nine time winner of the top class of the Le Mans 24 Hours race, but its last victory was in 1965.
A rendering by Sean Bull Design of the possible classic livery Ferrari might be planning to use is shown at the end of the article.
Important changes introduced in the WEC technical regulations have enticed the premier motor manufacturer back, with development of the new hypercar run by AF Corse being combined with work on its next-generation 296 GT3 car with Oreca.
“We will start [testing] with the new hypercar I hope in June or July, and the new GT3 car on more or less the first day of April,” – Antonello Coletta said, in a recent interview for Autosport’s Charles Bradley.
“We will start in our track in Fiorano – because it’s tradition and takes minimum effort to open the doors, start the engine and go,” added the head of Ferrari’s Attivita Sportive GT department.
“I can just open my office window and watch!” he smiled. “And after that we will see. Our technicians have already created a map of the test programme.” – he continued.
Antonello Coletta is confident that the new LMH rules would result in a “great car” and confirmed he was pleased with Ferrari’s decision to go in at the top class rather than the lower-cost LMDh path selected by Audi, BMW and Porsche based on the LMP2 class.
“Our project is going ahead very fast. It’s very complicated, because the LMH is more complicated than the LMDh, but this is what we have chosen. When Ferrari chose to be involved in the top class, it just had to be in Le Mans Hypercar,” he explained. “When we compete in a category, it is normal that the car has to be all Ferrari, the entire project is under the control of our technical staff. With all the cars involved in this category, I believe the styling will be very different between them.
“I think it’s important for the fans to understand very easily what is a Ferrari, this is a Peugeot, this is a Toyota,” he added. “In the past, it was difficult to understand the differences between such similar cars. For us, the most important anniversary for us is that 2023 is 50 years since we last raced in prototypes, the best and most important category.” – he concluded.
