Last Saturday, during the 2025 Motorsports Champions award ceremony organized by the Automobile Club d’Italia at the Auditorium della Conciliazione in Rome, one of the evening’s highlights was Antonello Coletta. The head of Ferrari’s Endurance division was honored for the extraordinary results achieved in the FIA World Endurance Championship, capping off a season that he himself described as the best in the history of the Cavallino Rampante in endurance racing.
“I thank you for this important recognition. Coming out of a season like this is a great source of pride: it has been the best in Ferrari’s entire history in Endurance racing. We won both the Prototypes World Championship and the Drivers’ Championship with all three of our crews on the podium. Across our two official cars, of six drivers, three are Italian, and two of them—Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi—won the World Championship.”
Coletta also highlighted other achievements: the third consecutive victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the GT3 World Cup won in Macau with Antonio Fuoco. Clearly, a season destined to go down in the history books.
Despite the excitement, Antonello Coletta is already looking to the future. “We must look ahead and strive to do even better, even though it will be difficult. It would be presumptuous to claim that we will repeat exactly the same results. The real challenge will be staying competitive at the very highest level in a season where many of our competitors will bring new cars and additional manufacturers will join. We have chosen to continue with the same 499P for another year because we believe in its competitiveness.”
The Roman executive also emphasized the value of teamwork, extending beyond drivers and mechanics: “When you win, it’s never a cliché to talk about the team. Behind the results is the work of many people: those who develop the car, those who manage it on track, but also those providing resources, and the teams in communication and marketing. Engineering, mechanics, and the organizational structure must move together for results like these to be possible.”
Looking back at the creation of the Hypercar project, Antonello Coletta recalled its debut in 2023 at Sebring after just six months of testing, almost entirely behind closed doors: a pole position and a victory at Le Mans immediately followed, signaling a solid technical foundation from the start.
“The 499P is a very robust project, which has evolved over these three years. We race with the same homologated car for five years, with five opportunities for development. We have used only one of these, while others have already used almost all of theirs. This shows that the car was well-designed from the beginning. We hope we made the right choice in keeping it for another year, while our plans for 2027 are already clear, when three more manufacturers will join, bringing the grid to seven different brands. It will be the World Championship with the most manufacturers ever, not only in the WEC but probably in any other category.”
Antonello Coletta’s reflections paint a picture of a Ferrari squad that is as strategically disciplined as it is technically gifted. By opting to save their development “jokers” while rivals exhaust theirs, the Maranello endurance team is playing a long game that has already yielded three Le Mans trophies. The “robustness” of the 499P is not just a point of pride; it is a tactical weapon that allows Ferrari to focus on operational perfection while others grapple with the teething issues of new machinery. As the WEC heads toward a historic expansion in 2027, Antonello Coletta’s calm confidence suggests that the Prancing Horse is not just participating in the golden age of endurance racing—it is defining it.
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