Sometimes I feel I’ve spent my whole professional career waiting. It seems to be an occupational hazard for the sportscar journalist. I waited nearly 20 years for the return of world championship sportscar racing and 15 for Porsche to try to add to its tally of overall Le Mans 24 Hours wins. But the wait for Ferrari to come back to the top of the sportscar tree was so long that I don’t even count it.
I reported on what I call the original world championship, which in its final iteration was known as the Sportscar World Championship, in the early 1990s and was there at Le Mans in the 1990s when Porsche notched up its 14th, 15th and 16th victories in the Big One. So the arrival of the new World Endurance Championship in 2012 and Porsche’s return with the 919 Hybrid in 2014 were magic moments for me. I was there – waiting – for all the years we didn’t have a world series or a Porsche in the top class at Le Mans.
But Ferrari’s absence had been so long that it was outside my frame of reference. I was only seven when Arturo Merzario and Carlos Pace finished a distant second at the French enduro in 1973 with the 312 PB, so motor racing was at least a couple of years away from entering my consciousness.
More to the point, I wasn’t even born when the Prancing Horse claimed the most recent of its nine overall victories at the French enduro in 1965. So by the time I pitched up as a fresh-faced young journo in the sportscar paddock in 1990, Ferrari’s exploits at the front of the Le Mans grid were pretty much a distant memory. Or in my case, not a memory at all.
For virtually all my 30-plus years in the sportscar paddock it appeared that it would remain that way, even though Ferrari did tippy-toe around the fringes of premier league sportscar racing in that time.
There was the Ferrari F40LM at the back end of the 1980s that was given a new lease of life by the GT racing revival that followed in the 1990s. There was even an upgraded version of the car, the F40 GT Evoluzione, developed with private money. We also had the glorious – in looks and sound – 333 SP prototype from 1995.
It was designed as a customer car for IMSA’s World Sports Car class that had come on stream the previous year, and there was initially opposition from the factory to those customers intent on taking the car to Le Mans. Anyone who heard the scream of that four-litre V12 in France will no doubt have rejoiced that it relented.
The Ferrari 333 SP was never a real contender for victory at Le Mans
Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images
The Ferrari 333 SP kept coming back to the Circuit de la Sarthe – at least one was present every year from 1995 to 1999 – but it was never truly a contender. It was, after all, always in the hands of privateer entrants.
Then there was the F50 GT project that followed quickly after the arrival of the 333 SP. The car was conceived to go up against the McLaren F1 GTR – an outright Le Mans winner, of course – in the BPR Global Endurance GT Series.
The problem for this GT1 machine was the cars that started turning up as it was being developed. The Porsche 911 GT1 parts-bin special moved the goal posts in 1996 and then the Mercedes CLK-GTR picked them up and ran away with them when the BPR series effectively became the FIA GT Championship in 1997. Ferrari didn’t have much choice but to give up on the project.
The idea that Ferrari would be back at the pinnacle of sportscar racing after a 50-year hiatus never really sunk in, even when we saw the first photos of the car testing at Fiorano back in the summer. But finally it’s real for me
There was also a whiff of a Ferrari LMP1 factory programme just as the new-look WEC was getting going. Big Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo made some positive comments and then his sportscar subaltern Antonello Coletta admitted that there was some kind of evaluation going on. How far it got, I cannot tell you, but as we all know there was never a Ferrari LMP1 car.
It is against that backdrop in my time on the sportscar beat that I had to interpret Ferrari’s involvement in a process to create a new class to replace LMP1, a process that got going early in 2018. Ferrari was most definitely an active participant, but I wasn’t sure how serious it was about biting the bullet and going for ultimate Le Mans glory once again.
So that day in February last year when Ferrari announced its long-awaited return was a big one for me. But the idea that Ferrari would be back at the pinnacle of sportscar racing after a 50-year hiatus never really sunk in, even when we saw the first photos of the car testing at Fiorano back in the summer. But finally it’s real for me. I’ve seen the car we now know as the 499P and walked around it, though I resisted the temptation to lay my grubby hands upon it.
Insight: How Ferrari’s new Le Mans contender is a statement of philosophy
Through the years of the rule-making machinations I had a ‘believe it when I see it’ opinion on a Ferrari return. Grainy spy shots of a car running in camouflage are one thing, seeing the car in the flesh is quite another. And I can tell you that I like what I see. Roll on the Sebring 1000 Miles in March.
Expectations are considerable for the new Ferrari 499P LMH that will contest the WEC in 2023
Photo by: Ferrari
Keyword: Why Ferrari's long-awaited prototype return is a milestone moment