Its obvious but LeMans is such a difficult race to win. So much can go wrong and the stupidest thing over 24 hours can put you out. This is a great victory. Enzo would be proud.
Realized why I like the red and yellow livery so much. Same as my favorite AFX car as a kid, the 312PB. Dominated the 1972 season including several endurance wins, but didn't race at Le Mans. Still a fitting homage. Image Unavailable, Please Login
The funds Ferrari were no longer allowed to use for F1 since the budget cuts came in. In other news, communication intercept today: -Fred? It's Charles. I want to switch to the Hypercar championship. -In your dreams kiddo, you're stuck with us.
As far as I know, the program was the result of the F1 cost cap. Ferrari had a to make a choice. Fire a lot of talented people who used to work on the F1 program or reallocate the F1 funds to a new program. They looked at Indycar but Penske wouldn’t budge on letting them build their own car. So they decided on. WEC. I’m not sure of the actual numbers they put into the program, but if you subtract $145 mil (cost cap) from $400 mil (estimated old F1 budget) that will give you an idea of what they had to work with.
This is the first overall win in my lifetime -- and I'm in my mid 50s. The Ferrari brand has been coasting on the mid-60s for a long, long time.
WEC had originally proposed a budget for hypercar capped at 20 million euros, but that was several years ago. did that go out the window? or is that annual budget (operating race team) but you can spend unlimited (nine figures) developing the car? either way, it just paid for itself.
I'm sure there are plenty (at least 100, maybe 200) people who will buy one of these. That should make them back some money. Its good for the brand. Now we need an F1 title.
Way cheaper than f.1....this is the only good thing f.1 budget cap brough, because Ferrari picked the leftovers from the f.1 team and made a WEc team....maybe they dispensed the wrong guys!
About two weeks ago I was talking with a friend and clever negotiator who was owed a favor by Ferrari and who sat down with them earlier this year to discuss buying a 499P. He was quoted 8M Euros... So that is what Risi and any others wanting to launch a customer team have to put up...just for the kit... before you even start budgeting running costs. A street version is a pipe dream, you can forget about that, not feasible for countless reasons.
Another way to put this, is that they were able to bury a lot of R&D budget over with the sportscar team. I don't know if that's accurate, but I enjoyed that hypothesis. But I honestly don't understand which way all the money flows back and forth between AF Corse, who are really the team that just won that race, and Ferrari. Either way, Forza Ferrari! (I missed having reasons to say that)
By the way... an artifact of history of Ferrari racing over the last 50 years is the way that the Racing & Tracking sub-forum here at FerrariChat has been organized as long as we can remember... F1 Tracking & DE Other Racing
Out of curiosity, did they consider your friend to be more of a collector, or a viable racing privateer willing to field a competitive team? I wonder what happens to this LeMans winning chassis... surely TelaioChat already know all the chassis build numbers
Probably the 499 was designed by Ferrari's technical team, then built using sub-contractors (Dalarra for the carbon chassis), and passed on to AF Corse for testing and development, then the racing programme. As AF Corse are a factory-supported team, their budget is financed by Ferrari. Porsche must have the same arrangement with Penske.
correct as they have been alot faster in all the WEC races. 13 extra kgs does not turn the tide like that.
I can overlook the pain of the safety car periods...3 hrs of the race total...IMSA needs to adopt the tech of slow zone and FCY field neutralizers. I think it's only going to get better.
100% agreed. Good call and great car (yours and Ferrari's). One addendum- three cars ran at the 1973 24 hours of Le Mans utilizing the latest updates including a long tail chassis; 0888, 0892, 0896.
