Calado: Ferrari “Scratching Our Heads” at Bahrain Pace

James Calado expects the 8 Hours of Bahrain to be a tough race for Ferrari AF Corse which has been “scratching our heads” about how to get closer to the front of Hypercar.

Since winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June, both factory-operated Ferrari 499Ps have endured a difficult second half of the FIA World Endurance Championship season.

On Thursday, the Ferraris finished eighth and ninth in a rain-disrupted Free Practice 1 followed by 10th and 11th in Free Practice 2 at Bahrain International Circuit.

Calado, who won Le Mans with Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi, told media that Ferrari is currently “off in every area” including straight-line speed. The top speed trap figure from a 499P on Thursday was 8.1 km/h (5 mph) slower than the overall best.

The Italian manufacturer is known to have been dissatisfied with its car’s Balance of Performance that was issued for the final three rounds of the season.

“No pace at all so far,” said Calado. “Scratching our heads a little bit. The car feels quite nice to drive. Everything seems normal [but] we’re just two or three seconds off the pace.

“A lot of it is straight-line speed, for some reason. We are normally always able to match Toyota in top speed, but for some reason now there is a big deficit.

“Just generally, we’re lacking a bit of corner speed as well. We can only really compare to the last race. We are off in every area.”

Ferrari finished fourth and fifth at the 6 Hours of Fuji where it prioritized running on the hard tire compound until the final stint, except for an early experiment on one car.

Michelin has continued with the hard and medium compounds for the Bahrain season finale.

“We’ve always struggled a bit with degradation throughout the season, other than Le Mans,” reflected Calado.

“This is the track which is the worst of the season for that. It doesn’t really bode well for the race.

“Normally, we can at least put it up there on one lap, but for some reason, it’s not competitive yet in that area either.

“We’ve still got FP3 to see if we can make a few changes and work out what we need to do. It’s a bit of an unknown but we’ll just do the best we can.”

Ferrari tested at Bahrain International Circuit last month where the conditions were hotter than they are this weekend.

“We did the test and we went through a program, but the reality is coming back from the test, coming here [and] realizing it’s going to be difficult,” said Calado.

“It was clear that it was going to be really, really tough. It was about 10 degrees [C] more.

“We’d hoped that the cooler temperatures here would help, but the reality is that it’s the same [situation] as the test.”

Calado indicated that Ferrari has arrived in Bahrain with a different setup to help with degradation at a circuit that is notoriously demanding on the tires.

“We’re probably compromising a bit of one-lap pace when the tires are new at the start of the stint, but we’re trying to work on the endurance,” he suggested.

“Trying to do double stints [with consistent pace] isn’t easy at this track, so our focus is to try and do as well as we can in the race, and maybe not so well in qualifying.

“I don’t think we’ll ever use mediums [in the race]. We can’t get them to work on our car.

“We tried them in the test and we tried them here [in Free Practice]. For us, it doesn’t work. We need the harder compound.”

Ferrari’s head of endurance race cars Ferdinando Cannizzo struck a more optimistic tone when asked about the team’s chances, proposing that it had been “really happy” with its tire management in FP2.

“Of course, our target is to always fight up until the end,” he said. “Clearly there is something we have to [do], a very big challenge.

“Never, as Ferrari, we’d never give up before the race, despite the fact that the mission seems impossible.

“But we’re trying to find anything, either on strategy or setup, on everything, that will put us on the condition to fight at least for the podium.”