Ferrari Has “Work to Do” to Catch Toyota Despite COTA Win

Ferrari’s head of endurance race cars Ferdinando Cannizzo says the Italian marque still has a “lot of work” to do to close the performance gap to Toyota despite its victory in last weekend’s Lone Star Le Mans at the Circuit of The Americas.

Cannizzo made the comments in the wake of Ferrari scoring a first FIA World Endurance Championship win outside of the 24 Hours of Le Mans on Sunday with its satellite No. 83 AF Corse entry of Robert Shwartzman, Yifei Ye and Robert Kubica.

However, the win came after Toyota’s No. 7 car was given a drive-through penalty for a yellow flag infraction with 45 minutes left on the clock in the six-hour race, which dropped Kamui Kobayashi from a comfortable lead to second behind Shwartzman.

“We still need to work a lot to close the gap with the competition,” Cannizzo told reporters. “Our best competitors still have a lot of margin. We saw it at Interlagos and again today. We need to work harder to finally close the gap.

“They recovered from the drive-through quickly and easily. They were able to overtake everyone without losing time. This is something we need to fix for Fuji.”

Toyota emerged as the fastest car on race day at COTA despite a subdued qualifying performance for the Japanese manufacturer, which saw the No. 7 GR010 Hybrid only qualify ninth and the sister No. 8 taking the start from 12th.

The No. 7 car appeared to gain performance as the race went on, with Kobayashi setting the fastest lap of the race in his final double-stint, and successfully ran Michelin’s Medium tire compound for the entire race.

“We didn’t understand the performance of Toyota in qualifying,” added Cannizzo. “It seems they were quite cautious. But since the start, the Toyota seems very brilliant.

“They were overtaking easily. This is what we expected based on our simulations. They were the fastest car on track. They are able to manage the performance in the right way to be in front without taking risks.

“Today we were lucky with this drive-through, otherwise they were in front.”

Ferrari enjoyed a 1-2-3 at the head of the field in the early stages at COTA, but the pole-winning No. 51 car dropped out of contention less than two hours into the race, while the No. 50 car of Miguel Molina, Antonio Fuoco and Nicklas Nielsen appeared to lack the pace of the other two 499Ps.

The Le Mans-winning No. 50 trio eventually completed the podium in third place, 26 seconds behind the winning No. 83 entry.

Cannizzo didn’t have an immediate answer for the No. 50 car’s struggles when asked.

“On the average [pace], it was there, but it’s true that No. 50 had something we had to review because it was not as brilliant as the other cars,” he admitted.

“By looking at the pace in the last half of the race, there was no difference, so we were able to keep the gap. But definitely our competitors were faster than us.”

While admitting Toyota had the edge over Ferrari on pace, Cannizzo highlighted that losing the No. 51 car early in the race following contact with an Lexus LMGT3 car, which later caused a terminal driveline problem, denied the Italian brand the chance to make life “more difficult” for the No. 7 Toyota.

“We did everything perfect with car No. 83,” he said. “We changed the strategy and it paid off. But the bitter taste comes from the fact we lost one car from a stupid contact.

“With three cars [running] at the end, probably we could have maximized the result a bit more. It’s difficult to say but the results could have been different.”