Ferrari Reveals Plans for Major 499P Overhaul in 2027

Ferrari has revealed it will carry out a major update of its 499P Hypercar for the 2027 FIA World Endurance Championship season, involving the use of three Evo jokers.

The Italian marque’s head of endurance race cars Ferdinando Cannizzo made the revelation ahead of the start of official practice for this week’s 24 Hours of Le Mans as it prepares to bid for a fourth straight victory in the WEC blue riband event.

In reference to the fact many of Ferrari’s Hypercar rivals elected to play jokers for 2026, Cannizzo told assembled reporters at Le Mans on Wednesday that plans are well advanced for the 499P to undergo the biggest overhaul since its 2023 debut.

“We knew this year we had new tires, and so there are many variables,” he said. “We wanted to focus on the integration of the car; everything must be working in sync.

“Instead of playing our Evo jokers one at a time, we want to use them together to create a completely new car.”

However, when asked to confirm whether a “completely new car” meant a new homologation, Cannizzo clarified that Ferrari has elected to “put together different jokers” to create what amounts to a major overhaul of the car.

He added: “Every component of the car should be integrated. If we change just the rear suspension, it has an impact on other areas.

“We decided to tackle different areas in an integrated way, as we did when we designed the car originally. Since then we have understood our car better, and we know our weaknesses. We identified these not individually but collectively.

“It will not be a completely a new car, we will use the same homologation as today.”

Until now, Ferrari has used only one of the five Evo jokers available to it through the 2027 season under the Hypercar regulations, which the form of an update to the 499P’s brake cooling ducts and was introduced for the 2024 6 Hours of Sao Paulo.

Even with that allocation of four jokers set to expire next year, albeit with two further upgrades allowed for the 2028 and ’29 seasons, Cannizzo made it clear that Ferrari only plans to use three jokers instead of all four theoretically available to it.

Asked by Sportscar365 if it planned to use all four remaining jokers, Cannizzo jokingly replied: “We will use more than two, but less than four!”