Ferrari Targeted “Every Area” for 499P Reliability Tweaks

Ferrari carried out “several modifications” on its 499P LMH car to prepare it for its third FIA World Endurance Championship campaign, with the brand’s head of endurance race cars detailing that reliability improvements were a key area of focus.

The Prancing Horse revealed its 2025 challenger on Friday, featuring an updated livery that notably features a darker red base color compared to the previous two years.

As previously reported by Sportscar365, Ferrari decided against the use of new Evo jokers to the 499P prior to the start of the new season, but Ferdinando Cannizzo told reporters gathered at the Fiorano circuit that tweaks have been done to the car.

“[Although] you didn’t see any difference in the bodywork because we didn’t play any joker, we spent half of the season last year and the winter time to improve the car mainly on the reliability side,” said Cannizzo.

“There are several modifications within the car that you can not see from outside but under the skin there are a lot of modifications done.”

Cannizzo outlined that roughly half of the changes made to the car are on the reliability front, with regulations updates and performance-focused improvements making up the other 50 percent of the work done.

“Generally, reliability is behind every single detail,” said Cannizzo. “So we took the time to look at everything from the looms, electrical stuff, structural stuff.

“Everything that we prove race after race that we need to take care a bit more. Because yes, we finished the race but nevertheless at the end of each race we found something that we could improve, even in our last endurance test we did.

“We collected all this information and we put forward but basically every area has been impacted by modification, every area of the car. I cannot say there is one specific [part], but it’s all around every area.

“Let’s say minor or significant modification in terms of reliability in every area, like suspension, electrical stuff, structural improvements, all the areas that can give us a car which is much more robust, much more confident to drive at the edge.”

According to Cannizzo, Ferrari was incentivized to push for reliability improvements on the 499P after the car suffered issues that led to retirement three times across the course of the season last year.

“We were disappointed [about] the DNFs,” he said. “[They] were more related to some functionalities or some production process rather than real reliability, but nevertheless it’s something that we would like to avoid.

“We were focusing a lot trying to understand how we could avoid this year. So we were not frustrated because the first year was really brilliant.

“Last year unfortunately we had three DNFs, one in Le Mans, one in COTA and Fuji.

“But for example we are one of the three manufacturers that finished all the races with one car, together with Porsche and Toyota.

“They also had only one car finish. We had car No. 50 finish all the races without any issue. They also had one of their cars, because every manufacturer last year had problems.

“So maybe because we are pushing a bit more on the edge, we experience the car more. I don’t know.

“But [it’s] something that we look very deeply in understanding how we could avoid this year and that’s the reason why I was mentioning there are a lot of things that we did on the car in terms of reliability.”

Cannizzo also ruled out that Ferrari would be implementing additional Evo jokers, pointing to the change made that will outlaw in-season jokers, which he described as a “guideline” that brands will have to abide by.

Cannizzo: Increased Testing Restrictions “Big Issue” for Ferrari

As part of tweaks to WEC sporting regulations, Hypercar teams and manufacturers will have to reckon with a further reduction in testing opportunities as allocations have been scaled back.

This season, manufacturers will be permitted eight days of testing outside of tire tests or sanctioned testing such as the WEC Prologue or 24 Hours of Le Mans test day.

Two of those permitted days, meanwhile, will be allocated towards endurance tests.

“This is a big issue for us because we are constrained in the flexibility for validating our changes on track,” said Cannizzo.

“So get mileage to be sure that the reliability is there on any changes. And so it’s pushing us to find other paths for validating our changes.

“We are pushing a lot more on simulation, we are pushing a lot more on bench testing, in order that we are pre-validating every modification before arriving [at] on-track testing.

“And we are changing a bit also our strategy to cope with this regulation. Of course, it’s a big constraint and I’m not a fan of this to be honest.

“I’m not saying that you need to spend a lot of money but at the same time I think to validate a solution, nevertheless you need to push a lot so we need to find alternatives which are costly sometimes.

“What we are doing is, as long as one day is counted as one day, we are extending the track time for that day.

“Instead of [doing] the test from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., we test from 8 a.m. to midnight.

“We try to exploit most of the time we have available to increase the track time and the mileage as much as possible within the limitation.”