Ferrari Was “Short on Everything” Against Toyota

Ferrari’s head of endurance race cars Ferdinando Cannizzo says the Italian marque was “short on everything” in its fight against rival Hypercar manufacturers Toyota and Porsche in last weekend’s 6 Hours of Sao Paulo.

The two factory AF Corse-run 499Ps finished the fifth round of the FIA World Endurance Championship in fifth and sixth positions, with the No. 51 car leading home the sister No. 50 machine.

Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado and Antonio Giovinazzi ended up 1 minute and 27 seconds down on the winning Toyota GR010 Hybrid, while the car shared by Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen was lapped.

Looking back on the race, Cannizzo admitted that the Prancing Horse had been expecting a difficult contest based on its pre-race simulations.

He said the fact the No. 7 Toyota, which lost over two minutes due to a fuel issue early on, was able to catch up and pass the No. 51 Ferrari in the closing stages said everything about the gulf in pace between the two cars.

“It’s what we were expecting from the very beginning,” said Cannizzo. “Our analysis before the race was very clear.

“We tried to do our best to optimize the package we had, but we were limited because we are short on everything. It’s like when you pull a cover and it’s short on the other side. There was not much to do to optimize the race.

“I think we were faster than what we simulated. But we are talking about one, two tenths [per lap]. When you have a gap that is 1.5 seconds or on average eight tenths, there is something else. 

“With Porsche, at least we were able to fight. They were definitely faster than us but somehow we were able to fight with them.

“The summary of the day can be made from the overtake that the [No. 7] Toyota made on car No. 51. Three minutes behind, and overtook us in a couple of stints, being one second per lap faster.

“This is the situation and this is something to think about. We hope we have the opportunity to be competitive again.”

While Toyota appeared to have an advantage on tire wear at Interlagos, Cannizzo said that the GR010 Hybrid’s inherent pace advantage meant there was no way to make up for the deficit using strategy.

“The problem is when a car has such a huge advantage, it’s easy to manage whichever compound,” he said. “The rest of the competition was trying to understand the best.

“I’m not saying we did the right choice, but they were out of range. The compound was not the problem.”

Both factory Ferraris enjoyed mostly smooth runs, except when the No. 51 car lost time when it picked up a drive-through penalty for a Full Course Yellow infraction early in the race.

Calado described the penalty as “unfortunate” but felt it didn’t have a significant bearing on the final result.

“We massively lacked pace compared to Toyota and Porsche,” said Calado. “We knew it would be a difficult circuit for us but I didn’t expect such a big gap to be honest. It was one lap.

“Toyota was on another planet this weekend. Other than the drive-through, which cost us 22 seconds, that was the maximum.”

Cannizzo also voiced his surprise at Toyota’s vastly improved performance compared to the early rounds of the WEC season, when it often struggled to match Ferrari and Porsche on pure performance.

“What is clear for me is that at the start of the season the performance of our competitors, especially Toyota, was very strange because it was slower than last year on the same tracks, even in better conditions,” he said.

“This year they were struggling a lot before Le Mans in every race. And now they suddenly popped up and that is very frustrating for us.”

John Dagys contributed to this report