Pier Guidi: “Difficult to Repeat” Ferrari’s 2023 Results

Ferrari driver Alessandro Pier Guidi admits that it will be “difficult to repeat” the results the Italian marque achieved in the FIA World Endurance Championship last year in the 499P’s sophomore season.

Ending a 50-year factory absence from top-level sports car racing, Ferrari emerged as Toyota’s strongest challenger in last year’s WEC and was the only other manufacturer to win a race all season, doing so in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The AF Corse-run operation backed that success up with five other visits to the podium over the year, with the Fuji round marking the only time that neither the No. 50 nor the No. 51 Ferrari crews managed to finish inside the top three.

Pier Guidi forms part of an unchanged Ferrari lineup for 2024, again sharing the No. 51 car with James Calado and Antonio Giovinazzi (pictured top in new livery).

Looking ahead to the 499P’s second season, Pier Guidi conceded that Ferrari will be feeling the weight of expectations even more as it takes on an expanded Hypercar field that includes new arrivals BMW, Alpine, Lamborghini and Isotta Fraschini.

“I feel more confident now than I did at the beginning of last year,” the Italian driver told Sportscar365. “The car was so new and the period of development was so short.

“But looking at the results [from 2023], I’m not sure! We were immediately competitive, very quick, we won just our fourth race at Le Mans… it will be difficult to repeat this. Just to get the same results again will be very tough. 

“Last year, nobody knew [what to expect]. People expected Ferrari to be competitive, but nobody knew how competitive we would be. Now the expectations are higher. 

“It’s difficult to win, and it’s even more difficult to repeat it. We won many things in GTs, but we knew that was tough, and it will be tougher this year.”

After winning at Le Mans, the No. 51 Ferrari crew endured a comparatively difficult end to the year, with Pier Guidi and his teammates only managing a best finish of fifth place across the final three rounds.

The 40-year-old hopes that the team’s greater familiarity with the 499P will allow it to perform more strongly at what were its less favourable tracks in 2023 this time around.

“There were some other tracks where we were not super competitive, so we are looking to improve on these tracks where we lacked performance,” said Pier Guidi. 

“When the car is homologated, it’s difficult to make a drastic improvement, but the knowledge with the 499P is super-important, especially because we didn’t have so much experience in prototypes before.

“We know our car much better, and also how to manage the competition in prototypes, so we can make a step forward. so I think we can make a step forward.”

On top of the factory Ferraris, AF Corse will be running a third 499P on a customer basis this year for Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye and Robert Shwartzman.

Pier Guidi accepts that any benefits from data sharing are likely to be cancelled out by the fact the No. 83 car will be another serious competitor for top results.

“In the end, if you want to win you have to beat everyone,” he said. “Of course it’s another lineup with the same potential as us. 

“Maybe we can share some data and speak with them, so there can be positive things. But in the end it doesn’t change so much for us.”