Shwartzman Feels “Fully Ready” to Race Ferrari 499P After Test

Robert Shwartzman feels “fully ready” to race a Ferrari 499P in the FIA World Endurance Championship after steering the car to the fastest lap in last weekend’s rookie test.

The Ferrari Formula 1 reserve driver was pleased with his performance at Bahrain International Circuit after he posted a time of 1:48.559 to top the overall leaderboard.

Shwartzman made his sports car racing debut with AF Corse in this year’s Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS Endurance Cup season, winning the final race, but doesn’t feel the need to return after learning the fundamentals of sports car racing.

He acknowledged that one of his ambitions is to progress into a full-time WEC seat next year, although a program hasn’t been confirmed at this stage.

“My aim [next year] is to do something different,” Shwartzman told Sportscar365 during a roundtable interview in Bahrain.

“Even now in the test, I think I’ve shown enough that I’m fully ready for that car. I have zero doubt about it.

“I am generally very quick to adapt to anything, like when I did the IndyCar test I was straight on the moment. With FE also when we did the Berlin test, I was very good there. So for me, it doesn’t require much time. I’m a very quick learner and I’m proud of [it].

“I did a season in GT3 and got a feel for endurance and know more or less how things work.

“I don’t need another year; I don’t see anything that I will learn more than I have already now. My ambition and target is to obviously step up next year.”

A first season in the WEC for Shwartzman would depend on his schedule availability considering he will continue as Ferrari’s F1 test and reserve driver.

Ferrari recently stated that it would be ready to support a third Hypercar in the WEC, which is understood would need to be a customer effort per the championship’s rules.

“I don’t know about the third car, will they do it or will they not? If they do then I really hope they will consider me,” said Shwartzman.

“But I generally hope that, especially after this test, I have shown what I am [and] that I’m ready and that I am quick to learn anything. That they are going to be interested.

“I’m not saying that I’m leaving GT3 racing. I’m just saying that I want more. I don’t want to stop – we still need to speak and discuss – but we [will] see how much time I have.

“I’m also a reserve driver in F1 and it requires quite a bit of time. So we need to look at the calendar and if we’re going to squeeze anything in.”

Shwartzman got half a day in Ferrari’s LMH simulator to prepare for the Bahrain test.

He only did the rookie test on three hours of sleep after flying in from Sao Paulo where he was on F1 standby duties.

It has been a busy time for the 24-year-old, who was also at the Mexico City Grand Prix the previous weekend and did the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship pre-season test at Valencia just before that.

“Performance and feeling wise it was very good,” he said of the LMH session.

“It was 30 laps, but in this short amount of time I managed to straight away get along with the car. I think we’re quite good friends now.”

Despite only having a short amount of seat time, Ferrari gave Shwartzman different tire scenarios to try.

“The target was for me to get along with the car and see how quickly I can [adapt],” he said.

“The speed was very quick and they wanted just to show me different stages of grip this car can give.

“So the late race when you have completely killed tires, mid-stint, beginning of the race and quali, which was on new mediums.

“On all of the four runs we did, I had a taste of each [type of] running. All of them felt pretty good and quite manageable from my side.”