How rain and strategy spelled disaster for Ferrari in WEC Imola 6 Hours

Toyota triumphs in a World Endurance Championship race. Nothing unusual in that, of course. Yet the Japanese manufacturer didn’t so much win the Imola 6 Hours as Ferrari lost it. The home marque was in the ascendency up the road from its factory last Sunday, only to throw it away. When rain arrived, it got its strategy spectacularly wrong and its sparring partner nailed it spot-on as Mike Conway, Nyck de Vries and Kamui Kobayashi took an against-the-odds victory.  

Deep into the fourth hour, Ferrari was sitting pretty in 1-2 at the top of the leaderboard, James Calado in the #51 Ferrari 499P Le Mans Hypercar ahead of Miguel Molina in the #50 sister factory car. Just after the clock hit four hours, the two factory cars and the satellite customer entry also run by AF Corse were in the pits having wet-weather tyres bolted on.

The problem was that the rest of the Hypercar field had long since taken grooved rubber, the majority four laps earlier. Suddenly the trio of 499Ps were down in sixth, seventh and eighth, Calado in the best-placed of them, a minute and a half down on race leader Kobayashi’s Toyota GR010 HYBRID LMH. The chance of victory for Ferrari in its backyard was gone. 

It was a disastrous episode for Ferrari in front of a monster crowd at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari – the three-day attendance was put at more than 73,000. It should have won this race easily, probably with a 1-2 result, perhaps even repeating the 1-2-3 of qualifying with the yellow independent car following, or in among the two red factory entries.  

Antonio Fuoco, teamed with Molina and Nicklas Nielsen in #50, had been six-tenths up on best-of-the-rest Kevin Estre in the Qatar-winning Porsche 963 LMDh during Hyperpole qualifying. Over the dry portion of the race, it kept a margin of superiority around the 3.05-mile track. Ferrari maintained its top-three block to the first round of stops, Nielsen leading Antonio Giovinazzi (in the #51 car shared with Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi) and Robert Kubica in the customer car that Robert Shwartzman had put second on the grid.

The gap from first to fourth – the Porsche Penske Motorsport entry with Laurens Vanthoor at the wheel – was barely five seconds early on before the Ferrari superiority was extended over the second stint. The 499P looked after its tyres better than its rivals at Imola, so much so that all three were able to open proceedings with a triple stint on the same set of medium Michelin rubber, though Nielsen got a new left-rear at the first pitstop when falling pressure was detected. 

But it all went wrong with the rain that arrived just before the second safety car of the race and intensified straight after it. Ferrari stopped too late with all three cars. It admitted that it misinterpreted the severity and persistence of the rain that soaked the track down at Rivazza, but left Tamburello initially bone dry.

Rain caused Ferrari to slip up

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

This error was compounded by a missed opportunity to split its strategies, and AF was in a better position to do so given the three cars under its umbrella. Ferrari held its hands up to both mistakes.  

“We misjudged the situation; this is clear,” said Giuliano Salvi, Ferrari’s sportscar race and testing manager, who revealed that the team had been expecting the rain earlier. “Sometimes you look at the radar and you think it should rain and it doesn’t, and you stop relying on the signal.” 

Salvi added that the message from the drivers was that they could handle the conditions on slicks. It became apparent that they could not when their rivals, Kobayashi in the race-leading Toyota included, started lapping upwards of 10s per lap faster after switching to the one spec of Michelin wet available. Ferrari conceded, too, that it should have played the percentages by splitting its strategies.

“We misjudged the situation; this is clear” Giuliano Salvi

Salvi revealed that it was actually in the plan. “We need to understand why this way to split didn’t go through,” he said. “At the moment there has not been the time to see and understand [what happened], but we need to revise our chain of communication, because we missed certain scenarios.” 

Salvi was happy to admit that Sunday was “a shitty day” for Ferrari, but stressed that there were positives to take away from Imola, not least that the car was competitive in a way it wasn’t first time out in the WEC this season in the Qatar 1812Km in March. There was a helping hand from the Balance of Performance last weekend, but he explained that there had been some good work post-Qatar: “For sure we developed the car in a proper way – the car was behaving very well.”

It should be pointed out, as well, that the characteristics of Imola didn’t make it natural 499P territory – unlike the Circuit de la Sarthe at Le Mans, scene of the car’s only victory last year. 

Ferrari wasn’t actually leading the race when the rain came. Giovinazzi had handed over to Calado under green-flag conditions, while the rest of the field gained time stopping during the virtual safety car that immediately followed and then led into the second safety car of the race.

Ferrari pitted just before a FCY and safety car period, bleeding time to their rivals

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Nielsen, meanwhile, had been jumped by an opportunistic de Vries straight after a Full Course Yellow, the third of seven over the incident-packed six hours. The Toyota driver simply reacted quicker when the race went green. The AF customer car, driven by the two Roberts and Yifei Ye, was down in seventh before the pivotal stages of the race. The reason was that Kubica landed an early drive-through penalty for exceeding the 80km/h (50mph) FCY speed limit.  

Kobayashi led by six seconds on the wet circuit from Estre after the trio of Ferraris made their belated stops for grooved rubber. The Japanese driver had a clear edge when the conditions were at their wettest. He drew the #7 Toyota away from the Porsche, stretching the lead to as much as 20s.

The Toyota stopped for slicks before the Porsche – Kobayashi didn’t have a choice, the car was close to exhausting its energy allocation for the stint – and Estre’s two extra laps on wets allowed him to close to within eight seconds.  

Estre edged towards the Toyota, but his charge could be described as a phantom one. Race control informed the team early in the final hour that the Porsche had been given a five-second penalty for overtaking during the hour-four safety car.

It meant that the Frenchman would have had to pull that gap on the Toyota to seal the victory had he actually made it past. PPM, however, opted not to tell the driver. There was no point in blunting his motivation, it thought, in the expectation that those extra two laps completed by the Toyota after the last pitstop would come into play.  

“We were a bit confused about what was going to happen,” explained Estre, who was informed of the penalty with five laps to go after clipping the gravel at Variante Villeneuve and told that discretion was now to be the better part of valour.

“We were saving fuel and the Toyota stopped two laps before us. Either they were going to have to save a lot more fuel than us or they were going to have to pit again for a splash.” 

Toyota's fears of needing a late splash and dash proved unfounded

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The same thought process was going through the minds of the engineers in the Toyota camp. “We talked about whether we would need a splash at the end,” related Kobayashi. “The Porsche was catching up fast. I just needed to survive.” 

Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury was effusive in his praise of Kobayashi after the race. “When we started the final stint we were scratching our heads a bit, wondering how we were going to manage it,” explained Floury.

“Kamui did a fantastic job saving energy while staying in front. We did the job today. The team did the perfect execution and Kamui was brilliant at the end.” 

“We talked about whether we would need a splash at the end. The Porsche was catching up fast. I just needed to survive" Kamui Kobayashi

Porsche was far from despondent to miss out on the victory. It had low expectations coming into Imola, believing it would be its worst race of the season for the 963: the car didn’t like having its ride height picked up for the bumps and kerb-bashing that is key to a good lap time.

“We would have taken this result before the weekend,” said Estre. “When we came here a month and a half ago for testing we knew it was going to be a hard one, and it became even harder with the [BoP] changes after Qatar. Our tyre degradation was higher than the Ferrari and a bit higher than the Toyota. In a dry race, we could have been P4 or P5.” 

Kobayashi took the chequered flag almost exactly two seconds ahead of the Porsche, which became 7.1s once the penalty had been applied. The second PPM Porsche shared by Matt Campbell, Frederic Makowiecki and Michael Christensen ended up third, a further 18s  
in arrears.

Porsche, unlike Ferrari, did opt for a two-pronged strategy when the rain came and Campbell was the loser there, staying out for two more laps than the sister car.  

Fourth place was as good as it got for Ferrari, Fuoco’s late charge on slicks snatching the position from Brendon Hartley in the second Toyota at Tamburello on the final lap. The Kiwi had stopped a lap before Kobayashi, so had an even tougher job eking out his energy.

Troubles saving energy cost the reigning champions

Photo by: Emanuele Clivati | AG Photo

It was another low-key weekend for reigning WEC champions Hartley, Sebastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa on the way to fifth. Hartley spun in qualifying, Buemi got bottled up behind Rene Rast in the best of the WRT BMW M Hybrid V8s in the early stages, and there were a couple of slow pitstops.  

The BMW that Rast shared with Robin Frijns and Sheldon van der Linde ended up an encouraging sixth, the car’s pace and position representing a big step forward on Qatar. Van der Linde might have been within sniffing distance of the two cars ahead of him at the end, rather than a lap down, but for a double whammy of a botched final pitstop.

Van der Linde locked up the rear as he headed for his pit stall, and the resulting manoeuvres to get the car into position resulted in a drive-through penalty.  

The second Ferrari came home seventh after making an extra pitstop: Pier Guidi stayed on wets when taking over from Calado with more than an hour to go, and then had to come in with 40 minutes left to change to slicks. He finished one place up on the ‘indie’ Ferrari, which struggled on the damp surface on slicks in the closing stages.  

Peugeot notched up some points on the debut of its new 9X8 2024 LMH with Nico Muller, Mikkel Jensen and Jean-Eric Vergne, while Cadillac rescued a point from the weekend with its solo Ganassi-run V-Series.R driven by Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber.

The third quickest package in Qatar fell down the pecking order at Imola, though it might have finished deeper into the points but for rear-wing damage sustained in a first-lap accident at Tamburello and then a puncture resulting from debris.  

Isotta Fraschini driver Jean-Karl Vernay triggered the incident when he locked up as the field concertinaed ahead of him. He tagged Matthieu Vaxiviere’s Alpine A424 LMDh, which bumped BMW’s Marco Wittmann and Peugeot driver Paul di Resta. Wittmann was the big loser: 54 minutes went west to bodywork and suspension repairs. The car made the finish only to be disqualified for not entering parc ferme under its own power. 

11th and 13th were not the results Jota had hoped for

Photo by: Paolo Belletti

The Jota Porsche team didn’t have a good day at the office, it's two 963s coming home 11th and 13th at the end of a weekend during which they failed to get close to the factory cars.

Phil Hanson, Oliver Rasmussen and Jenson Button might have been in the points had not the windscreen wiper failed on the last-named, while Callum Ilott went off twice in the sister car he shared with Will Stevens and Norman Nato. The team suspected that the offs weren’t entirely his fault and were investigating a possible technical problem post-race.  

Lamborghini expressed satisfaction with 12th position after another clean race for its solo SC63. Ditto Alpine, which got both its A424s to the chequered flag in 13th and 15th positions, which became 15th and 17th after both cars were penalised because Jules Gounon and Nicolas Lapierre failed to achieve the minimum drive time.  

“I don’t think we should get overexcited because it was a race decided on a tyre call” David Floury

Toyota was certainly satisfied with the result, if not its performance in comparison to the Ferrari. Floury was under no illusions, however, that the champion team for the first three seasons of the Hypercar class is fully back in the mix.

“I don’t think we should get overexcited because it was a race decided on a tyre call,” he said. “If you look at pure pace on fastest lap times, Ferrari is four-tenths faster than us. It is not something we are happy with.” 

9X8 = two points for revised Peugeot on debut

A couple of points for the heavily revised Peugeot 9X8 at Imola may not sound like the kind of result the French manufacturer was looking for on the car’s debut. Not after it missed out on second place with the original iteration of its Le Mans Hypercar at Qatar for the want of a few litres of fuel. But it reckoned that it had got the most out of the car on Sunday, at least the #93 entry shared by Nico Muller, Mikkel Jensen and Jean-Eric Vergne that chalked up a score with ninth position.  

“I think we maximised what we could do with the pace of the car,” said Peugeot Sport technical director Olivier Jansonnie. “On the positive side, we are quite happy with our strategy when the rain was coming and putting on the rain tyres at the right moment.” 

Peugeot "maximised" its weekend, scoring points with a revised 9X8

Photo by: Paolo Belletti

Peugeot knew it would be up against it at Imola with the Balance of Performance the new car had been given – 31kg up in weight and 10kW down in power on the old wingless Pug. “The BoP had to change, that was clear, but we were not expecting it to be that tough,” continued Jansonnie.  

He explained that he was surprised at the BoP for the new Peugeot, dubbed simply the 9X8 2024, while stressing that he wasn’t criticising the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest. Jansonnie pointed out that Peugeot Sport only knows the numbers for his car and that only the rulemakers have a global picture.  

Peugeot knows that it still has work to do dragging performance out of a car that has come through more than 12,000 miles of testing so far. They have been focused on reliability over the course of four endurance simulations aimed at preparing the car for the big one in June, the Le Mans 24 Hours. “We have a lot to learn with this car,” Jansonnie explained. “I am not saying we are starting all over again, but there is a lot to learn on the set-up.” 

Loic Duval, who came home 14th in #94 after it was delayed in the first-lap accident and then by a bodywork-damaging puncture, reckons there’s still some “digging into pure performance to be done”. The question is whether the heaviest car in the Hypercar field at Imola needs a little bit of help from the rulemakers as well. 

1-2-3 at the start for Ferrari, but no place on the podium for any of the three cars

Photo by: Paul Foster