Why Ferrari is ending its 50-year top-flight sportscar exile

A bright new future for the top flight of sportscar racing. Massively reduced costs. Prototype machines that can be made to look like their road-going brethren. And a surplus of resources from its Formula 1 programme becoming available. The stars have aligned for Ferrari's long-awaited return to the pinnacle of sportscar racing as a factory.

Everything came together for the decision that preceded Wednesday's announcement of the Italian manufacturer's bid to start trying to add to its tally of nine outright victories at the Le Mans 24 Hours from 2023. It seems it is just a happy coincidence that its first factory assault with a prototype will happen half a century on from its last such campaign in 1973 with the 312PB three-litre Group 6 car.

This was an opportunity that was too good to turn down because sportscar racing really does seem set for another golden age. Ferrari is developing a Le Mans Hypercar, like Toyota and Peugeot, for the World Endurance Championship, while Porsche and Audi are taking the alternative route into what is simply - yet confusingly - called the Hypercar class by building LMP2-based LMDh prototypes.

Acura, too, will be represented in LMDh in the IMSA SportsCar Championship in North America from 2023 and it would be foolish to suggest its cars won't make it to Le Mans. Wayne Taylor Racing, which has joined the Honda brand for 2021, has already declared its intent to take on the big one in France.

So there were five major manufacturers, plus boutique marque Glickenhaus, confirmed before Ferrari hit the go button on its own project. It would be too strong to say there was an imperative for Ferrari to throw its hat in the ring, but there was a clear draw to enter a class that's surely going places.

The LMH category, and LMDh more so, has been conceived to drastically reduce the cost of competing at the pinnacle of sportscar racing. No longer, will a manufacturer have to come up with a nine-figure budget, as was the case in LMP1, to chase victory at Le Mans and in the rest of the WEC.

Antonello Coletta, boss of the Competizione GT department overseeing the prototype return, suggested a year ago that LMDh would allow to Ferrari to race at the front of the WEC field for little more than it spends in GTE Pro. LMH will require a bigger budget, but his comments give an insight into the thinking behind the latest decision.

Ferrari, of course, has been an ever-present force in the world of GT racing for the past quarter of a century and has graced the WEC grid in GTE Pro with the factory AF Corse operation since the rebirth of the series in 2012. Sportscar manufacturers need to go racing with the cars they sell, or something at least resembling them.

LMH offers that chance while going for the biggest prizes on offer. The rules have been framed to ensure the stylists and not just the aerodynamicists can have a say in how the car looks. Whether the new Toyota GR010 HYBRID looks more like an LMP1 machine than something you might see on the road - and opinion seems divided on that one - the opportunity is there.

It is probably no coincidence that the last time Ferrari was evaluating a step up to the top class of the WEC came in 2013, a time when cost restrictions were on the table for 2015

Ferrari has stressed the importance of being able to "share technical innovations and solutions with our road cars". It's the principal reason why it chose LMH over LMDh, that and the fact an LMDh needs to be based on a chassis provided by one of the four constructors licensed to build LMP2 machinery.

Ferrari has traditionally had a chauvinistic approach to racing car design and build. You get the impression it couldn't countenance a machine that in reality was an ORECA, a Ligier, a Dallara or a Multimatic, even if it did bear the Prancing Horse on the front and have one of its engines in the back.

It might seem slightly sordid to keep banging on about money and things at a time when sportscar racing has received arguably its biggest shot in the arm for years, but the belated arrival of a budget cap in F1 surely was a factor. Ferrari has dismissed the significance of the reduction in the costs of going racing in F1, pointing out that the LMH is a Competizione GT project and not one masterminded by the Scuderia Ferrari F1 team. "Not connected" is how a Ferrari spokesman described the F1 cost cap in relation to the prototype return.

Yet it is probably no coincidence that the last time Ferrari was evaluating a step up to the top class of the WEC came in 2013, a time when cost restrictions were on the table for 2015. Then Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo said in December 2013 that the company would build an LMP1 "sooner or later" and that its forthcoming F1 hybrid V6 would be the perfect powerplant for such a car.

The budget cap was quickly shouted down by the big teams, Ferrari among them. There was no more talk of LMP1 and the prospect of a new prototype rolling out of Maranello's famous iron gates remained just a dream.

Six years on, and F1 finally has a budget cap in place, $145 million for this season with a five million reduction for each of the following two campaigns. That's a significant reduction on the $175 million originally agreed back in 2019.

Ferrari was against the reduced figure and, back in April last year, F1 team principal Mattia Binotto declared that the marque might have "to look at further other options for deploying our racing DNA" in the face of a reduced budget requiring reduced manpower. Some interpreted that as a threat to quit F1, but it would be more correct to suggest that it offered another hint of a prototype return, something that had been on the table ever since Ferrari joined the discussions in the spring of 2018 to come up with a set of regulations to replace LMP1.

There's an irony if the freeing up of resources from the F1 team - that personnel and technical capacity, as well as money - really has been central to Ferrari's decision to make an all-out return to the prototype arena. Its long-standing participation in what can generically be called the world sportscar championship was axed for 1974 by that man Montezemolo.

In his new role as team manager, Montezemolo reckoned it was time to focus resources on F1 to re-establish Ferrari at the sharp end of the grand prix grid after a sustained period of underachievement capped by a disastrous 1973 season. His strategy did the trick: Niki Lauda won the marque's first drivers' title for 11 seasons in 1975 and then one followed every other year through to the end of the decade.

Now it has some resources going spare, Ferrari is building a long-delayed successor to the 312PB. (I'm not counting the 333SP of the 1990s here, because that was conceived as a customer car for the IMSA series, even if it did make it to Le Mans in the hands of privateers.) Of course, it's not as straightforward to say that Ferrari is shooting for overall Le Mans win number 10 just because there's a budget cap in F1. The decisions of major motor manufacturers are never that simple.

As explained earlier, there were a lot of strands to this one. But anyone who loves sportscar racing or Ferrari - I'm going to stretch that and say anyone who loves motor racing - should be thankful that everything fell into place for Ferrari to end what will end up as a 50-year exile.