Taming tires and temps key to home-ground heroics for Ferrari

Weather and tires — these are the topics du jour at Imola ahead of Round 2 of the FIA World Endurance Championship season on Sunday. The Hypercar teams are utilizing the free practice sessions at the Italian circuit to prepare their cars for a race set to be held in cool temperatures and, potentially, changeable conditions, similar to last year’s encounter.

For Ferrari, this year’s 6 Hours of Imola presents a huge opportunity. Riding high from its 1-2-3 finish in Qatar to kick off the year, the AF Corse team is highly motivated to finally score a win on home soil. It is also keen to put an end to the persistent chatter about its strategic error in the rain during the 2024 race that cost it a famous victory in front of the Tifosi.

The expectation, according to Mauro Barbieri, Ferrari’s endurance race cars performance simulation and regulation manager, is that the 499Ps will be fighting at the sharp end once again. And at this early point of the season, as Ferrari knows all too well, banking points that will be useful for the title battle later in the year is key.

The 499P has, of course, evolved since last year, with a Joker package of upgrades introduced post Le Mans to improve brake cooling. This, Barbieri says, should translate into gains at the Imola circuit, which is tough on the brakes and load on the right side.

“I think we have a good knowledge of the full package, including the changes we made. This change gives us a better configuration for here and Bahrain, so we should be in a better position with fewer brake temperature issues,” he explained. “But in terms of setup, we will be pretty similar though, because the evo doesn’t make any changes in that respect.”

As for the tires, management will be key, as it always is in the FIA WEC. But this year at Imola, a change has been made to Michelin’s selection, and this will have an impact.

In 2024, the medium and hard compounds were available, whereas this time the soft and medium specs have been chosen. The general consensus is that this is the better choice. The big question is, how useful will the softs be over a full stint and will they be effective when used on the right side of each car?

“We tested here a couple of years ago, and on that occasion, we had the soft and medium, so we do have a reference on this track,” Barbieri adds. “From our perspective, the soft is a better alternative to the hard — because of the peculiarity of this circuit, it makes the soft more drivable than the hard.

“Changeable weather means that with the soft we have a wider window and we expect the warmup on the soft to be quite faster than the medium, so even if later on it has higher degradation, the amount of time you gain on the out laps could be useful over two stints.”

Ferrari doesn’t expect an easy ride on Sunday, though. Hertz Team JOTA’s Cadillac V-Series.Rs for instance, looked strong out of the gate in FP1, and Toyota proved last year that the GR010 HYBRID matches up well with the circuit, particularly in transitional conditions.

“The main expectation is to show ourselves that we have improved from last year and are able to make better decisions,” Barbieri concludes. “Last year in terms of performance, we had good pace but had poor execution; we didn’t make the right calls at the right time.

“Hopefully, our work will lead to a better result than last year. It’s not guaranteed we will be as quick as we were last year compared to our competitors. But it’s extremely important to prove we grew up.

“We are in good shape with all three cars, and I can’t see any specific driver or crew under specific pressure to deliver results. It will be an interesting race, and qualifying will be important because the field is so close and overtaking is difficult, like Qatar.”