14 TECH INSIDER: FERRARI 499P Ferrari won the 2023 Le Mans 24 Hours, 50 years after it last competed for the overall honors, and in doing so ended Toyota’s winning run. PMW takes a look at the 499P Le Mans Hypercar that secured victory WORDS BY LAWRENCE BUTCHER F 50 years in the making 2023 | www.pmw-magazine.com errari caused something of a stir when it announced its return to the sharp end of sportscar racing, having not fielded a works prototype team since the 1973 312 PB. The 499P Le Mans Hypercar’s victory at its inaugural Le Mans 24 Hours was impressive to say the least, despite the controversy around last-minute balance of performance changes. According to Mauro Barbieri, Ferrari’s endurance race car performance simulation and regulation manager, the team did not rule out building an LMDh at the outset of the project, but a Hypercar was always the favored option. “If we found out that it had some opportunities, whether on the performance side or the procurement side, that is a road we would have taken. But for sure, Ferrari needs to have its own parts. So LMH was a way to develop some technology in-house. And I guess these were the main reasons why we went the LMH way. Because we designed this chassis, we could decide where to get the battery from, which MGU to use, and so on.” Based around a carbon tub built by Dallara, the 499P combines the experience of Ferrari’s long-standing Competizioni GT team with some of the engineering might its F1 operation brings to bear, particularly in hybrid system design and management and virtual car development. The development timeframe for the car was compressed, particularly the track testing element. “The on-track program has been quite squeezed in order to be able to join the [2023] championship in Sebring,” says Barbieri. As a result, considerable effort was put into the virtual development program. “We did quite a lot of activity while designing the car and while producing the parts with the driving simulator to test different possibilities, different solutions. I think we did quite some job on the virtual side.” The team had access to the DIL simulator used by the GT operation and also Ferrari’s older F1 simulator (replaced last year). By being able to work on setups in the sim, the six-month track test program could focus on reliability. Barbieri says, “In terms of setup optimization, we didn’t push that much. With the driver-in-the-loop simulator, we were trying to optimize the suspension, the aero maps that we were getting from the wind tunnel, and trying to give development direction for