Ferrari’s BEST Race Car isn't in F1

Ferrari have had an incredible year of winning iconic races but none of them were in Formula 1 the 296 GT3 won the 24 hours of nurburg ring and set the distance record and the Ferrari 499 P won at laal yes I do remember Singapore but please stay with me but we're talking about this thing the incredible 1,000 horsepower four-wheel drive hybrid hyper car that won in its first year defeating the Giants of lont Toyota and Porsche they did all this through several incredible engineering decisions and one key difference from their Formula 1 team let me explain now we know that Ferrari's F1 team have recently been struggling with a car that is quick over one lap but doesn't have great race Pace they also haven't really been the sharpest of decision makers when it comes to race strategy we are checking we are checking okay we are checking we come back come back but the 99p the new Ferrari hypercard that was unveiled last year needed to nail those things they had one goal create a competitive hyper car that could win at Lal over 50 years since their last win in the top class so they had to create something that was reliable kinded on its tires and could be fast over 24 hours we're going to get into the incredible Engineering in this thing but quickly let me explain why Ferrari are here in the first place because whilst I've had GT cars running at lamon for years they haven't entered the top class of sports cars for a long time and it's a strange change of pace for them but it actually came about due to Formula 1 pre 2021 Ferrari was spending just over $400 million a year to develop their cars and run their F1 team but in 2021 the cost cap limited them to only spending $145 million so they had some cash left over at the same time W the World Endurance Championship was changing its very expensive lmp1 r regulations to do a similar thing make racing a bit cheaper so they could attract more competitors so Ferrari saw this as an opportunity firstly to try and go and win in another class of racing secondly to get more exposure from that and thirdly and most interestingly they could experiment with more Motorsport technology that could help the F1 team but outside of the cost cap and that is a very clever strategy so once Ferrari decided to enter the LOL hyper class or lmh they had to design a race car from scratch the first piece of the puzzle was the monoco the carbon tub that everything else is built around where competitors like Porsche had bought in a monoco Ferrari designed their own from scratch focusing on making it as Slimline as possible for greater Freedom with aerodynamics then they paired it with their V6 engine from the 296 Road car and this was an interesting decision the engine was a good match for the car a 3 l twin turbo V6 from the 29 6 GTB and GTS road cars and what's great about this engine it's already designed to work with a hybrid motor like the 296 Road car it's already producing more than enough power and it's 120° V angle this is ideal for a couple of reasons a nice wide V angle means that the engine is wider but it's also flatter so the center of gravity is lower in the car it also helps with packaging Ferrari actually put the turbos inside the V which is known as a hot V with a 6 cylinder engine 120° angle allows for a perfectly even firing order but why does that matter well basically a fourstroke engine creates power over two full revolutions so 720° of crank rotation for a six-cylinder engine you divide that by six leaving you with 120° an even firing order sounds smoother minimizes vibrations and provides more even pulses of exhaust gases to the turbochargers now you might be wondering about the power output from this engine you might be thinking that Ferrari created a high strung engine that runs at 800 900 or 1,000 horsepower but the hypercar class has a few weird but great rules and there'll be a few of those rules throughout this video rules that don't make sense on the surface but do create better racing overall so in the hypercar class the internal combustion engine is limited to 500 KW that's 670 horsepower so that's what the engine producers so Ferrari have some Headroom which allows them to focus on reliability but there was one main problem for Ferrari this engine wasn't made to be a stressed member of the car and this is where the engine forms part of the loadbearing chassis because in the road car there is a chassis frame holding the engine so Ferrari had to make a number of changes to the engine casing to ensure it could deal with the loads of racing as well as making sure it could do that for 24 hours however they aimed to keep as much of the internals the same helping develop the road car engine and supporting the development for the Formula 1 V6 as well then there's the hybrid system this is made up of a 900v battery the same core system in the F1 car as well as the mguk motor powering the front wheels through a differential this thing makes 200 Kow the equivalent of around 270 horsepower but it can do this in deployment and regeneration that's the whne you can hear under braking the mgu weing away and charging the battery this makes the combined power output of the car over 9900 horsepower except there's another weird but good rule the cars are limited to a combined 700 horsepower limit at any one time so the motor is used to fill in for when the engine isn't creating Peak power it's an extremely complex system that has to decide when to use the Hybrid Power and another thing the motor Powers the front wheels but the hypercars are not allowed to deploy this power below 190 km an hour or 120 mph and this is for One Good Reason when the FAA was trying to attract more hypercar entrance not everyone wanted to develop a full hypercar so they allowed the lmdh Lemont Daytona hybrid cars to enter from the us-based impa series this is all very complicated these are more standardized cars that run with a hybrid system on the rear wheels So to avoid giving the hyper cars a massive Advantage they all state that the four-wheel drive cars and the two wheel drive cars can only use their hybrid deployment over a Sur speed to have a fairer overall class of racing it's complicated and it's weird but having runaway winners is boring so I actually really like this idea and it's the same thing with the maximum power it allows all of the manufacturers to use engines that are applicable to their road cars meaning there is a great variety of engines Cadillac BMW Lamborghini and glicken house have V8s Ferrari perso and Toyota have turbo v6s but this rule does bring in one weird dynamic for the drivers through most of the corners they are driving essentially a rear whe drive car that behaves like any other race car but some of the corners at lall have a minimum Corner speed of more than 190 km per hour places like the Porsche curves and Dunlop so the drivers need to factor in the additional under steer from the four-wheel drive deployment through those specific corners and that must be really challenging now Ferrari hasn't won in the top class utland Mall since 1965 with the incredible Ferrari 250 LM so the aerodynamic design of the 499 p and this is where Ferrari went with a different design to their competitors in context here is the Toyota perso glicken house Porsche and Cadillac all of Ferrari's main Rivals have gone for a smooth sleek and low drag looking cars Ferrari on the other hand have an angular aggressive looking car and I think it looks incredible against a bunch of already greatl looking cars in the hypercar class but just look at this notice all of the vert vertical strikes on the car these are ideas brought across from Formula 1 and there's a clever plan behind these so let me explain another weird but good rule from the FIA these hypercars don't have geometric limits on their Splitters wings or Bodywork like you would have in Formula 1 instead they have limits on aerodynamic efficiency and it's super clever essentially you can't have too much downforce or too little or drag the FAA measured the cars in the window before the event and if your arrow is too good you have to change the car and the best bit is that these targets are actually pretty easy to hit so for example PUO don't even have a rear wing because they don't need one to be able to hit the downforce target so Ferrari saw this and we think they noticed something these downforce numbers are measured in a straight line but you actually want the downforce in the corners so these vertical strikes could be to maximize cornering downforce whilst meeting the straight line regulations this obviously isn't confirmed but it could be a clever idea if we're right so how has this car been getting on well for its first W season pretty good it got a third in its first event behind the two Toyotas and a couple of podiums leading up to lall but the main thing to know here is that Toyota are a full season ahead of them in terms of development so are glicken house and to an extent perso Ferrari turned up to Lal as an underdog but this helped them lastly in our list of weird but good rules is Bop balance of performance it's something they have in sports car racing to balance out the cars it opens up a wider breadth of cars into the sport take a look at this the BMW M8 GTE was racing against the 4D GT two very different looking cars but made even by Bop anyway for Lal the Bop landed favorably for Ferrari only getting 24 kg of extra weight where Toyota got handed 36 kgrs after winning the first three rounds of the wet championship so these things were set for Lal the underdog was ready to go Ferrari LED all of the practice sessions and fuo took pole in the Ferrari with P guidi in second the Ferrari was quickest on the long Straits hitting 343 km down the straight however the entire hypercar field was covered by less than a second and on a long circuit like L mall that is not a lot now before I get into the race I must mention one thing I spoke about earlier there's one big difference between Ferrari's F1 team and Ferrari's sports car team in the sports car program the car is developed with Ferrari the race team is run by AF corser a highly experienced well oiled machine of a race team who also ran the Ferrari GTE team before this and I mention this because of the strategy at the start of the race the Ferrari LED from pole but within the first lap the rain started to come down but only lightly after the second lap both Toyotas managed to overtake the Ferrari for the lead this was down to the Toyota starting on the soft tire where the Ferraris started on the medium in the Rain the soft was by far the better tire and this was starting to look like a Ferrari strategy clanger but over the first two stints the medium Tire became the best tire as the TRU dried out and the soft tire wore out quickly the Ferraris came back at the Toyotas the strategy pit stops and general running from the AF corser team was Flawless after the third stin James kardo a super experienced GT driver hopped out the car and insteed Antonio giovany and we know this guy as an X Formula 1 driver but this season he's been incredible in the hypercar class he tore through the field after the pit stop and even handled a torrential downpour that saw many cars flying off the circuit the Ferrari overall had the pace on the Toyotas persos and Porsches but the main difference was the reliability experiencing only one small issue throughout the race where they had to run a power cycle in the pit stop but compared to their competitors this wasn't really much the 51 car of colard gianatti and Pierre guidy run the race taking home the top class win for Ferrari the first time at Lao in over 55 years this car was incredible for its first time out at La Mall the driving the strategy the tire wear the pace and the reliability were all pretty much Flawless surprising for a Ferrari race car if you're an F1 fan check out this video on the incredible diesel Leonard just here and I'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Driver61

Views: 377,547

Keywords: Formula 1, Driving, Coaching, Motorsport, Engineering, F1, Racing, Incredible Motorsport, Driver61, Scott Mansell, Callum McIntyre, Le Mans, WEC, World Endurance Championship, FIA WEC, Ferrari SF23, Ferrari 499P, Ferrari 296 GT3, Toyota, Porsche

Id: 7zeerWYU-60

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023