Ferrari's development plan for WEC title-winning Hypercar
by Rachit Thukral · AutosportNo evo updates, but Ferrari’s all-conquering 499P won’t remain completely unchanged in 2026
Ferrari will head into the 2026 World Endurance Championship with small updates to its title-winning 499P Le Mans Hypercar.
Although the Italian manufacturer has opted against using any additional evo jokers from the five available to it during the initial five-year lifecycle of the car, it is making minor revisions to the aerodynamics of its LMH prototype as it bids for a fourth consecutive win at the Le Mans 24 Hours.
The decision to update the aero of the 499P follows the WEC’s switch from Sauber to the Windshear wind tunnel in North Carolina, requiring all manufacturers to re-homologate their cars in the US. A more substantial upgrade to the car will follow in 2027, when the 499P enters its fifth season in competition.
"We tried to take advantage of this opportunity [of a new wind tunnel] to tweak a few things, but we preferred to do so without making any major changes, so without playing any jokers, even though they were available under the regulations,” Ferrari's head of endurance Ferdinando Cannizzo said at an event in Maranello.
“We wanted to give continuity to the work we are doing and come up with much more significant changes in the following season [2027], in which we will make integrated changes, i.e. we will try to see something that is designed from a 360-degree perspective and not just to optimise a single area, in this case only aerodynamics.”
The aero tweaks Ferrari has planned for 2026 will help it stave off rising competition in Hypercar, when Genesis enters the championship with the GMR-001 and several incumbents, including Cadillac, BMW, Alpine and Toyota, introduce significantly overhauled cars.
The aero adjustments will coincide with the introduction of Michelin’s new slick tyre made from 50% sustainable materials.
Focus on reliability
Ferrari stressed that a key goal for 2026 is to improve the reliability of the 499P after a complicated Le Mans appearance in which both its factory-entered cars were hit by technical issues.
“If there is a weak point, it is that one aspect we must not give up on - reliability. I think it is one of the important areas for improvement to focus on, also because the faster we go, the more we can exploit the car and the more reliability issues come to the fore, because we are putting more and more stress on the systems,” Cannizzo said.
“When we encounter reliability issues, we know that we are really at the limit, so we have to think ahead and build in very high safety margins every time we design the car. So I think this is the area for improvement - I wouldn't call it a weakness, but it is definitely an important area for improvement.”
Cannizzo pointed to Toyota’s impressive recovery in 2025 as proof that Ferrari needs to raise its game on the reliability front next season.
“This season has demonstrated one fundamental thing: Toyota, which started with some difficulties but finished all the races, then finished second in the championship, simply by scoring a one-two in the last race [Bahrain],” he said.
“They suffered a lot, but they still finished in second place, and this is the result of the consistency of the results they managed to achieve, so we have to do the same thing.
“We want to talk about more comprehensive improvements, looking also at the team, attention to detail and how we perform in races is one of the aspects that always needs to be taken care of, because this year we lost several seconds due to errors or penalties, and this is something that, given the constantly increasing level of overall competitiveness, we cannot afford.”
Development in the Hypercar class is heavily restricted, with teams only allowed a limited number of upgrades to their cars. Further, each manufacturer is required to seek permission from the rulemakers the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest to use an evo joker on their car.
Since its Hypercar debut, the only time Ferrari deployed an evo joker was after Le Mans 2024, when it updated the brake systems on the 499P. But while Ferrari has largely refrained from making major changes to its prototype, Cannizzo revealed that it has constantly been refining the car in multiple areas for overall improvement.
“The car still has many hidden areas that need to be explored with a lot of patience," he explained. "When I say hidden areas, I'm referring to the wide range of adjustments we have in the car, because sometimes we don't realise what we can do, simply by changing the shock absorbers rather than the suspension from soft to hard, combining shock absorbers with less or more damping, with ground clearance, with aerodynamic characteristics, with tyre temperature or with the choice of the right compound.
“There are so many variables that knowing how to combine them in the right way for each circuit is not easy. This is the work that has kept us busy over the years, with a completely new car that we too have learned to know in all its secrets, race after race.
“It is clear that it is difficult to achieve significant improvements on a car where little can be changed, but we have seen that with this approach we have managed to greatly increase the performance of this car this season without changing anything in terms of components, but in reality, we have changed a lot in how we have presented the car in each race.”
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- The Autosport.com Team