For sportscar enthusiasts, seeing Ferrari’s 499P in the metal is a milestone moment as it finally returns to Le Mans, writes Gary Watkins
Sometimes I feel I’ve spent my whole professional career waiting. It seems to be an occupational hazard for the sportscar journalist. I waited nearly 20 years for the return of world championship sportscar racing and 15 for Porsche to try to add to its tally of overall Le Mans 24 Hours wins. But the wait for Ferrari to come back to the top of the sportscar tree was so long that I don’t even count it.
More to the point, I wasn’t even born when the Prancing Horse claimed the most recent of its nine overall victories at the French enduro in 1965. So by the time I pitched up as a fresh-faced young journo in the sportscar paddock in 1990, Ferrari’s exploits at the front of the Le Mans grid were pretty much a distant memory. Or in my case, not a memory at all.
It was designed as a customer car for IMSA’s World Sports Car class that had come on stream the previous year, and there was initially opposition from the factory to those customers intent on taking the car to Le Mans. Anyone who heard the scream of that four-litre V12 in France will no doubt have rejoiced that it relented.Photo by: Rainer W.
The idea that Ferrari would be back at the pinnacle of sportscar racing after a 50-year hiatus never really sunk in, even when we saw the first photos of the car testing at Fiorano back in the summer. But finally it’s real for me
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