Ferrari has expressed “frustration and a sense of helplessness” at its inability to challenge for a podium in Sunday’s Interlagos round of the World Endurance Championship.
The statement was made by Ferrari's head of sportscar racing Antonello Coletta after the Italian manufacturer’s pair of 499P Le Mans Hypercars finished only fifth and sixth in the Sao Paolo 6 Hours.
He claimed that it was “impossible to achieve a better result” without mentioning the Balance of Performance that was in place for the Brazilian round of the WEC.
Coletta’s comments and those of its technical boss, Ferdinando Cannizzo, suggest that Ferrari believes it was held back by the BoP, though they did not specifically mention it through fear of sanction from the race stewards.
Manufacturers, teams and drivers are prohibited from talking publicly about the BoP in the series' sporting regulations.
The Ferrari was the least powerful car on the grid last weekend at 503kW (674bhp) and, along with the race-winning Toyota GR010 HYBRID LMH, the heaviest at 1060kg.
The Toyota, however, was racing at 506kW (678bhp) maximum power and also had a 2.8% increase above 250km/h (155bhp) under the new power gain feature of the BoP introduced at Le Mans compared with 1.8% for Ferrari.
“With the maximum [highest] weight and the lowest power it is very difficult to find the right window to optimise the car,” said Cannizzo.
He also suggested that the lack of power made it difficult for the Ferraris to overtake on the tight and narrow 2.68-mile Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace.
“This means that sometimes when you are stuck in traffic you can lose a lot, especially on a short track like this with a lot of cars per kilometre,” explained Cannizzo.
He pointed out how easy it was for Kamui Kobayashi in the delayed #7 Toyota to overtake the #51 Ferrari with Alessandro Pier Guidi at the wheel for fourth place in the closing minutes of the race.
“The day can be described by the overtake the #7 Toyota made on #51,” he said.
“It came back from three minutes back in a few stints. That is the situation; that is what everyone has to think about.”
Cannizzo went on to say that he didn’t believe Ferrari and the factory AF Corse team could have done much more at Interlagos.
“We were happy about what we did: we were happy about the tyre strategy and except for the drive-through [for #51] we had no problems,” he said.
“The race was quite good and the drivers were quite happy, but very disappointed being unable to fight.”
Ferrari introduced its first evo joker upgrade on the 499P at Interlagos and Cannizzo said that it could potentially have found slightly more performance from its package.
“There are maybe a few tenths that can be extracted, [but] it is not what we were missing,” he noted.
“The big challenge ahead of us is to stay with our feet on the ground and try to digest this, and hope that in the coming races we are able to be competitive again.”
