Insight: Ferrari’s 499P is a Marriage of Past and Future

An expanded look at the Italian manufacturer's long-awaited factory return into top-level sports car racing...

The launch of the Ferrari 499P was a historic occasion, marking the first time that a new Maranello-built sports prototype had been presented to the public in half a century.

Many of the people present at Imola on Oct. 29 either couldn’t remember or weren’t yet born when the second-generation Ferrari 312P was introduced in 1971.

Ferrari has been keen to remind us of that earlier time, most notably in the 499P’s color scheme --- red with a yellow belt – which is a nod to the 312P that Brian Redman and Jacky Ickx drove in the World Sportscar Championship 50 years ago, and to the car that won the 1972 title.

But Ferrari’s LMH contender also looks to the horizon in the technology that it contains: the 200-kW electric motor and the twin-turbo three-liter V6 engine shows the direction of the company’s road car policy, whilst also slotting neatly into the technical regulations.

At the launch event, Ferrari’s sports car racing director Antonello Coletta declared: “This car is both a tribute to our past and a manifesto for our future.”