Insight: How Ferrari Displaced Toyota as Le Mans Benchmark
Jamie Klein on how he believes the Ferrari 499P is now the car to beat in the FIA World Endurance Championship...
Was the 2025 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans the most hyped-up race in sports car racing history? If so, it would be fair to say that it didn’t live up to it, nor did it come close to the spectacle provided by the previous two runnings of the French endurance classic.
Fans had been promised by teams and media alike a ferocious battle between five, possibly six Hypercar manufacturers. But in the end, we didn’t even really get a two-way fight.
A one-and-a-half-way fight might be the best way to describe the lop-sided battle between three Ferrari 499Ps, two of which were forced into managing engine problems in the closing stages, and a solitary Porsche 963, the No. 6 car that had as close to a perfect race as you’re likely to have at Le Mans and yet still fell short of victory by 14 seconds.
For large swathes of the race, and especially after a fortuitous mid-race safety car that allowed both works Ferraris to wipe the slate clean after picking up costly penalties, the Italian manufacturer looked on course for a podium lockout, such was their dominance once the sun rose and the temperatures climbed in the morning hours.
It was only really in the final four hours or so, after Alessandro Pier Guidi dropped it in the gravel on his way into the pits, and Porsche switched the No. 6 car from triple stints to doubles in a final roll of the dice to challenge the Prancing Horse, that what had been an oddly dull race up to that point finally livened up somewhat.
Much has been said about the Balance of Performance in the wake of Ferrari’s latest victory. Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury made his feelings on the matter clear immediately after the race, calling the Hypercar field a “two-class” fight between cars with the necessary top speed to contend for the victory and those without.