Ferrari’s Antonio Fuoco described the Italian manufacturer’s Qatar 1812km as ‘not positive’, while teammate James Calado called it ‘tricky’, in what was a hard race for the scarlet red cars.
The #50 Ferrari 499P finished eighth on the road — seventh with the #93 Peugeot 9X8’s disqualification — while the #51 car was a lowly 13th, out of the points.
“The year’s first outing wasn’t positive,” said the #50 Ferrari’s Fuoco.
“First, we must work on ourselves because we made too many mistakes today. Now our goal must be to start again even stronger. We are already thinking about the next race at Imola in which I hope we’ll again prove our worth.”
The car, started by Miguel Molina took the lead at the start, ahead of Michael Christensen in the #5 Porsche 963 and Nico Muller in the #93 Peugeot, with Muller taking the lead shortly before the pitstop cycle started.
Molina, hoping to undercut, pitted earlier than his rivals, but inadvertently crossed the white line at pit entry, receiving a drive through penalty for his trouble.
From then on the car lacked the ultimate pace to take the fight to the Peugeot and the four Porsches from the factory Penske-run team and the customer JOTA squad, winding up seventh at the end of the race.
Meanwhile, the #51 Ferrari was running inside the top 10, but mid way through the second hour the rear bodywork came off the car after contact with a United Autosports McLaren LMGT3 car. Alessandro Pier Guidi, in the car at the time, pitted for the team to replace the bodywork, but the car lost two laps in the process — time it would never recover.
“We have finished a tricky race in which we made some mistakes and were a little unlucky to be honest,” said Calado, one of Pier Guidi’s teammates.
”But we knew after the practice and qualifying sessions we had little chance of a great result on this track. Now we look to the future, hoping to return to the track at Imola with different aspirations.”
One positive for AF Corse, which runs the factory Ferrari team, to take from Qatar was the good performance of its customer, privately-run 499P, the yellow-liviered car of Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye, and Robert Shwartzman. The trio finished fifth, the highest-placed 499P and best of the LMH-rules Hypercars.
“The race result confirmed what had already emerged during the Prologue and in the simulations, that is, the big difference from other cars that didn’t allow us to fight for the podium, and so it was, despite Molina’s splendid start,” said Ferdinando Cannizzo, Ferrari’s head of endurance race cars.
“The race was not free of flaws and unfortunate episodes, but we had no chance of contending for the podium.
“Despite this, we tried to achieve the best possible result for our cars also by adopting an aggressive strategy. Despite a very demanding track, the tyre management was admirable considering that we suffered neither degradation nor wear even with so many double and triple stints on the tyres.”
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