The Italian manufacturer closed out its first season in the Hypercar class with a third-place result in the Bahrain 8 Hours, with the #50 499P of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen securing the best-of-the-rest spot behind the dominant Toyota GR010 HYBRID LMH cars.
Ferrari didn’t have the speed to keep up with the Toyotas or the Jota Porsche 963 LMDh out front as the race reached two-thirds distance, but a penalty for Jota's Antonio Felix da Costa put the lead Ferrari crew in a position to snatch third.
Nielsen came under severe pressure from da Costa’s team-mate Will Stevens in the closing stages, but kept the Jota driver behind to clinch Ferrari’s sixth podium in seven rounds in 2023.
Speaking after the race, Ferrari’s sportscar technical director Ferdinando Cannizzo credited the team for achieving an unlikely podium in the season finale, explaining how it was able to compensate for the car’s weaknesses on track.
“We never give up,” said Cannizzo. “It was a very difficult race for us. It was tough because we were not the fastest car, not the second-fastest.
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“But we are even prouder for the results because we were able to play with the strategy in a way that we get the podium.
“We will not get nervous, we will keep calm. [We] really look at the last lap of the race [to see] what we can do to grab the podium with a car which was not the fastest.
“You saw on track how easily we have been overtook sometimes.
Source: Autosport