Ferrari has confirmed their six-driver line-up for the 2023 debut season for Ferrri’s 499P Hypercar in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
The No. 50 Ferrari 499P will be driven by Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen, the number 50, chosen to mark the years that have passed by since Ferrari last raced in the top class of the endurance world championship.
The sister No. 51 car will see Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado and Antonio Giovinazzi make up the crew – the number 51, one of the most successful in Ferrari history.
Five of the drivers have been drawn from the hugely successful Ferrari factory GT racing roster with Giovinazzi moving full-time into sports cars for the first time in his career. He remains a reserve driver for the Ferrari F1 team.
Fuoco and Molina took the race win at Bahrain in the final outing for the GTE Pro class, securing the Manufacturers World title for Ferrari, the Italian/ Spanish pair joined by Dane Nicklas Nielsen who has been a key part of the development testing thus far for the 499P after a stellar rise from a Championship win in the Ferrari Challenge Europe in 2018 that has seen him claim Championships in every season since then, all bar one (the LMP2 Pro-Am title in WEC last year with AF Corse), in Ferrari machinery.
After becoming WEC GT Drivers World Champions for the second time in a row (the third in their careers), Italy’s Alessandro Pier Guidi and the UK’s James Calado join forces with ex-Sauber and Alfa Romeo F1 driver Giovinazzi who already has some sportscar experience, including a Le M ans start in 2018 with Ferrari in GTE Pro in 2018 and a handful of LMP2 race starts.
This is the first top class, factory-entered sports prototype effort from Ferrari in half a century with the new AF Corse-run cars going head to head with the returning Toyota, Peugeot and Glickenhaus efforts, joined by factory cars too from Porsche and Cadillac in the WECs top class.