WEC Season Preview: Ferrari
- Benjamin Crundwell
- 7 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Quite often in motor racing, the success of a racing team is measured on technology, or the driver's grit. While both cases are more than true for the Ferrari Hypercar team, their achievements are also owed to the passion and loyalty within the team.
For the first time, Ferrari are entering a season as reigning champions, having won the Constructor's Championship and the Drivers' Championship with the No.51 in 2025, but 2026 is the fourth consecutive year they are utilising an unchanged driver lineup across their two works cars since they joined the World Endurance Championship (WEC) in 2023.
Coming off the back of their maiden WEC championship, the No.51 will be raced by Antonio Giovinazzi, James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi. All three drivers were a part of the car which re took Le Mans 24 Hours glory for Ferrari in 2023, for the first time since 1965.
In addition to a Le Mans victory and WEC Championship per person, each driver has a plethora of experience.
Unbeknownst to many, Giovinazzi made his WEC debut in the LMP2 class in 2016, before starting a complicated on and off stint as reserve and full time F1 driver with Sauber (under the Alfa Romeo name) up to 2021, before he left the bottom end team to join Ferrari as a reserve driver in 2022.
After an unsuccessful season in Formula E, Giovinazzi's career started to take flight when his F1 reserve driver role transgressed into a hypercar drive with the Ferrari's 499P in the WEC.
Calado is an older face in the WEC paddock, he debuted in 2014 and had his break through drive in the same year at Le Mans where he finished in second place in the LMGTE Pro class. Before signing with the hypercar team, Calado picked up two class wins at Le Mans, and three LMGTE Pro Drivers' Championships with Ferrari and AF Corse.
The oldest of the three drivers, Pier Guidi has been racing cars since 2002. Similarly to Calado, he made his debut in the WEC in 2014 with Ferrari. As he was partnered with Calado in the WEC for the most part of his LMGTE Pro career, he also picked up two class wins at Le Mans and three LMGTE Pro Drivers' Championships.
The car sporting the number 50 will be driven by Nicklas Nielson, Miguel Molina and Antonio Fuoco. In some respects the No.50 was unlucky to only finish third in the championship last season, having been the Ferrari with the most points in 2023 and 2024 while Toyota and Porsche won the championships respectively.
A large contributor to falling short of the championship in 2025 was Le Mans, having won the race in 2024, their joys were not repeated a year later as they were disqualified post race, meaning they failed to score in a round awarding double points. Despite none of the drivers branding a Hypercar Championship, they each have an overall Le Mans win amongst other accolades to brag their talent.
Nielson had an incredibly impressive run of form from 2018 to 2021, winning five championships in the four year span, including two LMGTE Am WEC Drivers' Championships. Additionally, Neilson picked up an LMGTE Am class win at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2021. The Danish driver has competed in six seasons in the WEC and has finished in the top three of his class in each one.
Molina never finished better than 4th in the LMGTE classes of the WEC, having debuted in 2017, but he did take the spoils in the LMGTE class of the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) in 2021, during a season in which he won three races and had a 100% podium rate.
Having gone further through the single seater junior categories, Fuoco joined the world of sportscar racing later than his two teammates. His first WEC race was as late as 2021, he managed two race wins before signing as a hypercar driver. In 2025 Fuoco won the FIA GT World Cup in Macau, it could have been for the second year running however he was hit from the lead in 2024.
The iconic Giallo Modena liveried No.83 Ferrari, raced privately by AF Corse, is entering its third year of competition - since it did not race in 2023. Despite not having factory backing, the No.83 is no slouch, it picked up Ferrari's second hypercar victory in COTA 2024, then went on to win the 2025 Le Mans 24 Hours and challenge the No.51 for the championship.
Their Le Mans honour did not come without controversy, the factory Ferrari team asked the No.83 to play the team game but its drivers, Robert Kubica, Phil Hanson and Yifei Ye, refused and ultimately did the best job of the three Ferraris which were scrabbling for the top spot.
Whereas the two factory Ferrari's drivers picked up a lot of their previous successes in GT classes, the AF Corse boys specialised in LMP2s.
Phil Hanson has held the LMP2 championship in each of the Asian Le Mans Series (AsLMS), the ELMS and the WEC - the only major LMP2 series he is missing is the IMSA. With just one less, Ye is missing a WEC championship, having never raced a full season of the LMP2 class in the FIA series. Regardless, Ye impressively won the 2021 ELMS and AsLMS LMP2 Championships in the same year.
The most impressive career of all nine Ferrari driver's comes from Robert Kubica. The 41 year old became the first Polish driver to race in Formula One in 2006. His reckoning as a future star collapsed when he suffered a serious incident while rallying in 2011, and the injuries (including a partial arm amputation) should continue to haunt his driving ability but his racing does not show it.
Very soon after being deemed fit to drive, Kubica returned to rallying and won the WRC 2 Driver's Championship in 2013. He managed a one season return to F1 in 2019, then switched to sportscars where he won the LMP2 class of the ELMS with Ye. Kubica repeated the feat in 2024, alongside his maiden year in the hypercar class of the WEC.
Across the AF Corse's time racing the 499P, Kubica has been the driving force of their success, crucially ignoring team orders and out pacing the red cars to take victory at the 2025 Le Mans 24 Hours.
The prancing horse has been a dominant force in the recent years of the hypercar era. Although it took them until 2025 to win championships, it felt like a "when" rather than an "if". More impressively than the championships, Ferrari won their first attempt in half a century in the top class of Le Mans, then followed it with two more wins in the next two years.
The credit for these achievements fall on the Ferrari 499P and the efforts put in by a team of top class engineers. A 2992 cc twin-turbocharged V6 internal combustion engine and an 800V battery collaborate under the bonnet to produce 671 brake horsepower. The car is tamed in the corners by an aerodynamic package with over 3000 hours of testing, so versatile it can win comfortably on a variety of tracks from COTA to Imola.
Ferrari have stuck loyal, keeping all six drivers unchanged from 2023 to 2026 for the factory Ferraris and only exchanged Robert Shwartzman for Hanson in the AF Corse car between 2024 and 2025. Furthermore, the majority of their drivers were with the Italian marque deep into their junior career.
A fast car is nothing without a strong team of drivers; the loyalty displayed within the team has built pure chemistry and turned skilled drivers into experts of their machinery. With the new confidence established into the team off the back of last year, all three cars will be hungry to be the one to take the spoils this year, with the ultimate championship in sportscar racing.
