The fastest Ferrari, that of 2024 race winners Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and (an under the weather) Nicklas Nielsen, is only seventh on the grid; Calado, Fabrizio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi, winners two years ago, are down in 11th; and the third 499P of the officially ‘customer’ AF Corse entry of Yifei Ye, Robert Kubica and Phil Hanson is only 13th.
But with only 1.2 seconds separating that top 13 in the Hypercar class, the 2025 Le Mans 24 Hours literally seems to be almost anybody’s. It’s wide open and set up to be an all-time classic.
“If you watch the qualifying, the Cadillac is the car to beat,” says Calado’s far more sunny and much more patient team-mate Giovinazzi. “But it is not the only one. Toyota I think will be there. Yes, they did not do the laps because [Sébastien] Buemi had a [tyre] flat spot, so we don’t know the real pace. But on race pace they were really competitive. The same for Porsche. BMW is already there. Alpine is also there…
“I think it will be a close fight and for you guys it will be the best to watch. A long 24 hours, but I’m sure it will be a sprint race. It will be all quite close and let’s see where we are. We’re starting not from a good position, especially if we compare to the last two seasons when we were on the first row in 2023 and the second row in 2024. But qualifying at Le Mans is not very important. For sure we missed performance compared to our competitors, but let’s see in what is a long race.”
Calado believes he can add another win to his 2023 victory… but it’ll be a fight for the full 24 hours
Ferrari
Giovinazzi says use of Michelin’s soft compound tyres could be key, even if the hot temperatures of Friday do not carry over into the weekend. “Conditions will be tricky, maybe cooler than in the tests we have done,” says the former Alfa Romeo Formula 1 racer. “But it’s still a lot hotter than in previous years and this makes a big difference in when we can use the soft tyres in the night. At one point we’ll finish with the mediums so we will have to use the softs. This will be important depending on how many laps or stints we can do on the softs.
“It will be a tricky one. But this is Le Mans, and it’s like this. Good strategy, no mistakes and then in the morning see where we are.”
Not long to go now. It’s impossible to call.