Jim Weeks

The very basis of Ferrari’s reputation is competition. Indeed, Enzo Ferrari himself famously only built road-going examples of his cars rather begrudgingly, at least seeing the silver lining that they would act to fund his real passion, racing. It is one of the sport’s great curiosities, then, that a brand which owes its very existence to competition has enjoyed relatively little success in the biggest endurance races.

You have to go back to 1973 to find the last factory Ferrari entry to compete in the top class of the Le Mans 24 Hours. Of course, that is set to change in 2023 when Maranello will join the new Le Mans Hypercar ranks with the aim of achieving a 10th overall victory at La Sarthe. Still, it’s been 57 years since a car bearing the Prancing Horse last led the way in the world’s largest endurance race – and even then it was Luigi Chinetti’s NART outfit that did it, with Jochen Rindt and Masten Gregory steering a 250 LM to victory.

Two years later, a factory-entered 330 P4 scored a famous one-two-three finish at the 1967 Daytona 24 Hours, yet somehow that stood as Ferrari’s last overall victory in a marquee 24-hour race until 2004 – when the BMS Scuderia Italia team won the Spa 24 Hours with a 550 GTS Maranello in a field largely devoid of manufacturer support. With the rise of costly prototypes in the top categories and the originally begrudged road-car business flourishing, Enzo’s GT-based offerings were largely relegated to fighting for class wins at best, and the company’s reliance on privateers to try and burnish its sports car racing reputation never really paid off.

One outright 24-hour victory in almost six decades is simply not good enough for a brand like Ferrari. That’s why Iron Lynx’s win in the 2021 Spa 24 Hours was so significant. Not only was it secured in circumstances dramatic enough to have been ripped direct from a Hollywood film script – the team’s Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo grabbing the lead with just 10 minutes of the 24 hours remaining, and in monsoon-esque conditions – but it also ended one of the sport’s most glaring dry spells.

Unlike its equivalents at Le Mans and Daytona, the Spa 24 Hours features only one category of car, the globally popular GT3 platform having filled grids at the Ardennes enduro since 2011. This tends to ensure healthy entry lists – a record 72 cars took the start in 2019 – and also means that manufacturers can invest a relatively small sum of money to go after the overall win. And they have in droves, with the top class of the race being dominated by factory efforts with all-professional driver line-ups. When it comes to GT racing, there is no larger race in the world than the Spa 24 Hours in the modern age.

Since the GT3 takeover, the big German marques have dominated; indeed, between 2011 and 2020, all 10 wins were carved up between Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Porsche.

Though it was present from the start Ferrari only really enjoyed success in the Pro-Am class, but efforts began to ramp up in the top-tier Pro category from 2016. Still, it was not until 2020 that a works-affiliated programme run by the AF Corse team on behalf of Maranello – and finally featuring a full complement of factory GT drivers – was signed off. The following year, Iron Lynx stepped up to represent Ferrari in its bid for overall victory.

Founded in 2017, the Italian squad is a relative newcomer on the international racing scene, though it is not without pedigree: its founding members included current team principal Andrea Piccini, a Spa 24 Hours winner with Audi in 2012. In 2021 the team entered a pair of cars in the GT World Challenge Europe, the championship of which Spa is the centrepiece event.

Its #51 crew was made up of Alessandro Pier Guidi, Nicklas Nielsen and Côme Ledogar. Pier Guidi has been a stalwart of Ferrari’s GT endeavours, taking class wins at Le Mans in 2019 and 2021 and at Daytona in 2014. But competing in a Pro entry at Spa offered the Italian something else: the chance to finally fight for an overall win.

“Spa is one of the greatest 24-hour races in the world, alongside Le Mans and Daytona,” says Pier Guidi. “I had tried to win it many times – I had finished second twice – but there was always something that didn’t go right. Finally, we had a chance [in 2021]. I knew it was my time and I went all in.”

The #51 car qualified 13th, the kind of under-the-radar starting spot that so often produces winners in long-distance racing. By the six-hour mark the crew had established itself in the lead, a position it maintained at half-distance. When Sunday morning dawned in the Ardennes with the Iron Lynx car still circulating at the front, it was clear that Ferrari had a real shot at its first Spa win since 2004, and first against notable manufacturer competition since that Daytona race all the way back in 1967.

But it could not possibly be that simple. For one thing, the leader was being chased hard by the factory-backed Audi from Team WRT. Always a factor at Spa, the powerhouse Belgian squad’s lead R8 suffered a disastrous qualifying that left it 54th on the grid, yet a combination of speed and strategy brought it into firm contention by Sunday morning.

To make matters more complicated, Spa was pulling its favourite party trick: rain was falling on some parts of the circuit, but not on others. Nielsen, who had a hard-charging Kelvin van der Linde in his mirrors throughout the 22nd hour, takes up the story: “During my final stints it started to drizzle. Then it rained pretty hard in sector one but was still dry in sector three so we didn’t know what to expect, how long the rain would stay, or how heavy it would be.”

Pier Guidi was the man chosen to take the wheel for the final two hours of racing and seemed to have the edge on local ace Dries Vanthoor in the WRT Audi. With 55 minutes left on the clock the Ferrari pulled in for its final scheduled pit stop, taking enough fuel to reach the finish and a fresh set of slicks, while Pier Guidi remained on board. Next time by the Audi did likewise. But, in a remarkable twist, Team WRT gambled on fitting wet-weather tyres, despite the track still being dry.

“The weather at Spa is always unpredictable and WRT is the home team, so we thought that either they were crazy or they knew better than us what was going to happen,” explains team principal Piccini. “We were ahead, and they had to try something special to try and get in front. From our side we could not take too much risk as we were in the lead. They were very brave to go out on wets when the track was still dry; a lot of respect for such a move!”

Barely a minute later the heavens opened, and the kind of rain usually only encountered in the tropics – and at Spa on race day – engulfed the circuit. Having been within sight of a comfortable win, Pier Guidi was suddenly struggling to keep his slick-shod Ferrari pointing in the right direction.

“That was very difficult,” recalls the Italian. “I did two laps [on slicks]. I didn’t stop after the first because we hoped there’d be a full-course yellow, which would give us the possibility to pit and stay in the lead. We already knew that the Audi had gone to wets, so pitting straight away would have put us behind. When I arrived at the Bus Stop, it was impossible to keep the car straight. The tyre had no contact with the Tarmac and the car ended up looking more like a boat!”

The Iron Lynx crew made the call to fit wets next time around, but the gamble had paid off for WRT as its Audi assumed the lead. Meanwhile, heavy rain continued to fall, leading to chaos. This was best characterised by a McLaren 720S pirouetting through Eau Rouge and up towards Raidillon, hitting both apexes while facing in the wrong direction. Inevitably, a safety car was deployed, bunching the pack again.

The race went green with 28 minutes remaining. Vanthoor led, followed by four lapped cars and then Pier Guidi. The Italian says: “I knew I had a chance but there wasn’t much time; with a few lapped cars between us it was going to be tough. There was a lot of spray, so it was difficult to have any visibility. I knew I had to be aggressive with the lapped cars and then I had to catch Dries. I was quicker than him, probably because they had gambled with putting the wet tyres on before the rain came. That was a smart move, but it caused the tyre to burn up a bit. When we restarted I had more grip.”

To hear him tell it, Pier Guidi’s task was straightforward. But, as Nielsen explains, the tension in the Iron Lynx box was off the scale: “Everyone was really nervous,” says the Dane. “It’s always worse to sit in the garage than be in the car. To be honest, it’s really difficult to express what I was feeling. Spa is one of those races that you might only win once on a lifetime. The opportunity was there and Alessandro was definitely not going to sit in second without at least giving it a try.”

Pier Guidi cleared the lapped cars in a little over five minutes. The hunt was on. He now had only clear track separating himself from Vanthoor, a pace advantage, and 20 minutes to put Ferrari back on top at Spa. But there was still time for another heart-in-mouth moment when Pier Guidi caught a vicious tank-slapper exiting Raidillon; as Nielsen said, the Italian wasn’t going to let this one go without a fight.

Remarkably, the breakthrough came with just 10 minutes left on the clock. Vanthoor made a small error at Stavelot, allowing Pier Guidi to draw alongside the Audi around the outside of Blanchimont. In treacherous conditions and at the culmination of an epic battle, both drivers kept their right foot planted. Pier Guidi held his nerve and swept past, sending the Iron Lynx garage into raptures.

“For sure he showed huge respect,” Pier Guidi says of Vanthoor, then just 23-years old and within 10 minutes of winning on home soil. “We could have both crashed out in that moment, but he made it a fair battle. [The overtake] was something that will go down in the history of Spa and, luckily, it went our way. After the chequered flag it was like an explosion in the radio! That’s something I will never forget.”

While Pier Guidi experienced this explosion from inside the car, Nielsen was at its epicentre in the Iron Lynx box. “I’m still smiling when we talk about it,” he says. “There were probably 35 guys crying in the garage afterwards. It was full of emotions. After 24 hours of flat-out racing, as Spa is these days, everyone was tired – the mechanics, the engineers, everyone involved. I think there was a really big sense of relief that all this hard work had paid off.”

Piccini, meanwhile, was able to contrast winning both as a driver and a team boss: “When you are in the car, you mainly focus on your work, and you don’t have much time to think as you’re either on the limit or trying to rest for the next fight on-track. As a team principal, you never relax for the entire race. You need to oversee the whole team as everyone’s work is incredibly hard and important, from the preparation beforehand to the race itself.

“I feel Spa is ‘my race’,” he adds. “I’ve done it 14 times as driver, I’ve been fighting for the victory for many years and led for hundreds of laps before I could achieve the result as a driver. Having won now as a driver and in a management role makes me incredibly proud.”

As a stalwart of the Prancing Horse’s GT efforts, Pier Guidi acknowledges that this was something very special for the Italian manufacturer. “I know the effort Ferrari has put into this race over the years,” he says. “For a few years we had been really pushing to win and finally we got it. I am really grateful to them for giving me the opportunity. I know the work they put into the car, the preparation, all the engineers from Maranello who we had behind us. We pushed hard together, as a team and as a manufacturer.”

Ferrari has expressed a strong preference to build its 2023 Le Mans line-up around the existing pool of GT drivers. On that note, it should be mentioned that Pier Guidi and Nielsen were the first two chosen to sample the new LMH at Fiorano in July, with the veteran Italian in particular seen as a cert to be part of the new programme.

They say winning is a habit. Having already given Ferrari overall victory in one marquee 24-hour race, both drivers could well be at the forefront of its return to the premier class at Le Mans.

Iron Dames steal the show

Never mind the boys, Ferrari and Iron Lynx used girl power to notch another success in 2022

Iron Lynx couldn’t quite repeat its 2021 victory at the following year’s Spa 24 Hours, finishing a fighting third in a 2022 race dominated by a resurgent Mercedes. Yet the team still managed to make a piece of history thanks to its sister outfit, Iron Dames.

The all-female initiative had already made a name for itself by contesting the Le Mans 24 Hours with its shocking-pink Ferrari 488. This year the similarly liveried quartet of Sarah Bovy, Rahel Frey, Michelle Gatting and Doriane Pin became the first all-female crew to enter the Spa 24 Hours since 1997, and duly went on to score a dominant win in the Gold Cup class. The result made them the first all-female crew ever to win a headline GT3 event… At the biggest GT3 event in the world. That takes some doing.

The result was particularly significant for local girl Bovy, who was tackling her fifth Spa 24 Hours and follows in the footsteps of racing dad, Quirin. Pin, meanwhile, was making her first appearance in a major 24-hour race at the age of 18.

“We’re especially proud of what we have achieved with the Iron Dames,” says team principal Andrea Piccini. “They are achieving some amazing results on-track making history multiple times over the years.”

As Frey said after taking the chequered flag: “This feels like a big result historically. It’s a very good sign and a very good message to send out. We want to motivate more girls to come and achieve the same, to encourage them to join us within the motorsport world. We drive in pink suits in a pink car and this is just underlining the message we want to spread about getting females involved in motorsport.”

Rarely does a class win rival the overall result for column inches, but this was an exception.