We enjoy the cars and company in our journey with Ferrari from its home in Maranello to the 24 Heuers du Mans (aka 24 Hours of Le Mans) in France

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MARANELLO, ITALY

Trips are all about the journey and never the destination (well, unless you’re making a dash for the loo, in which case it is the destination), especially if the cars and company are great, as it was in the case of the 2023 Ferrari Road to Le Mans.

We’re part of a herd of Prancing Horses travelling from Ferrari’s home in Maranello to Le Mans in France, a symbolic journey intended to mirror the brand’s return to the 24 Heuers du Mans. Mind you, it’s not the usual mother-duck-style convoy, with faster cars waiting for the back-markers.

Instead, we have waypoints for meals and fuel, but otherwise it’s own-time-own-target over the one and-a-half days (and about 1300km) it takes us to drive from Maranello to Clermont- Ferrand (to visit the Michelin Museum and R&D Centre) and then on to Le Mans for the motorsport calendar’s legendary endurance event, the 24 Heuers du Mans.

The original group of 13 cars departing Maranello comprises a mix of Purosangue, 296 GTB and 296 GTS, Roma and the Portofino M (that would serve as our steed), but we would be joined by contingents from the UK and Germany for the total tally to swell to almost 30 stampeding stallions.

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If you’re new to the World Endurance Championships that the Le Mans 24 is a part of, the 2023 24 Heuers du Mans is Ferrari’s ‘debut’ after a fifty-year absence. Technical engineering and driver skill aside, endurance racing is a lot about calculated risk-taking as well, with strategy and experience counting a lot in this high-stakes game.

In fact, having the bunch of us media around was already a big gamble, because test all you want, but no one can predict with any certainty the results of a 24hrs endurance race – Ferrari’s triumphant result in first and fifth place might never have materialised, for instance! However, it did and we were most certainly glad to have been there for such a historical moment. It’s hard to think of a better way for Ferrari to stamp its authority during its debut ‘return’ to Le Mans 24!

At just after 1600hrs on 11 June, the pomp and pageantry at the Sarthe Circuit would be multiplied by a few hundred thousand times as Ferrari 499P #51 took the chequered flag to the accompaniment of the entire circuit erupting in rousing rapture.

We’re typically big fans of the Ferrari sportscars like the Roma and 296, but the Portofino M proved to be a surprisingly amenable companion thanks to its comfortable, grand touring credentials.

Don’t forget, our very own ‘endurance race’ involved taking the fastest route (as opposed to the long and winding) from Maranello to Le Mans to make it for the start of the 24 Heuers du Mans in France.

This meant plenty of highway runs with the occasional incursion through small towns, where we took the opportunity to put the hard-top roof down. Dropping the roof and revving the car proved big crowd-pleasers, with genuine enthusiasm from young and old alike as our flash parade passed through, woo-hoos and wowsers ringing in our ears.

The red-hot passion for the Ferrari brand burned brightly even after we crossed over from Italy into France. As we drew closer to Le Mans, the air of jubilation in the wake of our convoy’s passing was even more intense, because the tifosi were well aware this Centenary edition of the race would see Ferrari’s re-entry after a long hiatus.

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In fact, if we didn’t know better, we’d have thought they already looked into the future and foresaw Ferrari’s triumph in the top-shelf Hypercar class.

The end of our Ferrari Road to Le Mans would mark only the beginning of the race weekend’s festivities, but it also gave us a greater appreciation of the intense weight on the shoulders of Ferrari’s race-drivers.

After all, our greatest adversaries on the roads over the 1300km were kamikaze truck drivers and slow-moving cars that occasionally wandered into the fast lane, with stops whenever we wanted for a tea-break or a pee-break.

In contrast, the race-drivers easily cover three times that distance (in just 24 hours!), have to contend with different sorts of weather, temperatures and track-surfaces over the course of the 13.626km circuit.

Not just that, they’re expected to return flawless performance lap after lap, all the while fending off race adversaries and sniffing out opportunities to overtake, yet treading that fine line between hard and soft to ensure the car will cross the finish line.

The physical and mental stresses of racing at such a level is intense and to their credit, the race-drivers are a cool and collected lot that look far ahead towards the chequered flag, even as the rest of us are still seeing red with the spectacle of the tifosi’s display of Forza Ferrari!

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