The drivers of the winning Ferrari in Sunday’s Austin World Endurance Championship round described the victory as a redemption for their near-miss at the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Robert Kubica and Robert Shwartzman, who shared the winning AF Corse-run Ferrari 499P Le Mans Hypercar with Yifei Ye, both used the word in reference to the first victory for the Italian car outside of the French enduro.
“I think we can call it redemption for Le Mans,” said Shwartzman after the Ferrari’s narrow victory over Toyota in round six of the 2024 WEC.
“That was a big loss for us; it hurt a lot.
“After our retirement at Le Mans where we were big contenders for so long, I’ve been waiting for a moment like this.
“We were hungry for that win and finally we got it here.”
Kubica called the victory “something special” after the win at Le Mans “slipped out of our hands”.
The customer or satelitte Ferrari was a frontrunner at Le Mans in June for much of the race, leading a total of 83 laps.
It was still in contention into the 20th hour despite the 30s penalty Kubica received for his controversial clash with BMW driver Dries Vanthoor during the night when the car retired with a hybrid system failure.
#83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman, Yifei Ye
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
Ferrari admitted that it needed luck to take the victory in the Lone Star Le Mans event at the Circuit of The Americas, but, said Ye, «we made no mistakes today».
The yellow privateer Ferrari looked destined to finish second behind the #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID LMH shared by Mike Conway, Nyck de Vries and Kamui Kobayashi until the last-named was penalised for a yellow flag infringement.
Kobayashi resumed nine seconds behind Shwartzman after taking a drive-through penalty with 40 minutes to go and was able to close to within two seconds by the end of the six-hour race.
Shwartzman conceded that the closing laps were “really difficult” for him as he strove to stay ahead.
“I was starting to lose the grip and the car was quite difficult to drive and sliding around,” he explained.
DID YOU KNOW?
Ferrari took overall victory in two FIA world championship races for the first time last weekend. The AF Corse crew followed up on Charles Leclerc’s Formula 1 victory on home ground in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza earlier in the day.
Ferrari won 63 races in the original iteration of what can be termed the world sportscar championship and two prior to last weekend, but one had never coincided with an F1 championship triumph before Sunday.