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The race preparations firm Prodrive has announced that it is taking the marque Ferrari back to the most famous race in the world, the Le Mans 24-hours.
Prodrive will be running two Ferrari 550 Maranellos in the GTS class at Le Mans in June. Alain Menu and Rickard Rydell are already confirmed as drivers and Prodrive is currently talking to a number of other top drivers to make up the full team. A front-engined Ferrari, the 275 GTB, last competed at Le Mans in 1966 and Ferrari last won the race in 1965 with the 250LM in the hands of Jochen Rindt and Masten Gregory.
In 2002, Prodrive is aiming for a podium finish for its 550 Maranello in the GTS class. In preparation for the endurance event, Prodrive will be running a durability and development programme over the coming months. As part of this, one of the cars will be raced at the Sebring 12-hours in March by Rydell, Menu and a third driver. The second Le Mans specification car is currently being prepared at Prodrive's workshops in Banbury, UK. Prodrive's FIA GT car, which won two out of the five races it entered in last year's FIA GT Championship, will once again be competing in that series in 2002, but this time in the hands of a private team which has not been named. "Doing Le Mans will help us showcase our product to potential buyers," said project manager George Howard-Chappell.
In addition to the Prodrive effort, the Rafanelli team have also expressed interest in entering one of their 550's for Le Mans. Their ItalTecnica-built cars competed in the FIA GT championship during the first half of 2001 but it was the Prodrive version which scored Ferrari's first win. Both teams were invited to demonstrate their cars at Fiorano in November last year to determine whether the Factory would wish to become involved, but in December it was announced that Ferrari would not officially support the programmes. Click here to return to the Ferrari Happenings page.
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