SCARLET MIST

50 YEARS AFTER FERRARI LAST RACED AT LE MANS, IT RETURNED TO TAKE A HISTORIC VICTORY IN THE CLASSIC 24-HOUR RACE

- ANGUS MACKENZIE

“When the sun rises, we’ll see where we are.” Ferrari team driver Miguel Molina was guardedly optimistic as mechanics fettled the two scarlet Ferrari 499P hybrid-powered Hypercars in final preparation for the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans. And as the hot June sun dried a track that had been intermittently deluged by violent thunderstorms over the previous 12 hours, Ferrari was locked in a gripping duel with Toyota for the lead of the world’s most famous endurance race.

Le Mans celebrated its 100th anniversary this year with its 91st running. (The race wasn’t held in 1936 due to a labor strike, and it was canceled from 1940 to ’48 because of World War II.) It is, along with the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500, one of the top-level motorsports’ blue riband events.

Only one driver has ever won all three, known as racing’s vaunted Triple Crown. Brit Graham Hill won Monaco five times as a Formula 1 driver between 1963 and 1969, drank the milk at the Brickyard in 1966, and in 1972 drove to victory at Le Mans’ Circuit de la Sarthe. Hill co-drove with Frenchman Henri Pescarolo in a Matra MS670, a car whose screaming 3.0-liter V-12 would later inspire a watching Gordon Murray to equip his T.50 and T.33 hypercars of today with high-revving 12-cylinder engines.

Having already clinched the World Sportscar Championship, Ferrari wasn’t at Le Mans in 1972. However, it returned the following year. It had to—the 1973 race would be the eighth round of that year’s World Sportscar Championship, and Ferrari, Porsche, and France’s Matra had all won two rounds each. Le Mans would be decisive.