As Motorsport.com Italia reports, the 499P machines simply never found their footing in Japan, compounding a historical struggle at the venue and delivering a bruising weekend for the manufacturer. The reigning World Endurance Championship title defenders found themselves chasing shadows throughout, salvaging a lone point only through a chaotic late race safety car phase.
The #51 Ferrari AF Corse entry shared by Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, and Antonio Giovinazzi spent the afternoon out of the points before finishing ninth. Giovinazzi set the strongest lap times among the stable, yet their overall race average remained at the bottom of the Hypercar manufacturers. Running medium compound tires for half the distance robbed them of the leaders' pace, and a pit lane delay compounded by a 10-second penalty for contact sealed a bitter 10th place finish that pushes the championship summit further away.
It was a really complicated race for us, first with the problem at the pit-stop and then with the car stopping on the track,
"Everything that could go wrong went wrong," James Calado admitted. "The choice of tires at the start perhaps wasn't ideal, but we could have made it work if not for the many safety car restarts. It was very difficult to bring the tires up to temperature. Then we had two penalties, which we couldn't serve in the pits because the neutralization wiped out the gaps and disadvantaged us in that sense. Let's archive this race quickly and look ahead."
Antonio Giovinazzi echoed those frustrations, noting that starting from the back offered no favors while race pace failed to unlock any recovery. The #50 sister car of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, and Nicklas Nielsen endured an even harsher fate. Running respectably around ninth on Michelin softs and a medium rear-left, their afternoon derailed during the fourth-hour stop when the car rose on pneumatic jacks, lost over three minutes, and tumbled down the order amid air pressure alarms. By the fifth hour, Molina was forced to park the scarlet machine with a terminal halt.
"It was a really complicated race for us, first with the problem at the pit-stop and then with the car stopping on the track," Nicklas Nielsen acknowledged. Engineer Giuliano Salvi admitted the team was unsurprised by the raw lack of favorability in the layout, but the pneumatic leak on the #50 was entirely unexpected. A subsequent dead battery robbed the parked car of power and system connectivity. Meanwhile, the independent #83 AF Corse entry steered by Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye, and Philip Hanson also failed to emerge from the pack, finishing a lap down in a dismal 12th place.
With just two rounds remaining, aerodynamic limitations in slow corners continue to plague the design, yet attention pivots instantly toward upcoming events in Barcelona and Monza. Ferdinando Cannizzo noted the weekend provided vital lessons on suboptimal choices, while Antonello Coletta conceded that the squad must quickly regroup, address reliability gremlins, and attack the final two fixtures with maximum force.
