Red Mist: Why this Fuji weekend is Ferrari’s biggest in 17 years

Let’s forget Formula 1 for a moment. Ferrari won the World Sportscar Championship the series’ first two seasons in 1953 and ’54, took three more titles from 1956 to '58 and went unbeaten for six years on the trot from 1960 to 1966. Maranello then won one more world sports car title, the International Championship for Makes in 1972. Before Enzo decided to concentrate on Formula 1.

Ferrari returned to the FIA WEC fifty years later and has won every Le Mans 24 Hour since. And now, after dominating the first half of 2025, stands on the threshold of a dreamy thirteenth world endurance racing championship, and the first since its 2023 return, to add to its 12th Le Mans triple success in June.

The Ferrari WEC effort is run by AF Corse. AF being Amato Ferrari. No relation to Enzo, Amato was also a journeyman driver in European Formula 3 and later British and Italian Touring Cars. He scored the occasional podium before hanging up his helmet in ‘95 to concentrate on managing his Italian Superturismo team.

Amato Ferrari (pictured above in the middle) later launched his GT team, AF Corse in 1999 and landed a development deal to run the Maserati Trofeo Cup one-make series. That led to developing the racing version of the Ferrari Enzo spinoff FIA GT Maserati MC12. The team won a few races before AF Corse returned to running the Maserati Trofeo Cup in ’05.

AF Corse later ran a FIA GT Ferrari to F430 in 2006, winning several races including the Spa 24 Hour en route to the title, before repeating the feat in dominant style in 2007. The team joined the Le Mans Series in 2010, stepped up to the Ferrari 458 in ‘2011 and spread its wings to the USA to become the international Ferrari GT3 racing force.

Scuderia Ferrari appointed AF Corse to run its new 499P hypercar in the FIA World Endurance Championship from 2023and the rest is history. In short, the odds are on Ferrari wrapping up its first endurance crown since 1973 at Fuji this weekend. And finally, the tifosi have something real to shout about for the first time since Kimi in ’07.

In stark contrast to the travesty they call Ferrari in Formula 1, AF Corse has utterly dominated in the WEC. It started with a 1-2 in Bahrain, followed that with a home win in Imola and then another 1-2 at Spa Francorchamps That Le Mans 24 hat thick followed in June. And second and fourth in Texas two weeks ago now sees Ferrari at a huge 2025 WEC advantage.

Currently 75 points clear of Porsche in the Makers’ race, Ferrari needs to be 65 clear after Japan so as not to be beaten. It’s a similar scenario in the privateer WEC Hypercar championship, where all second in the overall championship, Philip Hanson, Robert Kubica and Yifei Ye need do is to finish the race to wrap it up. They’re also in with a very real shot of the Driver’s title.

That chase is likely to go down to the points-and-a-half Baharan 8 Hour finale, with Ferrari trio Alessandro Pier Guidi, Antonio Giovinazzi and James Calado hold a fifteen-point advantage over Hanson, Kubica and Ye, with Porsche duo, reigning champions Kévin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor still a little too close for comfort 21 points further back. Their problem is however the 50 crew Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, Nicklas Nielsen out to make it a Ferrari 1-2-3!

So, please excuse Red Mist if he has nothing to say about Ferrari in Formula 1 right now. Because, quite honestly, there’s really nothing to say about that big, fat bag of hot air. No, let’s rather concentrate on the real news. And that’s Ferrari at Fuji in the WEC this weekend. World champions to be? Oh yes. Forza!