Good start for the 499Ps in the first day of the Prologue

With the start of the engines at 2pm in Qatar, the endurance world championship officially took its first steps into the 2024 season with the Prologue. After postponing and modifying the original programme, the first collective tests of the season allowed the entered crews to test the car on the Lusail track. The Ferrari 499Ps did not take to the track for the first session but tackled the track's 5,380 metres in the second. During the five-hour test, the work of the Ferrari - AF Corse team's cars 50 and 51 developed according to a predefined plan that had begun with the winter tests that had been carried out on this very track, tests of set-up and adaptation of the car's behaviour according to the changes in air and asphalt temperature. There was no shortage of long stints and qualifying simulations, even for the AF Corse 499P, which, especially in the early stages, allowed the drivers to familiarise themselves with the circuit.

The mileage accumulated by the cars was very positive, as were the chronometric results, although not really significant. The number 50 499P of Fuoco-Molina-Nielsen closed in second place with 113 laps covered and the best time of 1:40.673, fourth with the number 51 of Pier Guidi-Calado-Giovinazzi who did 127 laps and sixth with the number 83 of Ye-Shwartzman-Kubica, authors of 119 laps.