British Ferrari star Calado: ‘WEC title is bigger than Le Mans’

“We’ve been on the podium for three out of three races, and it’s definitely been a good start.

“We could have potentially even won Qatar as well [eventually finishing third behind the winning No50 Ferrari], but even so three out of three wins for Ferrari so far is good.”

Keeping a cool head for the duration is key at both Le Mans and in the championship fight, and Calado says that’s what’s changed in both himself and the team since the Hypercar project went racing at the start of 2023.

Long races give a wide window for a lot of things to go wrong, but Calado says he and the Scuderia have a lot more under control these days, as proven in the 2025 results.
“It’s massive,” he says of Ferrari’s change since its 2023 debut at Sebring.

“Honestly, if you compare the first races [in 2023] to where we are now, it’s like another team really.

“In terms of how everything’s managed, the car, the reliability, everything’s definitely more organised.

“You’d expect that as any new team coming into a new category, it’s going to be like that.

“You have to learn the car, which was obviously very fast from the get-go, but it’s a matter of controlling how we go about the weekend.

“If you see the latest results, even starting from the middle of last year, I think it’s another world.”

Calado sees himself as a different driver to the one that took the step up into Hypercar in 2023 too – and even the one that helped the No50 car clinch first at Le Mans that year.

“The first year was obviously tricky,” he says. “Knowing how to manage the tyres, how to play with the electronics, and all those sort of things.

“It’s all finally been understood by myself. I’m finding the races much more relaxed, and I’m much more in control of what I’m doing.

“And when you’ve been thinking more clearly, it just tends to be easier to extract performance.

“The car set-up difference [more focused on stability in high speed] has really helped my kind of driving style as well. Combined, that’s a lot of performance.”

Are his Ferrari team-mates in the same boat though, regarding Le Mans versus the championship?

Giovinazzi is half in agreement: “If I need to choose one this year, I will go for the championship, because we won the ‘right one’ two years ago,” he says.

“Yes mate!” laughs a more equivocal No50 driver Nicklas Nielsen. “Instead of Le Mans? I don’t know, both would be nice.

“But we’ve said from the beginning, the goal [this season] is the drivers’ title and the constructors’ title.”

Meanwhile, team boss Antonella Coletta is more circumspect. Rival teams Toyota and Porsche have complained bitterly about the Balance of Performance rules, an opaque system of technical adjustments which is supposed to even-out the supposed advantages or disadvantages of the different Hypercar powertrain options available.

Coletta makes a veiled reference to BoP – and also the fact a different version of the system is used at Le Mans compared to the rest of the championship – in suggesting winning the championship would be the greater triumph this season.

“The championship is the championship, and Le Mans is Le Mans,” he says. “Probably we will see a different competition in Le Mans and the race after Le Mans.

“My idea is that we will have more competitive cars than the first race [of the season]. Yes, probably we see a changed championship in the second part of the season.

“And for this matter, I’m very happy to be to have a lot of points in the pocket for this moment!”