Enlarge / Ferrari last won Le Mans overall in 1965 and hasn't competed at the top level since 1973. This year it returned and won with the hybrid 499P hypercar. (credit: Ferrari)

On Tuesday morning, a triumphant Ferrari celebrated its latest race win. Not this past weekend's F1 race in Montreal, though; 2023 is still looking rough for Scuderia Ferrari's open-wheel racing program. Instead, the glory was brought back to Maranello by its new endurance racing effort, which just won the 24 Hours of Le Mans after an absence of 50 years. It did it with an all-new car, against tough opposition, and the enormity of that result has taken a little time to sink in, according to Ferdinando Cannizzo, technical director of Ferrari Competitzione GT and technical director for the Ferrari 499P program.

"What I can tell you is that it is clear for us that the challenge that we accepted was very ambitious, that we finally achieved a very historical result," Cannizzo told Ars. "We are aware that the company achieved an historic results, and I think everything will mature in the days that will come; we can probably realize the value of what we have done all together."

Endurance racing is flat-out now

The nature of the Le Mans race has changed a lot since Ferrari last won overall in 1965. Then, as now, overall victory was usually up for grabs for one of the cars in the prototype class—cars designed just to go racing rather than the converted road cars that contest the GT class. And the race still takes place for 24 hours on a circuit that still includes some public roads. But in the 1960s, endurance racing was not a flat-out sport; cars were fragile, and making it to the end meant leaving plenty in reserve and being kind to the machinery.

Enlarge / Race winners, the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 499P of James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi, and Antonio Giovinazzi arrive down the pit lane toward parc ferme at the end of the 100th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the Circuit de la Sarthe on June 11, 2023, in Le Mans, France. (credit: James Moy Photography/Getty Images)

One hundred is something of an arbitrary number, an accident of how many fingers we happen to have. But in years, it represents a long time to keep doing something again and again: like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, an annual race around an 8-mile circuit in France that exists not just as a way to entertain but also to improve the cars we drive on the road. Windshield wipers, disc brakes, fuel injection, and laserbeam headlights are just a few examples that were proved in the cauldron of the 24 Hours before appearing on cars like the one you might drive.

This weekend saw the centenary edition of the race take place. Anticipation had been building for months thanks to a new ruleset that has revitalized the top class of prototypes , now called Hypercars. After several years of Toyota facing little competition by meagerly funded privateer teams, 2023's entry list also included cars from other major manufacturers—Cadillac, Ferrari, Peugeot, and Porsche.

Legends return

Each has raced at Le Mans before, the European makes with quite some success. Across 91 actual races—world wars prevented running some years—Porsche's entries notched 19 wins, more than anyone else. Audi has the next-best record, but it has opted to spend its racing budget on Formula 1 for the foreseeable future .

Enlarge / A Formula 2 car on track in Bahrain. The cars are less powerful than an F1 machine, but still tricky to drive. (credit: Joe Portlock - Formula 1/Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images)

The 2023 Formula 1 season springs into life this weekend at the Bahrain Grand Prix, the first race of the year. Three days of preseason testing held last week suggest that Red Bull Racing still has the car to beat, although there is the tantalizing prospect of Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin having possibly found a lot of speed in the off-season.

But today's interesting news actually comes from the lower formulae, F2 and F3, where young drivers cut their teeth. Today, those series announced that they are moving to sustainable fuels starting this season.

As we've previously detailed, F1 is moving to carbon-neutral gasoline in 2026 , but as single-make formulae with a single fuel supplier (in this case Aramco), it's possible for F2 and F3 to try something even bolder.

Enlarge / A human player races against several instances of GT Sophy, a highly capable racing AI developed by Sony. (credit: Sony)

Last year, Sony AI and Polyphony Digital, the developers of Gran Turismo , developed a new AI agent that is able to race at a world-class level. At the time, the experiment was described in a paper in Nature , where the researchers showed that this AI was not only capable of driving very fast—something other AI have done in the past—but also learned tactics, strategy, and even racing etiquette.

At the time, GT Sophy—the name of the AI—wasn't quite ready for prime time. For example, it often passed opponents at the earliest opportunity on a straight, allowing itself to be overtaken in the next braking zone. And unlike human players, GT Sophy would try to overtake players with impending time penalties—humans would just wait for that penalized car to slow to gain the place.

But in the intervening year, Sony AI and Polyphony Digital have been working on GT Sophy, and tomorrow (February 21), GT Sophy rolls out to Gran Turismo 7 as part of update 1.29, at least for a limited time. Until the end of March, players can try their skills against Sophy in the GT Sophy Race Together mode in a series of races with increasing difficulty levels. There's also a one-versus-one match where you race Sophy in identical cars, so you can see how much slower you are than the AI.

Enlarge / The Ford DFV is the most successful F1 engine of all time. Ford is returning to the sport as an engine builder in 2026. Note the suspension elements mounted on the engine, which is a fully stressed part of the chassis—a big revolution in F1 car design. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Formula 1 just can't seem to keep American car companies away. Last month, we were stunned by the news that Cadillac wants to enter F1 with the Andretti team , which is seeking an entry into the sport. While that bid remains in doubt , here's one that isn't: Today, the Ford Motor Company revealed it will be back in F1 starting in 2026, when the new engine rules come into effect .

"This is the start of a thrilling new chapter in Ford's motorsports story that began when my great-grandfather won a race that helped launch our company," said Bill Ford, executive chair of Ford. "Ford is returning to the pinnacle of the sport, bringing Ford’s long tradition of innovation, sustainability, and electrification to one of the world’s most visible stages.”

Ford's first foray into F1 began in 1967 when Colin Chapman, the head of Lotus, persuaded Ford to pay for the development of a new racing engine that would be a stressed part of the F1 chassis. (In other words, it was a structural element of the car rather than being mounted in a cradle or subframe.) After being initially rebuffed, Chapman convinced Walter Hayes, the head of Ford UK's PR, to help him lobby the suits, and the result was a development budget of £100,000—about $1.7 million today—given to Cosworth to create the engine.

Enlarge / Nine GTP race cars from Acura, Cadillac, BMW, and Porsche took part in this year's 24-hour race at Daytona. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.—With just one race on the books, it's probably too soon to declare this the dawn of a new golden era in racing, but that thought was on many minds at last weekend's spectator-packed Rolex 24 at Daytona. The grueling 24-hour race is the season-opening event for the WeatherTech Sportscar Championship, and 2023 saw the introduction of a new class of hybrid prototype race cars called GTP (for Grand Touring Prototype).

The crowds were heavier than ever, buoyed by the debut of the new machines, which put on a good show. And the complicated new energy-based pit stop formula didn't appear to present anyone any trouble.

The same can't be said for the race itself. Twenty-four-hour racing is hard —I speak from some experience—and making it to the end should be, and is, a challenge. A 24-hour race as the first race of the year for all-new cars is even more difficult, despite the thousands of miles each car covered in testing over the past few months. As such, some feared we might be in for a repeat of 2003; that year saw a new prototype class introduced, the best of which finished 24 laps behind the winning car, a racing version of a Porsche 911.

Enlarge / The #6 Porsche Penske 963 and the #10 Konica Minolta Acura ARX-06 run on Daytona's banking during the 2023 Roar Before the 24. With so many miles of testing completed, the Porsches are probably the favorites, but 24 hours is a long time in racing, and a lot can happen. (credit: Jake Galstad/LAT Images)

This past weekend saw the successful conclusion of the International Motor Sports Association's "Roar Before the 24," the series' preseason test ahead of this coming weekend's Rolex 24, a 24-hour race held each January at Daytona International Speedway in Florida. This year, the preseason test was more important than most, as there's a new kind of race car, called the GTP, competing in the Rolex 24 in 2023.

The new hybrid prototype category has attracted more manufacturer interest than we've seen in many years, with brands like Acura and Porsche building new cars to compete and others, like Lamborghini, waiting in the wings to join next year. But the biggest question is whether these new race cars will be able to make it to the end of the race. As in the larger automotive industry, supply shortages mean that spare parts are scarce, so the consequences of a crash are calamitous.

But what makes GTP—originally called LMDh—so attractive to car makers? I asked David Salters, head of Honda Performance Development, which oversees the Japanese OEM's racing activities in North America.

Enlarge (credit: Cadillac)

The world of Formula 1 got a shock on Thursday morning when General Motors announced it has plans to enter the championship. GM wants to go F1 racing with its Cadillac brand, partnering with a new Andretti Global team, assuming the sport's organizing body accepts the entry.

F1 has been fixed at 10 teams since Haas joined the sport in 2016. Since then, the series has introduced a new budget cap that has reined in some of the crazier budgets and made the prospect of operating an F1 team much less of a financial black hole. The exact amount of the cost cap is adjusted depending on how many races are planned for a year— for 2023, that should be $138.6 million —and even finishing in 10th place earns a team enough money to cover about 70 percent of those costs.

As a result, the sport is now a much more attractive proposition for new entrants than it was the last time we gained new teams in 2010, none of which survived. But there's a snag: You can't just turn up at the start of a season with a couple of cars and expect to go racing. The sport's organizing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), requires that any new team "buy in" to the franchise with a $200 million "non-dilution fee" meant to ensure a new competitor doesn't cost the existing 10 teams any of their income.