Giovinazzi weighs Ferrari’s tyre unknowns at Monza

Antonio Giovinazzi put the #51 Ferrari 499P fourth in Hyperpole at Monza, but he expects the opening stints of Sunday’s six-hour FIA World Endurance Championship finale to tell Ferrari more about its chances than a single lap on slicks. After three wet practice sessions, he said the team still had to work out which dry-weather compound would hold up best with the car carrying race fuel.

Giovinazzi’s 1m33.573s left him 0.209s behind Antonio Fuoco’s pole lap in the sister #50 Ferrari. Speaking at Ferrari’s hospitality unit after qualifying, Giovinazzi said he had lost time in the middle sector because he was unhappy with the car’s balance. The circuit had dried enough for slicks, although he said some kerbs at Ascari and parts of the braking zones were still damp.

Ferrari will learn about the tyres as it races

The #51 had completed just seven laps in final practice after a technical problem. Qualifying gave Giovinazzi a chance to assess the Ferrari’s balance on slicks, but a heavier car and a potentially warmer, fully dry circuit will give the crew a different set of conditions on Sunday.

“We don’t know the degradation, how it is, which compound is better,” Giovinazzi said. He wants the crew to defend its track position early and use those first stints to see how the tyres behave over a longer run. How well they hold up will inform the team’s compound choices for the rest of the race.

The two factory Ferraris qualified ahead of both BMW Hypercars, giving Ferrari an early advantage in the fight for second in the manufacturers’ standings. Toyota has already secured the title, and BMW arrived at Monza ahead of Ferrari. Giovinazzi identified scoring points for Ferrari as the priority.

The 499P Giovinazzi calls his ‘first love’

Giovinazzi described 2026 as a tougher season than Ferrari’s title-winning 2025. He singled out Fuji as a circuit that has consistently proved difficult for the 499P and pointed to Barcelona as a weekend where the #51 struggled even as the sister #50 finished third. He said Ferrari was already testing its 2027 evolution and hoped it would help the team recover performance.

Asked what the current 499P meant to him, Giovinazzi called it his “first love”. It was the car in which he won Le Mans in 2023 and took his first world title in 2025, both alongside Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado. The three share the #51 again at Monza, where the season finale begins at 11:00 CET on Sunday 8 November.