Lilou Wadoux to join Ferrari’s Hypercar line-up for FIA WEC Rookie Test in Bahrain

French racing star Lilou Wadoux will return to the cockpit of Ferrari’s 499P hypercar at the FIA World Endurance Championship Rookie Test in Bahrain, held a day after the 8 Hours season finale, in what will be her second test in Ferrari hypercar machinery.

Photo credits: DPPI

French racing star Lilou Wadoux will return to the cockpit of Ferrari’s 499P hypercar at the FIA World Endurance Championship Rookie Test in Bahrain, held a day after the Bapco Energies 8 Hours season finale. The test, a long-standing tradition on the WEC calendar, has helped launch the careers of several notable names including Julien Andlauer, Mathieu Jaminet, Norman Nato, Célia Martin, and Ben Barnicoat – and now offers Wadoux another opportunity to showcase her talent in top-level endurance machinery.

Wadoux and fellow Ferrari factory driver Alessio Rovera will both sample the #50 Ferrari 499P, with Wadoux stepping into the Ferrari hypercar for her second test in the Le Mans–winning prototype. The 24-year-old from Amiens first drove the 499P at the 2023 rookie test in Sakhir, marking her second experience in a hypercar after debuting in Toyota’s GR010 Hybrid in 2022 at the same event.

Since joining Ferrari’s ranks, Wadoux has rapidly established herself as one of the marque’s top GT3 drivers. She became Ferrari’s first-ever female factory driver in endurance racing in 2023 and went on to make history as the first woman to win a FIA WEC race, triumphing in the GTE Am class at Spa-Francorchamps.

Her 2025 campaign has been equally remarkable: competing with Ferrari’s 296 GT3, she claimed victories in both the IMSA Motul Petit Le Mans and the European Le Mans Series rounds at Le Castellet and Silverstone, securing runner-up in the ELMS standings and clinching the IMSA GTD class title in the Michelin Endurance Cup alongside Alessandro Pier Guidi and Simon Mann. With these achievements, Wadoux became the first woman since Christina Nielsen in 2017 to win an IMSA championship.

Having already made history in FIA WEC, IMSA, and even Japan’s Super GT – where she became the first woman to stand on the podium in nearly 30 years – Lilou Wadoux continues to be a reference point for women in sportscars; her participation in the Bahrain Rookie Test marks another deserved step in her career. She remains the only female driver to have driven hypercar machinery in the current era.

The five hours of running at Bahrain International Circuit will begin at 10:00 local time on 9th November.