The 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans will see Ferrari return with a prototype race car at Circuit de la Sarthe after a whopping 50 years. But the Maranello-based firm is not the only Italian carmaker looking to get back on the endurance racing bandwagon. Isotta Fraschini also wants a piece of round-the-clock action.
Unfamiliar with the company? Well, that’s not surprising. Founded in 1900 in Milan, Isotta Fraschini stopped making cars after World War II. The firm didn’t disappear altogether, moving into marine engines in the 1950s. Still, the Le Mans-spec hypercar you see here is the first car wearing the “IF” badge in more than 70 years, except for a couple of concept vehicles built in the 1990s.
But even though it never raced at Le Mans, Isotta Fraschini did gain notoriety via the motorsport scene. Specifically, the company first went into the spotlight at the 1905 Coppa Florio, where it entered the Tipo D, a racer powered by a 17.2-liter engine.
Fast forward to 2022, and the automobile marque was revived to create an endurance race car under Le Mans Hypercar regulations. Designed in cooperation with Michelotto, which also prepped the iconic Ferrari F40 LM, the Tipo 6 LMH Competizione is already testing ahead of its official debut later in 2023.
Isotta Fraschini aims to compete in the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship, but word has it the race car could be homologated in time for the final race of the 2023 season, the 8 Hours of Bahrain. Recently spotted testing at Monza, the 1,030-kg (2,271-pound) race car features a hybrid setup that marries a 3.0-liter gasoline V6, a front-mounted electric motor, and a lithium-ion 900V battery. While the V6 generates 700 horsepower, the electric motor provides an additional 270 horses. And needless to say, the Tipo 6 LMH looks impressively fast on the Italian circuit.
But Isotta Fraschini isn’t stopping here. The company is also working on a track-only customer version of the car. Called the LMH Pista, it looks very similar to the race-spec model, but it has no FIA Balance of Performance (BoP) limitations. As a result, the V6 engine will deliver a bit of extra oomph at 750 horsepower. The Pista will come with a dedicated custom program, but details are still under wraps as of this writing.
Finally, the Tipo 6 project will also spawn a road-legal supercar called the LMH Strada. Essentially a Pista without the rear wing and with a bigger tank, the Strada will hit the streets with a 707-horsepower V6 and a 272-horsepower electric motor. Isotta claims it will hit 370 kph (230 mph). No additional details are available, but the fact that it looks almost identical to a Le Mans racer makes the Tipo 6 Strada worth following.