It’s the first annual Motornerd Awards, an end of year celebration of all that we’ve witnessed in the last 12 months. Max Verstappen took the driver of the year, but for the next award we go to an entirely different championship: the team of the year.

I won’t give the usual awards-show spiel about what this award means and every way in which it’s prestigious, but I will inform you it was a close cut decision. Toyota Gazoo Racing’s World Rally Team were right up there with 12 victories and a complete sweep of the manufacturers and drivers titles in the WRC, also considered were McLaren’s F1 team for their stellar campaign. Instead, it’s the reigning World Endurance Champions who get the nod. The 2025 Motornerd team of the year is that of Ferrari AF Corse’s Hypercar outfit.

Of course it would feel a bit unfair to hand out this award to the brand that runs countless privateer and factory efforts themselves, but the Hypercar team is a complete works effort. This year the Scuderia have stood out to me amidst such a stacked grid including multiple Le Mans winners Toyota, a new and improved JOTA/Cadillac and many other brands the Platinum Era of Sportscar Racing.

Despite the championship’s parity assuring BOP, with lap times separated by hundreds rather than tenths they’ve proven themselves time and time again. Though victory may have alluded the Scuderia in the post Le Mans rounds, they still found themselves in the hunt at Fuji and Bahrain, narrowly missing out on podiums on both occasions.

There’s more brilliance to be found, as not only did they control the driver’s and manufacturers’ standings at every round, the top three cars in the drivers standings were all Ferraris. It doesn’t hold a candle to Toyota’s 2023 campaign by any means, but it’s the kind of dominance not seen last year. Yes, they faltered in the second half of the season but their stranglehold in the championship’s first half meant they were never really going to lose their grasp on the silverware.

It’s a historically significant title for Maranello as well, as while the F1 team continues to flounder amid strategy woes, internal politics and a chairman who wants his drivers to plug their ears and swallow the continuing mediocrity of F1’s eldest team, the Hypercar squad just leap from strength to strength. In a grid that’s only getting more competitive with every passing race, Ferrari have now completed the transition from apprentice to master, and succeeded Toyota in being the benchmark for everyone else to beat.

That takes some doing, especially with zero driver transfers and having seemingly changed nothing since their debut. In a market where almost every brand has brought in new drivers and in which new aero jokers are becoming increasingly common, there’s a unique confidence about Ferrari in this paddock.

‘But of course they’re confident!’ I hear you cry, and yes, Ferrari will never shed the image of a team constantly admiring its own trophy cabinet and cleaning a massive portrait of Michael Schumacher every day. But with the F1 team there’s a subtle arrogance that is emitted, a refusal to change their ways. A reluctance to sacrifice tradition to keep up with the ever-modernizing McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull crews.

In WEC, there’s none of that. It’s a self-assured team that aren’t chasing the glory of the past, because that was officially consigned to the history books in 1992. The World Sportscar Championship is gone, and WEC will never quite conform to its own shadow. This Ferrari understands that; they acknowledge what came before but they’re not trying to repeat the past: they’re focusing on building their own legacy, and expanding the Scuderia’s own by proxy.

And this year, it’s shown. And it’s why they are the 2025 Motornerd Team of The Year.

image credit – Lukas Raich, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons