When you arrive in Maranello, you expect to hear the roar of a twelve-cylinder engine and smell the petrol. In this small town of 17,000 inhabitants, where everyone, sooner or later, has caught a whiff of engine oil, every Formula 1 weekend all eyes are fixed on a single red car: the Ferrari. This time, however, the reason for our trip is different, because from today, in Maranello, you can also breathe in the sea air.
The Ferrari Hypersail is the 100-foot flying monohull built to take on the oceans. This press trip, to which we at Top Yacht Design have been invited, is the perfect opportunity to discover how the Prancing Horse is bringing its DNA to the world of offshore sailing, overturning the common perception that life in Maranello revolves solely around engines.
Where ideas are born
The day begins at the Style Centre, the building where all the group’s cars take shape; and it is here that the Hypersail project was also conceived. In this very same space, Ferrari’s four-wheeled car designers worked side by side with those who, together with the French naval architect Guillaume Verdier, envisaged this new super-yacht: a foiling monohull capable of generating power comparable to that of the great record-breaking multihulls, but with much lower drag.
This same ecosystem also gave rise to the much-discussed Ferrari Luce, the company’s first fully electric car, designed in collaboration with Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s LoveFrom collective, and the Ferrari 12Cilindri, the latest direct descendant of the naturally aspirated V12 that first passed through the gates of Maranello in 1947. Whilst the Luce looks to the future – silent and powered by electric motors – the 12Cilindri is its exact opposite: a celebration of pure combustion, of noise, of mechanics that you feel in your hands even before you see the figures. Two cars at opposite ends of the spectrum, yet both profoundly Ferrari: because the Prancing Horse’s DNA has never been about a single technology, but a way of understanding driving, emotion and the obsessive pursuit of performance. And it is precisely this dual spirit – capable of holding tradition and innovation together – that we shall rediscover, transposed onto the water, in Hypersail.
Why a boat?
Hypersail is the first fully foiling monohull for offshore racing designed to be energy self-sufficient: a vessel built to challenge ocean records, yet conceived in the heart of Maranello. Matteo Lanzavecchia, Head of Vehicle Engineering and CTO of the project, explains how the boat is built on three pillars: Ferrari’s DNA, which naturally drives the pursuit of new endurance challenges; innovation, understood as performance and efficiency advancing hand in hand; and the cross-pollination between different worlds – from motoring to sailing, and vice versa.
Benedetto Vigna, CEO of Ferrari, explains that at the outset, very few people knew that Ferrari was working on a boat: at the factory, people pass each other every day without knowing what others are working on, to preserve the confidentiality of the projects. When the project was revealed, many asked, “Why a boat?” – and the answer, explains Vigna, is that to develop technology, you have to be daring, think outside the box and explore new areas. Hypersail is the laboratory that allows Ferrari to do just that, bringing innovations from the boat to the cars and from the cars to the boat.
Winch by Wire
After the presentation, we’re split into groups: I end up with the specialist journalists – those who live and breathe the sea every day. First stop: the test bench for Winch by Wire – the technology that reinvents the role of the grinder, the crew member on board who operates the winches to trim the sails.
In the traditional system, the grinder starts off nimbly, with the sheet slack; as the sail fills, the effort increases and the cadence drops: a bit like tackling a hill on a bike with too high a gear ratio. With Winch by Wire, the pedestal is no longer mechanically linked to the winch: it is a small generator that converts muscle power into electrical energy, which is then distributed where it’s needed – to the sheets or the hydraulic systems. The motors beneath the pedestals are, interestingly, the same as those used in the active suspension systems of the Ferrari Purosangue and F80.
On the test bench, they show us the human body’s power curve: too fast, and power drops; too slow, and the perceived effort skyrockets. The system keeps the grinder right in the zone where the body works best: he feels a constant effort, whilst the machine directs the energy where it’s most useful. A little competition immediately breaks out in the group over who can produce the most watts. I hold my own with a respectable second place, but it’s clear that my career at Ferrari Hypersail ends here: on the test bench!
On board a boat that doesn’t yet exist
Access to the research and development laboratories – situated next to the Renzo Piano-designed Wind Tunnel, historically dedicated to the aerodynamic development of Formula 1 single-seaters – is by badge only. Here, inside the Hypersail simulator, everything that can be physically replicated is recreated – cockpit, seats, screens, ergonomics – with the rest added via augmented reality: the sea, the 28-metre mast, the 8-metre foils. We put on a helmet that aligns our real-world view with the boat’s CAD model, and as soon as we glance behind us, there they are: the grinders at their stations. It really does feel as though we’ve stepped on board.
We’re told that during actual sessions, amidst the voices of the sailors and engineers in their headsets, those in the simulator quickly forget they’re in a virtual environment. It’s used to train the sailors, design the most ergonomic cockpit possible, and test how the boat will perform in different conditions even before it hits the water. The optimisation gains measured here are small – very small, between 2 and 3 per cent – but on a round-the-world race they really do make a difference.
We are then shown the work of the Flight Controller, who works alongside the helmsman to keep the boat ‘flying’ using eight independent flaps, distributed across the foils, keel and rudder. A computer receives course objectives, flight height and trim settings from the sailors and translates them into actual movements. Flying low isn’t just a matter of safety: it’s about aerodynamic efficiency – the same principle that allows America’s Cup boats to fly just skimming the water. A predictive control system keeps the boat stable, relieving the sailors of the burden of constant micro-corrections and leaving them free to focus on strategy.
The final stop before lunch is an underground room where Ferrari analyses, in virtual reality, all the models coming out of the factory – usually cars, but in this case a boat. Here, shapes, interference and potential errors are studied to minimise physical prototyping: a process that Hypersail shares with supercars, proof of just how much the boat is now a fully-fledged part of the Ferrari system.
The Ferrari Spirit
At midday, the sea gives way to land: it’s lunchtime and a minibus takes us to a small restaurant next to the Fiorano circuit. Here, you can breathe in the true spirit of a town where even the traffic lights are red. Amidst memorabilia and photographs hanging on the walls – all strictly Ferrari – we sit down to eat alongside drivers, engineers and enthusiasts. For some of the invited journalists, the visit to Maranello would end here, but there are those, like me, who, having had this first taste, still want to see the company’s red heart. So, in the afternoon, we also manage to squeeze in a tour of the factory, and it is here that you truly understand what Ferrari is all about. The assembly line resembles an operating theatre: silent, orderly, almost sacred. The cars aren’t mass-produced; they’re built one by one, and each one, right from the very first bolt, is already promised to a specific customer, with their own specifications, colours and details. Robots and human hands work side by side, but it’s always the artisan’s touch that takes the lead. Ferrari, after all, remains first and foremost this: a factory where man and machine come together to create something extraordinary.
Waiting for the boat to take to the sea
The day ends with the feeling of having seen just the tip of the iceberg of a whole new world that is about to unfold. The hull came out of the mould today, and work on the on-board systems and appendages will begin shortly. Ferrari’s stated aim is to have Hypersail on the water by spring 2027.
For sailing enthusiasts, it is fascinating to see how a symbol of speed on tarmac has chosen the sea as its new laboratory for the architecture of energy and control. For Ferrari enthusiasts, it is reassuring to discover that, even when discussing foils, solar panels and wind turbines, the focus always remains on the human element, the human touch and the obsessive pursuit of the right sensation: behind the wheel, or in this case, at the helm.
Giacomo Barbaro
