For 686 days, Carlos Sainz held a strange piece of Ferrari trivia. He was gone from the team, driving for Williams, and yet he remained the last man to win a Grand Prix for the Scuderia. Every Sunday that passed without a Ferrari victory kept his name attached to that record a little longer, an asterisk nobody at Maranello particularly enjoyed. Lewis Hamilton finally erased it in Barcelona, gambling on a three stop strategy and a lucky Virtual Safety Car to take his first win in red. It also gave Ferrari its first win as a constructor since Sainz’s 2024 Mexico City victory.
Thrustmaster’s answer to all that patience is the Ferrari 499P Centenary Winner Edition, a 1:1 replica of the wheel from the car that finally ended a different Ferrari drought, 58 years without a Le Mans win. The parallel writes itself. Limited to 499 individually numbered units and priced at €851, the wheel arrives as both a sim racing peripheral and a small monument to the idea that Ferrari eventually delivers, even when the wait stretches past reasonable. Seven programmable encoders, a live telemetry display, and a hand applied carbon fiber backplate round out a build clearly meant to be displayed as often as it is driven. It treats that 2023 win with real reverence.
Designer: Thrustmaster, in collaboration with Ferrari and 24H Le Mans
The face reads less like a gaming peripheral and more like a pit wall radio transcript. A 4.3 inch display sits dead center, surfacing up to 140 telemetry parameters, flanked by RPM and flag status LEDs lifted from the real 499P dashboard. A Ferrari yellow engine map dial anchors the layout, stamped with the Prancing Horse. Seven programmable encoders ring it, three rotary and four thumb operated, labeled for brake bias, fuel strategy, and traction control. Every control here earns its place because a driver needed it mid stint.
Flip it over and the design shifts from screen to structure. A molded carbon fiber backplate, hand applied rather than machine stamped, houses six paddles, two carbon fiber shifters and four metal units mirroring the 499P setup. The shift action carries real mechanical resistance instead of a springy click. Even the screws match the rest of the build, the kind of consistency you expect from a team that just spent three years dominating Le Mans. At 5.5 kilograms, it has the heft of something engineered rather than molded for a toy aisle.
Every unit ships on a steel display stand engraved with the 499P and Le Mans centenary branding, built to look as good on a shelf as on a rig. Two A3 posters round things out, one an official Le Mans print with gold foil detailing, the other a technical blueprint of the wheel itself. Thrustmaster throws in the full Le Mans Ultimate game too, ready to put the number 51 livery back on track digitally. At €851, a run capped at 499 units was never going to be priced like a normal accessory.
Thrustmaster built this wheel to honor one Ferrari comeback, and it launched right as the team pulled off another. Hamilton’s win in Barcelona had nothing to do with Le Mans, but it carried the same shape, an overdue victory arriving after everyone had stopped quite expecting it. Buy this wheel for the 2023 endurance win it commemorates, or buy it because Ferrari just reminded everyone why patience with this team eventually pays off. Either way, you are holding a piece of a brand that has decided 2026 is the year for overdue victories, on track and on the shelf. I would bet Maranello does not mind the parallel one bit.
