Ferrari’s Hypersail project has chosen Livorno as its base, in facilities provided by Azimut Yachts. The announcement came on Thursday 1 October from Maranello and Genoa. Azimut becomes Technical Partner and Official Yachting Partner of the 100-foot foiling monohull, and it is preparing a custom Fly 72 with 4,000 horsepower to tow the prototype onto its foils at about 30 knots. Seen from above, the new building has the yacht’s full outline drawn across its roof, with the bow pointing to the hangar exit. The yacht is not yet launched. No date has been given for its first tow. But with a base, a tow boat on the way and a partner on the Tuscan coast, Ferrari’s venture into ocean sailing is moving from the drawing board to the water.
A roof drawn with the yacht
The base was designed by the Ferrari Design Studio, headed by Flavio Manzoni, the company’s chief design officer. Above the entrance, a technical front view of the bow shows how the hull sits inside. The two colours of the livery alternate across the facade, with glass for the offices and polycarbonate panels for the spaces that house the yacht. The building will contain offices for the project team, the engineers and the shore team, gyms, laboratories for hydraulic, electrical and mechanical systems, and 3D-printing facilities. Ferrari gives two reasons for the choice: direct access to the Tyrrhenian Sea, with the range of sea and weather conditions a continuous testing programme needs, and the short distance to Maranello, where the engineering and design departments behind the project work. The livery itself was unveiled at Milan Design Week in April, when the grey of its carbon was renamed Grigio Hypersail.
4,000 horsepower on a tow line
The first flights will happen at the end of a rope. According to Azimut, in the opening tests, with no rig and no sails, the prototype will be pulled to around 30 knots and lifted onto its foils by the tow boat, named Azimut Fly 72 x Ferrari Hypersail. In Azimut’s account, its R&D department and technical office took six tonnes out of the boat with extensive use of carbon fibre. They fitted 4,000 metric horsepower, in a configuration made only for this project, and a tow post sized for the static and dynamic loads of towing. Ferrari’s release says the boat will be developed with its new partner. For comparison, the standard Fly 72 is 22.69 metres long, with two 1,400-horsepower MAN V12 engines and a top speed of up to 32 knots. Its role will grow. Later it will assist and monitor the sailing trials, carry the crew and serve as a hospitality boat at the project’s events.
“The Ferrari Hypersail project was born from the wish to create something never seen before, bringing Ferrari’s racing DNA into the world of ocean sailing.” Lorenzo Giorgetti, Chief Racing Revenue Officer, Ferrari, in Azimut’s announcement of 1 October 2026.
Three points of contact and no engine
The yacht was unveiled as a project in June 2025. Ferrari describes “a groundbreaking 100-foot flying ocean racing monohull prototype that will stabilise its flight on three points of contact”. The designer is the French naval architect Guillaume Verdier. The three points are a canting keel that carries one foil, a foil on the rudder and one of two lateral foils, used alternately. It is designed to sail on renewable energy alone, solar, wind and kinetic, with no combustion engine on board, and Ferrari says it will be the first yacht of its size to be entirely energy self-sufficient. Ferrari’s own magazine puts it at 30 metres long and 20 metres wide, with some 90 per cent of the prototype’s components made in the Maranello factory. The project is led by Enrico Voltolini, a naval engineer and sailor with experience in the America’s Cup and SailGP, with Matteo Lanzavecchia as chief technical officer and Marco Ribigini as team leader. Ferrari has said the yacht will launch in 2026, followed by its first sea trials.
Why Livorno
The reasons are practical. “Having such a strategically located facility on the Tyrrhenian Sea, suitable both for technical and athletic preparation and for sea trials, while at the same time being close to Maranello, gives us the ideal conditions to further accelerate the innovation process,” Voltolini said. For Manzoni, the project, up to the design of its base, has taken his studio “beyond the usual boundaries of our design field” and reinforced the belief that design is “a tool capable of generating innovation”. Angelo Pesci, Ferrari’s chief purchasing and quality officer, called the tow boat “a first concrete example of collaboration and operational synergy between the two companies”. Andrea Antichi, general manager of Azimut Yachts, linked the partnership to the yard’s independent R&D department, which he said is dedicated to “developing solutions that do not yet exist on the market”. Azimut is also on the quays in Genoa this week with fifteen boats, led by the Grande 44M, as set out in our guide to the show’s biggest yachts.
A racing team’s method, applied to the sea
Ferrari is building Hypersail the way it builds a race programme. There is a factory, a test base, a livery, a support vehicle and a team leader, and the first runs are controlled ones, behind a powerboat, before the yacht is left to the wind. The order matters. Marco Ribigini has described the ambition in the language of the road: the boat “aims to take part in races that, in automotive terms, are closer to endurance races, like the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Paris-Dakar”. Ferrari has not yet named a race or a record. What it has now is the place where the attempt will begin. Italy builds more superyachts than any other country, as the industry’s new figures show, and now a Ferrari will be tested off Livorno.
The Luxury.it perspective
The interesting thing about Hypersail is not speed alone. It is the idea that a 30-metre ocean yacht can fly on three points and cross oceans on energy it makes itself. A carmaker has chosen to prove it. The partnership with Azimut gives the project something a car company does not have: a partner on the sea, with premises in Livorno and a boat designed to tow the prototype. For Livorno, it brings a Ferrari project to its waterfront. For the rest of us, the dates to watch are the launch, scheduled for this year, and the first tow off the coast, when a grey and yellow yacht rises out of the water for the first time. That photograph will travel further than any press release.
Related guides
Azimut Grande 44M · The Italian superyachts of Monaco 2026 · The Cannes Yachting Festival · Yacht charter in Italy
