Scuderia Ferrari

History

Scuderia Ferrari was founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929 to enter amateur drivers in various races. Ferrari himself had raced in Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali and Alfa Romeo cars before that date. The idea came about on the night of 16 November at a dinner in Bologna, where Ferrari solicited financial help from textile heirs Augusto and Alfredo Caniato and wealthy amateur racer Mario Tadini. He then gathered a team which at its peak included over forty drivers, most of whom raced in various Alfa Romeo 8C cars; Ferrari himself continued racing, with moderate success, until the birth of his first son Dino in 1932. The prancing horse blazon first appeared at the 1932 Spa 24 Hours in Belgium on a two-car team of Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Spiders, which finished first and second.

In 1933, Alfa Romeo experienced economic difficulties and withdrew its team from racing. From then, the Scuderia Ferrari became the acting racing team of Alfa Romeo when the factory released to the Scuderia the up to date Monoposto Tipo B racers. In 1935, Enzo Ferrari and Luigi Bazzi built the Alfa Romeo Bimotore, the first car to wear a Ferrari badge on the radiator cowl. Ferrari managed numerous established drivers (notably Tazio Nuvolari, Giuseppe Campari, Achille Varzi, and Louis Chiron) and several talented rookies (Mario Tadini, Guy Moll, Carlo Maria Pintacuda, and Antonio Brivio) from his headquarters in Viale Trento e Trieste, Modena, Italy, until 1938, at which point Alfa Romeo made him the manager of the factory racing division, Alfa Corse. Alfa Romeo had bought the shares of the Scuderia Ferrari in 1937 and transferred, from 1 January 1938, the official racing activity to Alfa Corse whose new buildings were being erected next to the Alfa factory at Portello, Milan. The Viale Trento e Trieste facilities remained active to assist the racing customers.

Enzo Ferrari disagreed with this policy change and was dismissed by Alfa in 1939. In October 1939, Enzo Ferrari left Alfa when the racing activity stopped and founded Auto Avio Costruzioni Ferrari, which also manufactured machine tools. The agreement with Alfa included the condition that he would not use the Ferrari name on cars for four years. In the winter of 1939–1940, Ferrari started work on a racecar of his own, the Tipo 815 (eight cylinders, 1.5 L displacement). The 815s, designed by Alberto Massimino, were thus the first true Ferrari cars. After Alberto Ascari and the Marchese Lotario Rangoni Machiavelli di Modena drove them in the 1940 Mille Miglia, World War II put a temporary end to racing and the 815s saw no more competition. Ferrari continued to manufacture machine tools (specifically oleodynamic grinding machines). In 1943, he moved his headquarters to Maranello, where it was bombed in November 1944 and February 1945.

Headquarters

The team was based in Modena from its pre-war founding until 1943, when Enzo Ferrari moved the team to a new factory in Maranello in 1943, and both Scuderia Ferrari and Ferrari's road car factory remain at Maranello to this day. The team owns and operates a test track on the same site, the Fiorano Circuit built in 1972, which is used for testing road and race cars.

Identity

The team is named after its founder Enzo Ferrari. Scuderia is Italian for a stable reserved for racing horses, and is also commonly applied to Italian motor racing teams. The prancing horse was the symbol used on Italian World War I ace Francesco Baracca's fighter plane. It became the logo of Ferrari after the fallen ace's parents, close acquaintances of Enzo Ferrari, suggested that Ferrari use the symbol as the logo of the Scuderia, telling him it would "bring him good luck".

Formula One

Since its debut in 1950, Ferrari has become a byword for Formula One. For many, Ferrari and Formula One racing have become inseparable, being the only team to have competed in every season since the world championship began.

Engine supply

Ferrari produces engines for its own Formula One cars and has supplied engines to other teams.

Ferrari has previously supplied engines to Minardi (1991), Scuderia Italia (1992–1993), Sauber (1997–2005 with engines badged as Petronas, and 2010–2025), Prost (2001, badged Acer), Red Bull Racing (2006), Spyker (2007), Scuderia Toro Rosso (2007–2013, 2016), Force India (2008), and Marussia (2014–2015).

For the 2026 season, Ferrari supplies the Haas F1 Team and Cadillac. In December 2024, Ferrari announced that the forthcoming Cadillac Formula One team had signed a multi-year deal to use their engines and gearboxes from 2026 onwards, until GM PPU develops an F1-ready power unit.

Relationship with governing body

Ferrari did not enter the first-ever race of the championship, the 1950 British Grand Prix, due to a dispute with the organisers over "start money". In the 1960s, Ferrari withdrew from several races in strike actions. In 1987, Ferrari considered abandoning Formula One for the American IndyCar series. This threat was used as a bargaining tool with the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), and Enzo Ferrari offered to cancel the IndyCar Project and commit to Formula One on the condition that the technical regulations were not changed to exclude V12 engines. The FIA agreed to this, and the IndyCar project was shelved, although a car, the Ferrari 637, had already been constructed. In 2009, it had emerged that Ferrari had an FIA-sanctioned veto on the technical regulations.

Team orders controversies

Team orders have proven controversial at several points in Ferrari's history. At the 1982 San Marino Grand Prix, the two Ferraris were leading with Gilles Villeneuve ahead of Didier Pironi. The team showed the slow sign to its drivers, and, as per a pre-race agreement, the driver leading at that point was expected to take the win of the Grand Prix. Villeneuve slowed and expected that Pironi would follow; the latter did not and instead passed Villeneuve. Villeneuve was angered by what he saw as a betrayal by his teammate and, at one point, had even refused to go onto the podium. This feud is often considered to have been a contributory factor to his fatal accident in qualifying at the next race, the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix.

At the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, after having started from pole position and leading the first 70 laps, Rubens Barrichello was instructed to let Ferrari teammate Michael Schumacher pass him, a move that proved to be unpopular among many Formula One fans and the FIA, the sport's governing body. Following this incident and others in which team orders were used, such as McLaren's use of them at the 1997 European Grand Prix and at the 1998 Australian Grand Prix, and Jordan Grand Prix's at the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix, team orders in Formula One were officially banned ahead of the 2003 season.

On lap 49 of the 2010 German Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso went past Felipe Massa for the race lead, after Ferrari had informed Massa that Alonso was "faster than him". This communication has widely been interpreted as a team order from Ferrari. Alonso won the race, with Massa finishing second and Sebastian Vettel taking the final place on the podium. Ferrari were fined the maximum penalty available to the stewards, $100,000, for breach of regulations and for "bringing the sport into disrepute" as per "Article 151c' of the International Sporting Code". Ferrari said they would not contest the fine. The team were referred to the FIA World Motor Sport Council, where they upheld the stewards' view but did not take any further action. The ban on team orders was subsequently lifted for the 2011 season.

Racing colours

In keeping with their Italian roots, the Ferrari works team has always kept a red colour in the tradition of rosso corsa, the national racing colour of Italy, except for last two races in the 1964 season (the 1964 United States Grand Prix and 1964 Mexican Grand Prix) when Enzo Ferrari let his cars be entered by the NART team in American national racing colours (white with blue lengthwise "Cunningham racing stripes") to protest against Italian racing authorities. However, Ferrari cars entered by non-Italian privateer teams wore their respective national racing colours until the 1961 Belgian Grand Prix when Belgian driver Olivier Gendebien privately entered a Ferrari car painted in the Belgian racing yellow colour, scoring 4th behind three other Ferrari cars painted in red as they were entered by the Scuderia Ferrari works team itself, and driven by US drivers Phil Hill and Richie Ginther as well as German Wolfgang von Trips.

Ferrari won the 1964 World championship with John Surtees by competing the last two races (the United States Grand Prix and Mexican Grand Prix) in Ferrari 158 cars painted white with blue lengthwise "Cunningham racing stripes" -the national colours of the teams licensed in the United States- as these were entered not by the Italian works team themselves but by the American NART team. This was done as a protest against the agreement between Ferrari and the Italian Racing Authorities regarding their planned mid-engined Ferrari race car. Since Ferrari cars entered in 1965 and 1969 seasons by the NART team and at the 1966 Italian Grand Prix by the British privateer team Reg Parnell kept wearing the red colour, the 1964 Mexican Grand Prix was the last time Ferrari cars wore other than the traditional red colour in Formula One.

Formula One team sponsorship

The Ferrari Formula One team was resistant to the commercial sponsorship for many years and it was not until 1977 that the cars began to feature the logo of the Fiat group (which had been the owners of the Ferrari company since 1969). Until the 1980s, the only other companies whose logos appeared on Ferrari's Formula One cars were technical partners, such as Magneti Marelli, Brembo, and Agip. At the end of the 1996 season, Philip Morris International through its brand Marlboro withdrew its sponsorship agreement with McLaren after 22 years (since the 1974 season) to become the title sponsor of Ferrari, resulting to the change of the official team's name to Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro from the beginning of the 1997 season until the 2011 European Grand Prix. Marlboro had already been Ferrari's minor sponsor since the 1984 season and increased to the team's major sponsorship in the 1993 season.

Alongside Jordan Grand Prix, the team was required to run non-tobacco liveries in United States Grand Prix in the 2000s due to United States Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement requirements, as Phillip Morris was sponsoring Team Penske at the time; a clause in the settlement allowed each tobacco company to sponsor only one sporting entity. In September 2005, Ferrari signed an extension of the arrangement until 2011 at a time when advertising of tobacco sponsorship had become illegal in the European Union, and other major teams had withdrawn from relationships with tobacco companies (e.g. McLaren had ended its eight-year relationship with West). In reporting the deal, F1 Racing magazine judged it to be a black day for the sport, putting non-tobacco funded teams at a disadvantage and discouraging other brands from entering a sport still associated with tobacco. The magazine estimated that between 2005 and 2011, Ferrari received $1 billion from the agreement. The last time Ferrari ran explicit tobacco sponsorship on the car was at the 2007 Chinese Grand Prix, with barcodes and other subliminal markers used afterwards.

On 8 July 2011, it was announced that the Marlboro section of its official team name had been removed from the 2011 British Grand Prix onwards, following complaints from sponsorship regulators. As a consequence, the official team's name was reverted to Scuderia Ferrari. At the 2018 Japanese Grand Prix, Ferrari added Philip Morris International's new Mission Winnow project logos to the car and team clothing. Although Mission Winnow is described as a non-tobacco brand "dedicated to science, technology and innovation", commentators such as The Guardian's Richard Williams have noted that the logos incorporate elements whose shapes mimic the iconic Marlboro cigarette packet design. In 2019, Mission Winnow became the team's title sponsor, and the team originally entered the 2019 season as Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow. Mission Winnow was dropped from team name before the season opener, while the car's Mission Winnow logos were replaced by a special 90th anniversary logo, after Australian authorities had launched an investigation into whether the initiative introduced by Philip Morris contravened laws banning tobacco advertising. Mission Winnow was restored for the second race of the season, and was used until the Monaco Grand Prix. The Mission Winnow logos were again replaced by the 90th anniversary logos for the Canadian until the Russian Grand Prix. The Mission Winnow branding returned at the Japanese Grand Prix. At the end of the 2021 season, the Mission Winnow sponsorship was dropped to promote new technologies.

Other racing series

Formula Two

Ferrari competed in the Formula 2 series in several years, as follows:

1948–1951: 166 F2

1951–1953: 500 F2

1953: 553 F2

1957–1960: Dino 156 F2

1967–1969: Dino 166 F2

Sportscar racing

From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, Ferrari competed in sports car racing with great success, winning the overall World Sportscar Championship (WSC) twelve times. Ferrari cars (including non-works entries) won the Mille Miglia eight times, the Targa Florio seven times, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans nine times. In this span of time, Ferrari was almost the only constructor able to support the participation in both the two most important categories of international car motor racing at the time, i.e. the Formula One and endurance racing championships. The fact that it did so, achieving remarkable success with few resources and coming from an impoverished post-World War II Italy, it is seen as a testament to the prowess, passion, and dedication to the men of the Scuderia and its founder. Ferrari scored international successes in sports car racing while still at the startup phase, taking wins in 1948 at the Mille Miglia and at the Targa Florio with the Ferrari 166 S and in 1949 at the Mille Miglia, at the12 Hours of Paris, at the 24 Hours of Spa, at the Targa Florio, and at the 24 Hours of Le Mans all in the same season. This remarkable streak of victories was achieved with the 2-litre Ferrari 166 MM against larger engined sports cars and already known marques. The 166MM in its famous barchetta form represented also a milestone in car design history and was soon copied abroad, ending up revisited in the lines of the Shelby Cobra of the early 1960s. Ferrari cars, being able to win at the first try at Le Mans and to triumph in all the major races of the time, become soon a product of excellence and famous, rich people started to desire and buy them.

The streak of prestigious victories continued the following seasons with wins at the Carrera Panamericana in 1951, at the 1950 and 1951 Mille Miglia, and almost at the same time Ferrari started to win in Formula One at several international events. In 1953, with the creation of the WSC, Ferrari, along with other manufacturers like Aston Martin, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, and Jaguar began to enter multiple factory-backed cars in races, such as the Carrera Panamericana in Mexico, the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France, the Mille Miglia in Italy, the 24 Hours of Spa in Belgium, the Nürburgring 1000 km in Germany, and the Sicilian Targa Florio. Ferrari launched a large range of sports racers over the next three years. This included the traditional compact Colombo V12-powered Ferrari 250 MM; the larger V12 Lampredi-powered 340 MM, 375 MM, 375 Plus, and 410 S; and Jano-powered 290 MM, 315 S, and 335 S; the four-cylinder 500, 625, 750, and 860 Monzas; and the six-cylinder 376 S and 735 LM. With this potent line-up, Ferrari was able to claim six of the first seven WSC titles (1953, 1954, 1956, 1957, and 1958).

Personnel and statistics

Formula One results

As a constructor, Ferrari has achieved the following statistics:

Constructors' Championship winning percentage: 23.5%

Drivers' Championship winning percentage: 19.7%

Winning percentage: 22%

Formula One records

Ferrari has achieved unparalleled success in Formula One and holds many significant records as both a constructor and an engine manufacturer (all numbers are based on World Championship events only). Ferrari is the most successful Formula One engine manufacturer with 251 wins, having achieved a single non-Ferrari victory with Scuderia Toro Rosso at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix, as well as one Ferrari privateer win at the 1961 French Grand Prix.

Drivers' Champions

Nine drivers have won the Drivers' Championship while driving for Ferrari, winning a total of fifteen Drivers' Championships.

Team principals / sporting directors

Federico Giberti (1950–1951)

Nello Ugolini (1952–1955)

Eraldo Sculati (1956)

Mino Amorotti (1957)

Romolo Tavoni (1958–1961)

Eugenio Dragoni (1962–1966)

Franco Lini (1967)

Franco Gozzi (1968–1970)

Peter Schetty (1971–1972)

Alessandro Colombo (1973)

Luca Cordero di Montezemolo (1974–1975)

Daniele Audetto (1976)

Roberto Nosetto (1977)

Marco Piccinini (1978–1988)

Cesare Fiorio (1989–1991)

Claudio Lombardi (1991)

Sante Ghedini (1992–1993)

Jean Todt (1993–2007)

Stefano Domenicali (2008–2014)

Marco Mattiacci (2014)

Maurizio Arrivabene (2015–2018)

Mattia Binotto (2019–2022)

Fred Vasseur (since 2023)

Privateer entries

Between 1950 and 1966, numerous privateer teams entered Ferrari cars in World Championship events. Between them, these teams achieved five podium finishes, including Giancarlo Baghetti's win at the 1961 French Grand Prix, and one fastest lap (Baghetti at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix). The 1966 Italian Grand Prix was the last time a Ferrari car was entered by a privateer team when Giancarlo Baghetti drove a private Ferrari car entered by the British Reg Parnell team.

Esports

The following drivers won the Formula One Esports Drivers' Championship for Scuderia Ferrari Esports Team:

David Tonizza (2019).