Scuderia Ferrari was founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929, initially to race cars produced by Alfa Romeo. By 1947, Ferrari had begun building its own cars. The team 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 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. 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.
In the winter of 1939–1940, Ferrari started work on a racecar of his own, the Tipo 815. 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. In 1943, he moved his headquarters to Maranello, where it was bombed in November 1944 and February 1945.
Rules for a Grand Prix World Championship had been discussed before the war; it took several years afterwards for the series to become active. Meanwhile, Ferrari rebuilt his works in Maranello and constructed the 12-cylinder, 1.5 L Tipo 125, which competed at several non-championship Grands Prix. The car made its debut at the 1948 Italian Grand Prix with Raymond Sommer and achieved its first win at the minor Circuito di Garda with Giuseppe Farina. After the four-year condition expired, the road car company was called Ferrari S.p.A., while the name SEFAC (Società Esercizio Fabbriche Automobili e Corse) was used for the racing department.
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.
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".
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.
As a constructor in Formula One, Ferrari has a record 16 Constructors' Championships. Their most recent Constructors' Championship was won in 2008. The team also holds the record for the most Drivers' Championships with 15, won by nine different drivers including Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Mike Hawthorn, Phil Hill, John Surtees, Niki Lauda, Jody Scheckter, Michael Schumacher, and Kimi Räikkönen. Räikkönen's title in 2007 is the most recent for the team. The 2020 Tuscan Grand Prix marked Ferrari's 1000th Grand Prix in Formula One.
Schumacher is the team's most successful driver. Joining the team in 1996 and driving for them until his first retirement in 2006, he won five consecutive drivers' titles and 72 Grands Prix for the team. His titles came consecutively between 2000 and 2004, and the team won consecutive constructors' titles between 1999 and 2004, marking the era as the most successful period in the team's history. The team's drivers for the 2026 season are Charles Leclerc and seven-time Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton.
Ferrari produces engines for its own Formula One cars and has supplied engines to other teams. 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.
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. 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.
The Ferrari Formula One team was resistant to commercial sponsorship for many years. It was not until 1977 that the cars began to feature the logo of the Fiat group. At the end of the 1996 season, Philip Morris International through its brand Marlboro became the title sponsor of Ferrari, resulting in 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.
On 24 April 2024, the team announced a multi-year title partnership with HP Inc., renaming the team (including E-sports and F1 Academy) as Scuderia Ferrari HP from the 2024 Miami Grand Prix onwards.
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. 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 the 12 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.
In 2023, after a 50-year hiatus, Ferrari returned to the top class of endurance racing with its new Ferrari 499P, a Le Mans Hypercar prototype. Subsequently, they were able to compete for the world title and in prestigious events, such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the 24 Hours of Daytona, and the 12 Hours of Sebring. At the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans, Ferrari achieved its first Le Mans victory since 1965 with the No. 51 499P driven by Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, and Antonio Giovinazzi. At the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans, Ferrari achieved its eleventh victory, recording consecutive victories at Le Mans for the first time since 1965 with the No. 50 499P driven by Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen. The success was repeated in 2025, with the No. 83 499P driven by Phil Hanson, Robert Kubica and Yifei Ye winning Ferrari's twelfth 24h of Le Mans. Ferrari went on to win the 2025 World Manufacturers' and Drivers' Championships.
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