The team takes its name from the initials of founder Amato Ferrari, who has no familial connection to Enzo Ferrari or the Maranello car manufacturer. After retiring from driving in 1995, Ferrari turned to team management, entering the Italian Superturismo Championship. When that series folded in 1999, he rebranded his operation as AF Corse and redirected its focus toward sports car racing.
AF Corse's first major manufacturer partnership came with Maserati in the early 2000s. The team was contracted to manage the Maserati Trofeo Cup, a one-make series built around the Maserati Coupé, handling the development, maintenance, and logistics of the championship from its inception through 2005.
In 2004, Maserati invited the team to campaign the new MC12 in the FIA GT Championship. AF Corse assisted in development testing and ran the car at their home round at Imola, with drivers including Fabrizio de Simone, Andrea Bertolini, Mika Salo, and Johnny Herbert. The team secured two victories before the season's end.
The team's most dominant period in the FIA GT Championship came after switching focus to Ferrari machinery. Returning to the series in 2006 with the Ferrari F430, AF Corse won the GT2 class championship in their debut Ferrari season, taking three victories including one at the Spa 24 Hours. Drivers in that year included Mika Salo, Rui Águas, Jaime Melo, and Matteo Bobbi.
The 2007 season saw an even more commanding campaign. With drivers Dirk Müller, Toni Vilander, Gianmaria Bruni, and Stephane Ortelli, and the backing of Motorola as title sponsor, AF Corse's two Ferrari F430s won nine of the ten championship rounds and secured back-to-back GT2 titles. The team expanded to three cars in 2008, running a third entry under the Advanced Engineering banner with Matías Russo and Luís Pérez Companc.
When the FIA GT Championship was dissolved after 2010, AF Corse transitioned into the Le Mans Series and later the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup. In 2011, the team won the ILMC GTE-Pro class title using the newly homologated Ferrari 458 Italia GT2. That same year, AF Corse also claimed the FIA GT3 European Championship drivers' title through Francisco Catellaci and Federico Leo.
The team also entered the International GT Open and began operating satellite entries for other teams and partnerships, including Spirit of Race, PeCom Racing, 8Star Motorsports, and MR Racing, as well as a joint North American venture with Michael Waltrip Racing known as AF Waltrip. That partnership ran in the FIA World Endurance Championship and the Rolex Sports Car Series before closing in 2013.
AF Corse became a regular presence in the FIA World Endurance Championship, consistently fielding Ferrari GTE entries and developing strong driver partnerships. In 2023, AF Corse and Scuderia Ferrari announced a full factory hypercar collaboration, entering the Ferrari 499P in the WEC's top Hypercar class. The #51 car, driven by Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, and Antonio Giovinazzi, won at the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year — Ferrari's first outright Le Mans victory in the top class in fifty years.
In 2024, the team fielded a privateer yellow-liveried entry as car #83, driven by Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman, and Yifei Ye. The car led significant portions of the race before retiring with a motor-generator unit fault.
The 2025 Le Mans 24 Hours brought a historic result: the #83 entry, now crewed by Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye, and Phil Hanson, won the race outright. Combined with the victories of the #50 car (Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, Nicklas Nielsen) in 2023 and the #51 car (Pier Guidi, Calado, Giovinazzi) in 2024, AF Corse's three-car Ferrari hypercar programme achieved three consecutive Le Mans wins from 2023 to 2025. All nine of the core works drivers across the three cars had claimed a Le Mans victory within that span.
AF Corse stands as one of the most successful customer and partner racing teams in GT history. From supporting Maserati's early 2000s efforts to anchoring Ferrari's return to Le Mans outright victory, the team built its reputation on consistent championship performances across the FIA GT Championship, the Le Mans Series, and the FIA World Endurance Championship. The team's management structure — allowing it to simultaneously run factory-backed works entries and support customer programs under various banners — has made it a central figure in European and global GT racing for three decades.