Amato Ferrari — no relation to the family of Enzo Ferrari or the Ferrari car company — retired from driving in 1995 and began focusing on team management, initially competing in the Italian Superturismo Championship. Following that series' demise in 1999, he launched AF Corse (a contraction of "AF Racing" from his initials), and the team pivoted to sports car racing. Within a year, AF Corse was contracted by Maserati to develop, maintain, and transport the Trofeo Cup, a one-make series centred on the Maserati Coupe, a role the team continued until 2005.
In 2004, Maserati invited AF Corse to campaign the new Maserati MC12 in the FIA GT Championship. The team raced at their home event at Imola with drivers including Fabrizio de Simone, Andrea Bertolini, Mika Salo, and Johnny Herbert, earning two victories before the season closed. AF Corse returned to the championship in 2006, this time with Ferrari machinery in the GT2 class. Mika Salo was retained alongside Rui Aguas, Jaime Melo, and Matteo Bobbi. A debut win at Silverstone launched a season that ended with three victories and the GT2 class championship, defeating rival Ferrari entrant Scuderia Ecosse.
As defending champions in 2007, AF Corse brought in an entirely new driver lineup: Dirk Muller, Toni Vilander, Gianmaria Bruni, and Stephane Ortelli. With Motorola as title sponsor, the two Ferrari F430s dominated, winning nine of the ten rounds on the calendar and delivering a second consecutive championship. For 2008, the team expanded to three cars in the GT2 class, with a third entry running under the Advanced Engineering name.
When the FIA GT Championship was dissolved after 2009, AF Corse moved into the Le Mans Series for 2010, fielding three Ferrari F430 GT2s. Notable driver combinations included Toni Vilander partnered with former Formula One drivers Jean Alesi and Giancarlo Fisichella, and Gianmaria Bruni and Jaime Melo representing IMSA regular team Risi Competizione. In 2011, running the new Ferrari 458 Italia, AF Corse won the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup in the GTE-Pro category, including the final round at Petit Le Mans. The team also claimed the FIA GT3 European Championship drivers' title that year with Francisco Catellaci and Federico Leo.
At the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans, the AF Corse #51 Ferrari driven by Gianmaria Bruni, Giancarlo Fisichella, and Toni Vilander won the GTE Pro class. That same race saw an accident involving AF Corse privateer driver Piergiuseppe Perazzini and the Anthony Davidson-driven Toyota, which sent Davidson airborne at Mulsanne Corner and left him with two broken vertebrae.
In 2023, AF Corse and Scuderia Ferrari announced a formal partnership to field the Ferrari 499P in the FIA World Endurance Championship. The team entered two factory cars, with the driver lineup built around Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi in the #51 and Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, and Nicklas Nielsen in the #50. Ferrari won the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans in the race's centenary edition, ending a fifty-year absence from top-class Le Mans victories.
For 2024, a yellow-liveried privateer third entry was added as car #83, driven by Robert Kubica, Robert Shwartzman, and Yifei Ye. The #83 led much of the 2024 Le Mans race before retiring with a motor-generator unit failure. In 2025, car #83 — now with Kubica, Yifei Ye, and Phil Hanson — won Le Mans, while the factory Porsche 963 entries, operating under slightly different LMDh regulations, split the podium with the #51 and #50. Across three consecutive Le Mans victories from 2023 to 2025, all nine works drivers across the three cars — Pier Guidi, Calado, Giovinazzi, Fuoco, Molina, Nielsen, Kubica, Ye, and Hanson — earned a Le Mans win.
From 2011 to 2013, AF Corse operated a joint sportscar venture with Michael Waltrip Racing co-owners Michael Waltrip and Rob Kauffman. Known as AF Corse-Waltrip or AF Waltrip, the partnership competed in the FIA World Endurance Championship and the Rolex Sports Car Series using Ferrari GT machinery. The programme was dissolved in 2013 when Waltrip Racing chose to concentrate exclusively on NASCAR.