Capelli began competitive kart racing aged 15. In 1983, he became Italian Formula Three champion after dominating the series with nine victories. He then moved with the Coloni team to the European Formula Three Championship and was champion again in 1984.
In 1985, Capelli graduated to the European Formula 3000 Championship with Genoa Racing on a March-Cosworth and won one race. After making his Formula One debut in 1985 and failing to sign a full-time contract, he contested the 1986 Formula 3000 Championship, still with Genoa Racing, and also raced a BMW in the European Touring Car Championship.
In 1985, Capelli debuted in Formula One driving a Tyrrell at the European Grand Prix and finished fourth in Australia. He was not picked up for a full-time Formula One drive in 1986. Despite not landing a full-time contract, Capelli started several F1 races for the AGS team.
Cesare Gariboldi, boss of Genoa Racing, was working with Robin Herd of March to create a new Formula One outfit. Capelli was a core component in their plans, and by this time Capelli and Gariboldi had an almost father-son relationship.
In 1987, Capelli was in Formula One full-time with the March team, led by Gariboldi and running Herd's new chassis with a Cosworth V8 normally aspirated engine. He also continued with BMW touring cars for the Schnitzer team, as the March budget was tight — so tight they raced at the Belgian Grand Prix with a detuned 3.3-litre sports car engine rather than the full 3.5-litre Formula One unit. Capelli scored March's first point with sixth at the Monaco Grand Prix.
In 1988, Capelli had a March chassis designed by Adrian Newey combined with a Judd V8 engine derived from the Brabham-Honda CART engine and the Judd/Honda F3000 unit. March shared the Judd engine with the French Ligier team and with Williams, who had lost their supply of turbocharged Honda engines to McLaren. Capelli was joined by Brazilian rookie Maurício Gugelmin, the British Formula 3 Champion. The March 881 was the surprise of the year.
At Spa-Francorchamps, Capelli scored his first podium with a third place behind Ayrton Senna's and Alain Prost's McLarens — though this was not confirmed until after the season when the Benettons were disqualified for fuel irregularities. His best finish was second place at the Portuguese Grand Prix behind Prost. He also became the first non-turbo driver since 1983 to lead a World Championship Grand Prix: on lap 16 of the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, Prost missed a gear coming out of the final chicane and Capelli got ahead before the start/finish line, officially leading the lap. Prost used Honda's superior power to regain the lead before turn 1, and Capelli's Judd V8 then suffered an electrical failure three laps later.
March had financial problems and a sponsor, Leyton House, acquired a controlling interest. The definitive 1989 Leyton House March was a disappointment; Capelli only finished once throughout the season — 12th in Belgium — and was classified on one further occasion. Despite this, he was one of only six drivers to start all 16 races of the 1989 season, the others being McLaren's Senna and Prost, the Williams duo Riccardo Patrese and Thierry Boutsen, and Benetton's Alessandro Nannini. Team spirit remained intact despite Gariboldi's death in a car crash, and Capelli took up his option for 1990.
Newey's 1990 car (given the prefix CG in honour of Gariboldi) had excellent aerodynamics and exclusive use of Judd's updated V8, but it was intolerant of bumps. At the notoriously bumpy Mexico City track, neither driver could control the car and both failed to qualify. At Paul Ricard, however, Capelli led Gugelmin in a Leyton House 1–2 throughout much of the race. Gugelmin retired, and Capelli was overtaken near the end by the Ferrari of Prost with only three laps remaining, finishing second. Newey left the team shortly before that race to join Williams. Despite promising showings at Silverstone and Hockenheim, Paul Ricard remained the team's best result of the season.
In 1991, Leyton House bankrolled the ambitious Ilmor V10 engine programme. When Leyton House owner Akira Akagi was arrested in connection with the Fuji Bank fraud, the team was in a precarious state. Capelli had already signed for Scuderia Ferrari for 1992, so he voluntarily stepped down, allowing pay driver Karl Wendlinger to finish the season, and Capelli personally paid to attend the races he missed in order to offer support and advice to his rookie substitute.
In 1992, Capelli became the first Italian with a regular drive with Ferrari since Michele Alboreto in 1988, following Gianni Morbidelli's one-off race for the team the previous season. As of 2025, Capelli is the last Italian to have had a regular drive for Ferrari, with substitute appearances for Nicola Larini (1994), Luca Badoer and Giancarlo Fisichella (both 2009). The new car was the F92A, and expectations were high, but the car was not competitive.
A driver who enjoyed the convivial atmosphere of a family-type team, Capelli struggled to integrate with the bureaucratic structure of the early 1990s Ferrari. Losing motivation, the team in turn lost confidence in him, and his teammate Jean Alesi gained the upper hand. Capelli was sacked before the season's end — the last time until Felipe Massa in 2011 that a Ferrari driver failed to finish on the podium during a season.
Taking a Jordan seat for 1993 alongside young rookie Rubens Barrichello, Capelli failed to rediscover the form that had once marked him as a champion of the future. After failing to qualify for the second race in Brazil, he left the team by mutual consent and was replaced by Thierry Boutsen. He did not race in Formula One again.
Following his exit from Formula One, Capelli raced from 1994 to 1996 with a Nissan Primera in the German Super Tourenwagen Cup for BMS Scuderia Italia and in some rounds of the Spanish Touring Car Championship in 1995 and 1996.
Capelli became a Formula One commentator from 1998 until 2017 on the Italian TV station Rai 1.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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