Montezemolo was born in Bologna as the youngest son of a Piedmontese aristocrat whose family had served the Royal House of Savoy for generations. He graduated with a law degree from La Sapienza University in 1971, then pursued a master's degree in international commercial law at Columbia University. His early racing involvement was modest — he raced a Giannini Fiat 500 with a friend and briefly drove for the privately owned Lancia HF Squadra Corse rally team — before pivoting toward management and administration.
In 1973, Enzo Ferrari personally invited Montezemolo to serve as his assistant, and in 1974 he was appointed sporting director of Scuderia Ferrari. His impact was immediate: under his stewardship Ferrari won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship with Niki Lauda in both 1975 and 1977. In 1976 he was promoted to lead all FIAT racing activities, and by 1977 he had advanced into broader senior management within the FIAT empire, overseeing roles ranging from managing director of Cinzano to director of the publishing house Itedi.
In November 1991, FIAT chairman Gianni Agnelli appointed Montezemolo president of Ferrari, which had been struggling in the years following Enzo Ferrari's death in 1988. He moved quickly to restructure the team, enlisting Niki Lauda as a consultant and reshaping leadership around executive director Jean Todt. The Italian road car business, which had been burdened with heavy debts, was returned to profitability during the 1990s under his watch.
The Formula One results followed: Ferrari won the Constructors' Championship in 1999 for the first time since 1983, then secured the Drivers' Championship in 2000 with Michael Schumacher — the team's first Drivers' title since 1979. The team went on to dominate the early 2000s, becoming one of the most successful runs in the sport's history. Montezemolo also assumed the presidency of Maserati when Ferrari acquired the brand in 1997, a role he held until 2005.
In May 2004 Montezemolo became president of Confindustria, the Italian business lobby. Days later, following the death of Umberto Agnelli, he was elected chairman of Fiat S.p.A., Ferrari's parent company — a position he held until April 2010 when John Elkann succeeded him. In 2008, he founded the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA), which he led from 2008 to 2010 to give F1 teams a collective voice in discussions with the sport's governing bodies. FOTA was formally dissolved in 2014.
Outside motorsport, Montezemolo co-founded NTV (Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori), which became Europe's first private open-access operator of high-speed trains running at 300 km/h. In 1982 he managed Italy's first America's Cup challenge, Team Azzurra. In 1985 he took charge of the organizing committee for the 1990 FIFA World Cup hosted in Italy.
On 10 September 2014, Montezemolo resigned as president and chairman of Ferrari after more than two decades in the role. He was replaced by Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne. In July 2015 he was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.
Montezemolo's two stints at Ferrari bookend the team's most trophy-laden period in the modern era. His first term in the 1970s ended a long championship drought; his second, spanning 1991 to 2014, coincided with six Constructors' Championships and five consecutive Drivers' Championships between 2000 and 2004. Beyond the trophies, he repositioned Ferrari as a luxury brand with global commercial appeal, setting the template for the team's business model well into the 21st century. In June 2025 he was appointed as a director of McLaren Group Holdings Ltd, marking a return to the front line of motorsport governance.