Maserati's racing roots ran deep before the World Championship era. The company's first Tipo 26, driven by Alfieri Maserati, won its class at the 1926 Targa Florio. In pre-war Grand Prix racing, Maserati built a succession of competitive cars using four-, six-, eight-, and sixteen-cylinder configurations, and won the Indianapolis 500 twice — in 1939 and 1940 — both times with Wilbur Shaw at the wheel of the Maserati 8CTF.
After World War II, Maserati re-entered international competition with the 4CLT, a car designed to the new Formula One regulations introduced by the FIA in 1946. The 4CLT was developed from the pre-war 4CL voiturette and, despite its age, remained competitive as the sport resumed. It was in a Maserati 4CLT that a young Alberto Ascari began his Grand Prix career alongside mentor Luigi Villoresi in the immediate post-war years.
Maserati competed as a works entrant throughout the first decade of the World Championship. Their first championship-era car, the 4CLT, gave way to the A6GCM — originally designed as a Formula Two car — which was adapted for Formula One use. However, the team's defining car was the Maserati 250F, introduced in 1954, which became one of the most acclaimed Grand Prix cars of the 1950s.
The 250F was a front-engined, 2.5-litre straight-six machine praised for its balance and driver feel. Juan Manuel Fangio drove it to share the 1954 Drivers' Championship — he moved mid-season to Mercedes-Benz after starting the year with Maserati — and British privateer driver Stirling Moss drove a 250F owned by Rob Walker to his first Formula One victory at the 1955 Argentine Grand Prix.
Fangio returned to Maserati for 1957 with the updated 250F, and the combination proved unbeatable. Fangio won four of the seven championship rounds, including a legendary recovery drive at the 1957 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Having stopped to change tyres while leading, Fangio rejoined over 45 seconds behind the Ferraris of Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn. He proceeded to lap faster than he or anyone else had ever lapped the circuit — breaking the record on almost every lap — and overtook both Ferraris within the final few laps to win. Fangio later described it as the greatest race of his career. He won the 1957 World Championship, his fifth and final title, with Maserati.
Despite the sporting success, Maserati faced severe financial difficulties, and the factory withdrew from Formula One at the end of 1957 even though the 250F remained competitive. Privateers continued to race 250F chassis into 1960, and Moss himself drove a Walker-entered 250F to victory as late as the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix, defeating a field of far newer machinery.
Maserati's association with Formula One did not end entirely with the factory withdrawal. In the mid-1960s, the company supplied V12 engines to the British Cooper team. The resulting Cooper-Maserati T81 won the 1966 Mexican Grand Prix with John Surtees and the 1967 South African Grand Prix with Pedro Rodriguez, giving Maserati two additional victories as an engine supplier a decade after the works team's retirement.
Running parallel to the Formula One programme, Maserati's factory effort in sports car racing during the 1950s produced some of its greatest results. The Maserati 300S, 450S, and the legendary Tipo 61 "Birdcage" — named for its intricate tubular space-frame chassis — competed with distinction in the World Sportscar Championship. The factory finished second in the championship in 1956 and 1957, winning at Buenos Aires, the Nürburgring, and Sebring. After the factory team withdrew, privateers continued to race Birdcage cars into the early 1960s, with Stirling Moss and Dan Gurney winning the 1960 Nürburgring 1000 km in a Tipo 61.
Maserati's Formula One legacy rests primarily on two pillars: the 250F as one of the era's benchmark cars, and Fangio's 1957 championship as an emblem of the sport's most celebrated driving talent at his absolute peak. The Nürburgring drive of 1957 is frequently cited among the greatest individual race performances in motor racing history. The team's financial collapse before the manufacturer could properly defend its competitive position gives its story a melancholy undertone — a works operation at the height of its powers, extinguished not by defeat on track but by the constraints of commerce.
In modern motorsport, Maserati returned to competition via the FIA Formula E World Championship, competing as Maserati MSG Racing from the 2022–23 season onward, claiming the series' first victory under the Maserati name since 1958.