The Grand Prix racing history of Scuderia Ferrari dates back to 1947. The team is the most successful team in the history of Formula One racing, having contested every World Championship season since , winning 15 Drivers' Championships and 16 Constructors' Championships.
History 1930s
1940s In May 1947, Ferrari constructed the 12-cylinder, 1.5 L Tipo 125, the first racing car to bear the Ferrari name. A Formula One version of the Tipo 125, the Ferrari 125 F1 was developed in 1948 and entered in several Grands Prix, when a World Championship had not yet been established.
1950s In 1950, the Formula One World Championship was established, and Scuderia Ferrari entered in this first season. It is the only team to have competed in every season of the World Championship, from its inception to the current day.
In fact the Ferrari team missed the first race of the championship, the 1950 British Grand Prix, due to a dispute about the 'start money' paid to entrants, and the team debuted in the 1950 Monaco Grand Prix with the 125 F1, sporting a supercharged version of the 125 V12, and three experienced and successful drivers, Alberto Ascari, Raymond Sommer and Gigi Villoresi. The company later switched to the large-displacement naturally aspirated formula for the 275, 340, and 375 F1 cars. The Alfa Romeo team won all eleven events it entered in 1950 (six World Championship events and five non-championship races), but Ferrari broke their streak in 1951 when José Froilán González took first place at the 1951 British Grand Prix.
After the 1951 Formula One season the Alfa team withdrew from F1, causing the authorities to adopt the Formula Two regulations due to the lack of suitable F1 cars. Ferrari entered the 2.0 L 4-cyl Ferrari Tipo 500, which went on to win almost every race in which it competed in the 1952 Formula One season with drivers Ascari, Giuseppe Farina, and Piero Taruffi; Ascari took the World Championship after winning six consecutive races. In the 1953 Formula One season, Ascari won only five races but another world title; at the end of that season, Juan Manuel Fangio beat the Ferraris in a Maserati for the first time.
The 1954 Formula One season brought new rules for 2.5 L engines; Ferrari's new car, designated the Ferrari Tipo 625, could barely compete against Fangio with the Maserati and then the Mercedes-Benz W196 which appeared in July. Ferrari had only two wins, González at the 1954 British Grand Prix and Mike Hawthorn at the 1954 Spanish Grand Prix. In the 1955 Formula One season Ferrari did no better, winning only the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix with driver Maurice Trintignant. Late in the tragic 1955 season, the Ferrari team purchased the Lancia team's D50 chassis after they had retired following Ascari's death; Fangio, Peter Collins, and Eugenio Castellotti raced the D50s successfully in the 1956 Formula One season: Collins two races, Fangio won three races and the championship.
In the 1957 Formula One season Fangio returned to Maserati. Ferrari, still using its ageing Lancias, failed to win a race. Drivers Luigi Musso and the Marquis Alfonso de Portago joined Castellotti; Castellotti died while testing and Portago crashed into a crowd at the Mille Miglia, killing twelve and causing Ferrari to be charged with manslaughter.
In the 1958 Formula One season, a Constructors' Championship was introduced and won by Vanwall. Carlo Chiti designed an entirely new car for Ferrari: the Ferrari 246 F1, with a V6 engine named after Enzo Ferrari's recently deceased son. The team retained drivers Collins, Hawthorn, and Musso, but Musso died at the 1958 French Grand Prix and Collins died at the 1958 German Grand Prix; Hawthorn won the World Championship and announced his retirement, and died months later in a road accident.
Ferrari hired five new drivers, Tony Brooks, Jean Behra, Phil Hill, Dan Gurney, and occasionally Cliff Allison, for the 1959 Formula One season. The team did not get along well; Behra was fired after punching team manager Romolo Tavoni. Brooks was competitive until the end of the season, but in the end, he narrowly lost the championship to Jack Brabham with the rear-engined Cooper.
1960s The 1960 Formula One season proved little better than 1959. Ferrari kept drivers Hill, Allison and Wolfgang von Trips and added Willy Mairesse to drive the dated front-engined 246s and Richie Ginther, who drove Ferrari's first rear-engined car. Allison was severely injured in testing and Hill gave the team its lone win by heading a hollow podium sweep at Monza after top British teams, with the championship already decided, boycotted Italian organizers' decision to contest the race on a high-speed circuit which combined Monza's high-banked oval with the normal road course.
In the 1961 Formula One season, with new rules for 1500 cc, the team kept Hill, von Trips and Ginther, and débuted another Chiti-designed car, the Ferrari 156 based on the Formula 2 car of 1960, which was dominant throughout the season. Ferrari drivers Hill and Von Trips competed for the championship. Giancarlo Baghetti joined in midseason and became the first driver to win on his debut race (the 1961 French Grand Prix). However, at the end of the season, von Trips crashed at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix and was killed, together with over a dozen spectators. Hill won the championship.
At the end of the 1961 season, in what is called "the walk-out", car designer Carlo Chiti and team manager Romolo Tavoni left to set up their own team, ATS. Ferrari promoted Mauro Forghieri to racing director and Eugenio Dragoni to team manager.
For the 1962 Formula One season, Hill and Baghetti stayed on with rookies Ricardo Rodríguez and Lorenzo Bandini. Richie Ginther had left for BRM, leaving a big gap in the development of new models. The somewhat volatile Willy Mairesse took his place. The team used the 1961 cars for a second year while Forghieri worked on a new design; the team won no race. After a prolonged metalworkers' strike in Italy Ferrari missed two races. This, combined with the betrayal of the 1961 walk-out and various troubles arising from Enzo's refusal to accompany the team to the races (having his wife stand in for him instead) led to Enzo withdrawing from the last two races of the year. The drivers were free to drive for anyone, as long as it did not contradict the existing sponsor contracts with Dunlop, Shell, Marchal, and Ferodo.
There had been talk of a Gilera-Ferrari in late 1962, with technical drawings released but no car ever seen, using a transversely mounted eight-cylinder engine based on two Gilera four-cylinder motorcycle blocks combined. This came to naught, however, and Ferrari ran smaller lighter 156 cars for the 1963 Formula One season. This time the team depended on drivers Bandini, John Surtees, Willy Mairesse and Ludovico Scarfiotti. Surtees won the 1963 German Grand Prix, at which Mairesse crashed heavily, rendering him unable to drive again.
The new 158 model was at last finished in late 1963 and developed into raceworthiness for the 1964 Formula One season, featuring an eight-cylinder engine designed by Angelo Bellei. Surtees and Bandini were joined by young Mexican Pedro Rodríguez, brother of Ricardo (who had been killed at the end of 1962), to drive the new cars. Surtees won two races and Bandini one; the Ferrari was slower than Jim Clark's Lotus but its vastly superior reliability gave Surtees the championship and Bandini fourth place. In the last two races in North America, the Ferrari's were entered by private team NART and painted in the US colour scheme of blue and white, as Enzo was protesting against the Italian sporting authority.
The 1965 Formula One season was the last year of the 1.5 L formula, so Ferrari opted to use the same V8 engine another year together with a new flat-12 which had debuted at the end of 1964; they won no races as Clark dominated in his now more reliable Lotus. Surtees and Bandini stayed on as drivers, with odd races for Rodríguez, Vaccarella and Bob Bondurant.
For the 1966 Formula One season with new rules, the Ferrari 312 of Surtees consisted of a 3.0 L version of the 3.3 L V12 which they had previously used in Ferrari P sports car racers, mounted in the back of a rather heavy F1 chassis. Bandini drove a Tasman Series 2.4 L V6 car early in the season. Surtees won one race, the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix, but departed after a row with manager Eugenio Dragoni; he was replaced by Mike Parkes. Scarfiotti also won a race, the 1966 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, with an improved 36-valve engine.
In the 1967 Formula One season, the team fired Dragoni and replaced him with Franco Lini; Chris Amon partnered Bandini to drive a somewhat improved version of the 1966 car. At the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix Bandini crashed and suffered heavy injuries when he was trapped under his burning car; several days later he succumbed to his injuries. Ferrari kept Mike Parkes and Scarfiotti, but Parkes suffered career-ending injuries weeks later at the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix and Scarfiotti temporarily retired from racing after witnessing his crash.
The 1968 Formula One season was better; Jacky Ickx drove with one win in France and several good positions, which gave him a chance at the World Championship until a practise crash in Canada, and Amon led several races but won none. At the end of the season, manager Franco Lini quit and Ickx went to the Brabham team. During the summer of 1968, Ferrari worked out a deal to sell his road car business to Fiat for $11 million; the transaction took place in early 1969, leaving 50% of the business still under the control of Ferrari himself.
During the 1969 Formula One season, Enzo Ferrari set about wisely spending his new-found wealth to revive his struggling team; though Ferrari did compete in Formula One in 1969, it was something of a throwaway season while the team was restructured. Amon continued to drive an older model and Pedro Rodríguez replaced Ickx; at the end of the year, Amon left the team.
1970s
In , a new car and engine was produced for that season, the 312B. It had an all-new flat-12 engine, which was to be the engine used by the team for the next 10 seasons. Jacky Ickx rejoined the team and won the , the and the to become second in the Drivers' Championship. Clay Regazzoni made his debut that season and won the , finishing third in the standings. Ferrari driver Pedro Rodríguez was killed in an Interserie sports car race at Norisring in Nuremberg, Germany, on 11 July 1971, at the wheel of a Ferrari 512M.
After three poor years, including a disastrous 1973 season which saw Ferrari failing to attend two races – the Dutch and German Grands Prix – and not scoring a podium for the first time since the team had started racing in Formula One, Ferrari signed Niki Lauda in 1974, and made the momentous decision to pull out of sportscar racing to concentrate upon F1. The same year Luca di Montezemolo was appointed Team Principal. Ferrari won the , the and the , but Regazzoni lost the World Championship to Emerson Fittipaldi at the final race of the season, the United States Grand Prix.
The new Ferrari 312T, developed fully with Lauda and Regazzoni and designed by Mauro Forghieri, was introduced in 1975, and brought the team back to winning ways, Lauda won five races and took the drivers' crown, and Ferrari won the Constructors' Championship.
In 1976 Lauda was comfortably leading the championship when he crashed at the , seriously injuring himself. Carlos Reutemann was hired as a replacement, and Ferrari fielded three cars in the 1976 Italian Grand Prix when Lauda returned unexpectedly soon (only six weeks after his accident). Lauda scored points twice in the races following his severe crash, but voluntarily withdrew from the season-ending Grand Prix at Fuji after two laps because of heavy rain, and James Hunt won the drivers' title by a single point, but Ferrari won the constructors' title for the second year in a row.