Ferrari S.p.A, currently competing as Scuderia Ferrari HP (; Italian: [skudeˈriːa ferˈraːri]), is the racing division of luxury Italian auto manufacturer Ferrari and the racing team that competes in Formula One racing. The team is also known by the nickname "the Prancing Horse" (Italian: il Cavallino Rampante or simply il Cavallino), in reference to their logo. It is the oldest surviving and most successful Formula One team, having competed in every World Championship since 1950.
The team was founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929, initially to race cars produced by Alfa Romeo. By 1947, Ferrari had begun building its own cars. Among its important achievements outside Formula One are winning the FIA World Endurance Championship, World Sportscar Championship, 24 Hours of Le Mans, 24 Hours of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, 24 Hours of Spa, Targa Florio, and Mille Miglia. Its customers have also secured victories at events including Petit Le Mans, Nürburgring 24 Hours, Bathurst 12 Hour, and Carrera Panamericana. The team is known for its passionate support base, known as the tifosi. The Italian Grand Prix at Monza is regarded as the team's home race.
As a constructor in Formula One, Ferrari has a record 16 Constructors' Championships. Their most recent Constructors' Championship was won in 2008. The team also holds the record for the most Drivers' Championships with 15, won by nine different drivers including Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Mike Hawthorn, Phil Hill, John Surtees, Niki Lauda, Jody Scheckter, Michael Schumacher, and Kimi Räikkönen. Räikkönen's title in 2007 is the most recent for the team. The 2020 Tuscan Grand Prix marked Ferrari's 1000th Grand Prix in Formula One.
Schumacher is the team's most successful driver. Joining the team in 1996 and driving for them until his first retirement in 2006, he won five consecutive drivers' titles and 72 Grands Prix for the team. His titles came consecutively between 2000 and 2004, and the team won consecutive constructors' titles between 1999 and 2004, marking the era as the most successful period in the team's history. The team's drivers for the 2026 season are Charles Leclerc and seven-time Formula One World Champion Lewis Hamilton.
Scuderia Ferrari was founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929 to enter amateur drivers in various races. Ferrari himself had raced in Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali and Alfa Romeo cars before that date. The idea came about on the night of 16 November at a dinner in Bologna, where Ferrari solicited financial help from textile heirs Augusto and Alfredo Caniato and wealthy amateur racer Mario Tadini. He then gathered a team which at its peak included over forty drivers, most of whom raced in various Alfa Romeo 8C cars; Ferrari himself continued racing, with moderate success, until the birth of his first son Dino in 1932. The prancing horse blazon first appeared at the 1932 Spa 24 Hours in Belgium on a two-car team of Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Spiders, which finished first and second.
In 1933, Alfa Romeo experienced economic difficulties and withdrew its team from racing. From then, the Scuderia Ferrari became the acting racing team of Alfa Romeo when the factory released to the Scuderia the up to date Monoposto Tipo B racers. In 1935, Enzo Ferrari and Luigi Bazzi built the Alfa Romeo Bimotore, the first car to wear a Ferrari badge on the radiator cowl. Ferrari managed numerous established drivers (notably Tazio Nuvolari, Giuseppe Campari, Achille Varzi, and Louis Chiron) and several talented rookies (Mario Tadini, Guy Moll, Carlo Maria Pintacuda, and Antonio Brivio) from his headquarters in Viale Trento e Trieste, Modena, Italy, until 1938, at which point Alfa Romeo made him the manager of the factory racing division, Alfa Corse. Alfa Romeo had bought the shares of the Scuderia Ferrari in 1937 and transferred, from 1 January 1938, the official racing activity to Alfa Corse whose new buildings were being erected next to the Alfa factory at Portello, Milan. The Viale Trento e Trieste facilities remained active to assist the racing customers.
Enzo Ferrari disagreed with this policy change and was dismissed by Alfa in 1939. In October 1939, Enzo Ferrari left Alfa when the racing activity stopped and founded Auto Avio Costruzioni Ferrari, which also manufactured machine tools. The agreement with Alfa included the condition that he would not use the Ferrari name on cars for four years. In the winter of 1939–1940, Ferrari started work on a racecar of his own, the Tipo 815 (eight cylinders, 1.5 L displacement). The 815s, designed by Alberto Massimino, were thus the first true Ferrari cars. After Alberto Ascari and the Marchese Lotario Rangoni Machiavelli di Modena drove them in the 1940 Mille Miglia, World War II put a temporary end to racing and the 815s saw no more competition. Ferrari continued to manufacture machine tools (specifically oleodynamic grinding machines). In 1943, he moved his headquarters to Maranello, where it was bombed in November 1944 and February 1945.
Rules for a Grand Prix World Championship had been discussed before the war; it took several years afterwards for the series to become active. Meanwhile, Ferrari rebuilt his works in Maranello and constructed the 12-cylinder, 1.5 L Tipo 125, which competed at several non-championship Grands Prix. The car made its debut at the 1948 Italian Grand Prix with Raymond Sommer and achieved its first win at the minor Circuito di Garda with Giuseppe Farina. After the four-year condition expired, the road car company was called Ferrari S.p.A., while the name SEFAC (Società Esercizio Fabbriche Automobili e Corse) was used for the racing department.
The team was based in Modena from its pre-war founding until 1943, when Enzo Ferrari moved the team to a new factory in Maranello in 1943, and both Scuderia Ferrari and Ferrari's road car factory remain at Maranello to this day. The team owns and operates a test track on the same site, the Fiorano Circuit built in 1972, which is used for testing road and race cars.
The team is named after its founder Enzo Ferrari. Scuderia is Italian for a stable reserved for racing horses, and is also commonly applied to Italian motor racing teams. The prancing horse was the symbol used on Italian World War I ace Francesco Baracca's fighter plane. It became the logo of Ferrari after the fallen ace's parents, close acquaintances of Enzo Ferrari, suggested that Ferrari use the symbol as the logo of the Scuderia, telling him it would "bring him good luck".
Since its debut in 1950, Ferrari has become a byword for Formula One. For many, Ferrari and Formula One racing have become inseparable, being the only team to have competed in every season since the world championship began.
Ferrari produces engines for its own Formula One cars and has supplied engines to other teams.
Ferrari has previously supplied engines to Minardi (1991), Scuderia Italia (1992–1993), Sauber (1997–2005 with engines badged as Petronas, and 2010–2025), Prost (2001, badged Acer), Red Bull Racing (2006), Spyker (2007), Scuderia Toro Rosso (2007–2013, 2016), Force India (2008), and Marussia (2014–2015).
For the 2026 season, Ferrari supplies the Haas F1 Team and Cadillac. In December 2024, Ferrari announced that the forthcoming Cadillac Formula One team had signed a multi-year deal to use their engines and gearboxes from 2026 onwards, until GM PPU develops an F1-ready power unit.
Relationship with governing body
Ferrari did not enter the first-ever race of the championship, the 1950 British Grand Prix, due to a dispute with the organisers over "start money". In the 1960s, Ferrari withdrew from several races in strike actions. In 1987, Ferrari considered abandoning Formula One for the American IndyCar series. This threat was used as a bargaining tool with the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), and Enzo Ferrari offered to cancel the IndyCar Project and commit to Formula One on the condition that the technical regulations were not changed to exclude V12 engines. The FIA agreed to this, and the IndyCar project was shelved, although a car, the Ferrari 637, had already been constructed. In 2009, it had emerged that Ferrari had an FIA-sanctioned veto on the technical regulations.