Raffaele
Marciello

Raffaele Marciello was born in Zürich on 17 December 1994 and holds both Swiss and Italian nationality. He started karting in 2005 and raced in several European championships, reaching the KF2 category by 2010. That year he moved into single-seaters in the newly launched Italian Formula Abarth series and finished third in the standings with JD Motorsport. He also became a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy. In 2011 he stepped up to Italian Formula Three with Prema Powerteam and again finished third. In 2012 he stayed with Prema and contested both the Formula 3 Euro Series and the revived FIA European Formula Three Championship. He finished third in the Euro Series and second in the European championship, and in both he took the most wins of any driver. In 2013 he won 13 races and took the European Formula Three title with a race to spare.

In GP2 he drove for Racing Engineering in 2014, taking his first victory in the wet feature race at Spa-Francorchamps and finishing eighth overall. He was seventh with Trident in 2015 and fourth with Russian Time in 2016, with six podiums that year. He made his Formula One test debut on 26 November 2014 in the Ferrari F14 T at the post-season test in Abu Dhabi, setting the second fastest time. In 2015 he was Sauber's test and reserve driver. In January 2016 it was announced that Sauber had parted company with him and that he had left the Ferrari Driver Academy. He never contested a Formula One World Championship race.

Marciello moved into GT racing in 2017, driving a Mercedes-AMG GT3 for AKKA ASP in the Blancpain GT Series. At the 24 Hours of Spa he started from pole position and finished third with his team. In 2018 he became a Mercedes-AMG factory driver, won the Sprint Cup title with Michael Meadows and took victory in the Suzuka 10 Hours. In 2019 he won the FIA GT World Cup in Macau for the first time, driving for Team GruppeM. From 2022 he raced on a Swiss licence. That year he won the ADAC GT Masters title with Team Landgraf. With AKKodis ASP he won the 24 Hours of Spa, and with Jules Gounon and Daniel Juncadella the Endurance Cup. He also took the overall GT World Challenge Europe title. In 2023 he and Gounon retained the Endurance Cup title. In November 2023 he won the GT World Cup in Macau again, in his last race as a Mercedes factory driver.

In 2024 he joined BMW as a factory driver and raced for Team WRT in the Hypercar class of the FIA World Endurance Championship, driving the BMW M Hybrid V8. With his team he finished second at Fuji, BMW's first top-class podium in the championship. In 2025 he won the Nürburgring 24 Hours with Augusto Farfus, Jesse Krohn and Kelvin van der Linde. He also finished second in the Bathurst 12 Hours and won the Suzuka 1000 km. In the Intercontinental GT Challenge he ended the year second behind Kelvin van der Linde.

Source: Wikipedia, “Raffaele Marciello”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.