How Ferrari's F1 protege became a Mercedes GT prodigy

Raffaele Marciello once appeared to be Ferrari’s next Italian F1 star, but is now under the pay of its German arch-rival in GTs.

When Raffaele Marciello says “I don’t feel below guys that are in Formula 1”, he means it. Ranked 48th in Autosport’s top 50 drivers of 2020, below 12 from F1, the works Mercedes-AMG GT star is an in-demand 26-year-old who is content with his lot. After all, he’s racing great cars all over the world and is regarded as one of the best in his field.

Take this year’s activities. Marciello is set to compete in the GT World Challenge Europe, ADAC GT Masters and the Nurburgring Langstrecken Serie. He’s already finished second in class in the Daytona 24 Hours, and scored two class poles in the four-race Asian Le Mans Series. Over the past three years, he has contested an average of 20 race meetings per season, including 21 in COVID-impacted 2020.

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Author James Newbold

James Newbold is Autosport's Plus Editor, responsible for coordinating website feature content.

In a sign of things to come, having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at the University of East Anglia in 2015, he left his graduation ceremony early to catch the last train to Brussels for the following day's Spa 24 Hours.

After a period as a freelancer, he joined the Autosport staff in 2018 and won the Motorsport UK young journalist of the year award.

He initially edited Autosport magazine's Performance and Engineering supplements before joining the website team in his current role in 2020.

A keen enthusiast of anything that can be categorised unusual, niche or random, he enjoys unearthing little-known stories across all branches of motorsport, but has spent most of his career covering sportscars as Autosport's British GT correspondent and is a regular part of the Le Mans 24 Hours reporting team.

An expert in catching 40 winks on media centre floors, he lives with his wife and son in Plymouth, England.