Raffaele Marciello: From F3 Champion to GT Title Winner and BMW Driver

Raffaele Marciello is a Swiss and Italian professional racing driver who competes in the FIA World Endurance Championship for BMW M Team WRT and in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup for Rowe Racing. He won the FIA European Formula 3 title in 2013, raced in GP2, and tested for Ferrari and Sauber in Formula One before building a long GT career with Mercedes-AMG.

Who is Raffaele Marciello?

Raffaele Marciello, known as Lello, was born on 17 December 1994. He is a Swiss and Italian driver and is noted for his tall height relative to his rivals. He first raced in karting in 2005 and progressed through the junior ranks to the KF2 category by 2010.

From 2022 he raced on a Swiss licence, a switch he made after saying Italian motorsport's governing body had not given him enough support. He is described as both Swiss and Italian.

A 2013 European Formula 3 title came first, then a long run of GT crowns with Mercedes-AMG.

How did his single-seater career begin?

Marciello moved to single-seaters in 2010 with JD Motorsport in Formula Abarth, a series that had just launched in Italy. He took wins at Misano and Varano, added two further podiums, and ended third in the standings. That season he and fellow Formula Abarth champion Brandon Maisano became members of the Ferrari Driver Academy.

In 2011 he stepped up to the Italian Formula Three Championship with Prema Powerteam. He claimed wins at Misano and Adria and four more podiums, finishing third overall. He lost the rookie title to Michael Lewis, but he finished seven points ahead of Maisano in the standings.

In 2012 he continued with Prema in the Formula 3 Euro Series and the revived FIA European Formula Three Championship. In the FIA series he was second overall with nine podiums, including seven wins, and the Euro Series brought third place, ten podiums and six victories. Across the two series he recorded more wins than any rival.

What did he win in Formula 3?

Marciello won the 2013 FIA European Formula Three Championship, taking 13 race wins and the title with a race to spare. He had arrived at the start of the season as a favourite after his results in 2012 and strong pre-season testing.

The title confirmed a pattern of consistent wins. Across those seasons he moved from a rookie in Italy to the leading driver of the European category, with Prema giving him the cars to do it.

That winter he also competed in the New Zealand-based Toyota Racing Series. He took ninth place in the championship with a win at Hampton Downs, a useful step on the way to the next rung of single-seater racing.

How did his GP2 career go?

Marciello was looking at GP2 or the World Series by Renault for 2014, and he tested both cars at Catalunya in October 2013. On 20 January 2014 the Ferrari Driver Academy confirmed that he would race in GP2 that year, and in February it was announced that he would drive for the Racing Engineering team.

His first GP2 victory came in a wet feature race at Spa-Francorchamps, after a close fight with Stoffel Vandoorne in the closing stages. Mistakes and collisions hampered the rest of his year. Points came in only six races, yet the win plus three podiums carried him to eighth overall.

The 2015 move to Trident Racing brought seventh overall. He qualified outside the top ten just once and matched the previous year's podium count, and his points made up 99.1 per cent of the team's total. In 2016 he raced with Russian Time, and a season dominated by Prema Racing still left him fourth in the standings with six podiums.

Did he race in Formula One?

Yes, though only in testing and reserve roles. On 26 November 2014 he made his Formula One debut in the Ferrari F14 T during the post-season test at Yas Marina Circuit. He was second quickest in the session, and only half a second separated him from Pascal Wehrlein, who was driving a Mercedes F1 W05 Hybrid.

Sauber then took him on as a test and reserve driver for 2015, a signing confirmed on 31 December 2014. The following January the team ended the arrangement, and he parted company with the Ferrari Driver Academy for personal reasons.

When did he move into GT racing?

Sports car racing arrived in 2017, when he took a Mercedes-AMG GT3 run by AKKA ASP into the Blancpain GT Series, competing in both the Endurance and Sprint Cups. Two podiums came in that debut season. The highlight came at the 24 Hours of Spa, where he qualified on pole alongside Edoardo Mortara and Michael Meadows. He used the maximum allowed driving time of 14 hours and helped his team to third place.

Mercedes-AMG made him a fully fledged factory driver in 2018. That year he returned to both the Endurance Cup and the Sprint Cup with AKKA ASP. In the Endurance Cup he finished second at Silverstone, and at Barcelona he was first credited with a win that briefly gave him the title. An appeal by the disqualified team later removed that accolade. Victories at Budapest and at the Nurburgring finale, together with a run of podiums, gave him and Meadows the Sprint Cup title.

In the same season he took part in all four rounds of the Intercontinental GT Challenge with Mercedes. Bathurst and Spa produced podiums for him, and a win at the Suzuka 10 Hours briefly put him top of the standings. A seventh place at Laguna Seca, after a mistimed move on an Audi, dropped him to third.

How did 2019 unfold?

In his third season with AKKA ASP, Marciello drove alongside Vincent Abril in the Sprint Cup and joined Michael Meadows for endurance rounds. Defending the Sprint Cup crown proved out of reach. Victories at Zandvoort and in both Hungarian finale races nevertheless gave Abril and him third place in the standings, and the last of those Hungaroring wins handed AKKA ASP the teams' championship.

His Endurance Cup campaign was less fortunate, with two retirements that left him 25th overall. Later in the year he took part in the FIA GT World Cup at the Guia Circuit in Macau with Team GruppeM. He took pole for the second year running and won the main race, becoming the GT World Cup winner for the first time.

What happened in 2020 and 2021?

The COVID-19 pandemic truncated the 2020 season, but Mercedes expanded his full-time programme. He raced for AKKA ASP in the rebranded GT World Challenge Europe Endurance and Sprint Cups, and he also joined the ADAC GT Masters alongside Philip Ellis. That campaign was quiet until the final race at Oschersleben, where Marciello and Ellis took victory from pole.

In the Endurance Cup he finished fifth overall with Felipe Fraga and Timur Boguslavskiy, after a pair of podiums early in the year. In the Sprint Cup he helped Boguslavskiy to wins at Misano and Barcelona and finished third in the drivers' standings. He missed the Zandvoort round to race at the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring.

In 2021 he stayed in the ADAC GT Masters with Maximilian Buhk at the Mann-Filter Team Landgraf-HTP WWR squad. The duo converted pole into victory at the season opener in Oschersleben and closed to within three points of the lead, but a crash at the Sachsenring and a 30-second penalty in Hockenheim cost them the title, and they finished fourth.

In the SRO Endurance Cup he partnered Jules Gounon at AKKA ASP. They finished second at Monza and at the Nurburgring, but a damper failure at Spa ended one race, and the team missed the championship by four points at Barcelona. In the Sprint Cup he and Boguslavskiy scored four podiums without a win and finished third in the standings.

How strong was 2022 and 2023?

In 2022 Marciello was reunited with Team Landgraf for the ADAC GT Masters. A double podium at the start of the year was followed by his first pole at the Red Bull Ring, and he won the opening race at the Nurburgring. He then clinched the championship with Daniel Juncadella one race early at the Hockenheimring.

His Endurance Cup season was even stronger. The trio of Marciello, Gounon and Juncadella won at Spa and then claimed the championship at the Barcelona finale, two points ahead of Ferrari's Antonio Fuoco. In the Sprint Cup he won at Brands Hatch, Magny-Cours and Zandvoort, and he took the overall GT World Challenge Europe title at the final Sprint round.

In 2023 he raced at the Asian Le Mans Series with GetSpeed Performance, where he finished third in the GT championship alongside Fabian Schiller and Florian Scholze. He also made his prototype debut at Daytona in an Oreca 07 for High Class Racing.

Back in Europe he and Gounon retained the Endurance Cup, winning at Le Castellet and at the Nurburgring. The title was clinched with a fifth place at Barcelona, which gave the pair back-to-back championships. The Sprint Cup started with wins at Brands Hatch and Misano, but a collision at the Zandvoort finale decided the title in favour of another team.

In November 2023 he drove his final race as a Mercedes-AMG factory driver at the FIA GT World Cup in Macau with Team Landgraf. He took pole, won the qualifying race and clinched world cup honours. He described the win as a last gift to the brand he had represented for seven years.

Why did he move to BMW?

The week after his Macau triumph, Marciello announced he would join BMW as a factory driver. In January 2024 he was named for his World Endurance Championship debut in the Hypercar class, driving for Team WRT in a BMW M Hybrid V8 alongside Dries Vanthoor and Marco Wittmann.

His Hypercar season produced mostly modest results. Points eluded the team early on, but the No. 15 crew then finished ninth at Sao Paulo and eighth at Austin. Second place at Fuji brought BMW its first top-class podium in the championship, despite a collision with Earl Bamber during the third hour. The season ended with fifth in Bahrain, which helped BMW finish fifth in the manufacturers' standings.

His 2024 GT programme was equally busy. He drove a BMW M4 GT3 at the Bathurst 12 Hours and finished fifth. In British GT he set a GT3 lap record at Spa-Francorchamps, but he left the series after five races. In Macau he took pole and won the qualifying race, but a battle with Fuoco ended with both drivers overshooting a corner, and Marciello finished 18th, one lap down.

What were his 2025 highlights?

In 2025 Marciello continued with BMW and WRT alongside Vanthoor and Kevin Magnussen. He finished fourth overall in a one-off at the 24 Hours of Daytona and took second at the Bathurst 12 Hours in a WRT one-two finish. The WEC campaign started well at Qatar, where the team finished fourth, and it included sixth at Imola and tenth at Spa, where he was given a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane.

The WEC season then faded. A cooling problem left the No. 15 car several laps down at Le Mans, and a collision on his out-lap at Fuji ended a difficult run without points. BMW still finished fifth in the manufacturers' standings.

His GT3 season was the stronger of the two. In the Endurance Cup he won at the Nurburgring and finished third at Barcelona. He also won race one of the Sprint Cup at Misano. The highlight came at the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring, where he, Augusto Farfus, Jesse Krohn and Kelvin van der Linde inherited the win after a penalty for the leading Manthey Porsche.

That result, together with a podium at Bathurst, fourth at Spa and a victory at the Suzuka 1000 km, put him in contention for the Intercontinental GT Challenge. He finished third at the Indianapolis finale and ended second behind van der Linde in the standings. He closed the year by finishing second at Macau behind his old rival Fuoco.

Where does his career stand?

Marciello has won titles in Formula 3, GT World Challenge Europe, the FIA GT World Cup and the ADAC GT Masters, and he has added a 24-hour win at the Nurburgring to his list of results. He has raced in single-seaters, GT machinery and prototypes, and his most recent years have been mostly in BMW's WEC and GT programmes.

The record also contains disappointments. A short Formula One stint ended without a race seat, the 2021 ADAC title slipped away, and his BMW Hypercar results were mostly muted. The current WEC season is still in progress, so his next results will show how the BMW partnership develops.

Career summary

Summary

Marciello's path runs from Formula 3 champion to GT title winner, and then to a factory BMW role in prototype and GT racing. His 2025 Nurburgring win and his GT World Challenge titles show a driver whose strengths lie in endurance and sprint GT racing, and his BMW role keeps him in the top tier of sports car racing.