Ferrari Rex is the book I had wanted to write for most of my professional life.
From the very beginning, my ambition was not simply to tell the story of Enzo Ferrari the constructor, but to understand Enzo Ferrari the man. Over the decades, countless myths and stereotypes have grown around his extraordinary life. I wanted to move beyond them and portray him in all his complexity—brilliant, contradictory, visionary, often difficult, yet always profoundly human. Because achievements on the scale of Ferrari’s are never accidental. To understand the legend, one must first understand the person who created it.
The idea for the biography dates back to the mid-1990s. At the time, I hoped to write it together with Gino Rancati, one of Italy’s most respected motoring journalists and a man who had enjoyed Enzo Ferrari’s confidence for many years. During our meetings, Gino would spend hours recounting the Ferrari he had known personally, particularly during the difficult years following the death of Ferrari’s first son. After Gino passed away, I decided to continue the project alone.
Research became the backbone of Ferrari Rex. From the outset, I wanted every statement, every quotation and every factual claim to be fully documented through footnotes. I have always believed that serious historical writing must be transparent, allowing readers to trace every source for themselves. The finished book contains more than 2,000 footnotes.
Its oral history is based on dozens of interviews conducted over several years, most of them between 2008 and 2013. Almost all were recorded. Many took place in Modena, which proved to be the ideal place from which to undertake the project. The written sources were equally important: hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles published over more than seventy years, and around 1,500 hours spent in libraries working through them page by page. Those years of research eventually filled twenty-two notebooks.
Ferrari Rex was published in Italy to an exceptional critical and commercial response. It became an Amazon bestseller, and its first edition (2016) quickly sold out. Internationally, the book was described by The New York Times as “the definitive biography” of one of motor racing’s greats and was shortlisted for the Royal Automobile Club’s prestigious Motoring Book of the Year Award. Since its first publication, it has been translated into half a dozen languages, reaching readers in countries across the globe.
“The definitive biography—of one of motor racing’s greats.” The New York Times
