Marciello: Ferrari's prince in waiting

Ferrari is motor racing's most famous name, so how would you feel if you were a 15-year-old kid signed up by the Prancing Horse with a view to, one day, carrying the evocative red colours in Formula 1?

Even more exciting, if you were a 15-year-old Italian kid...

Such a dream became reality for Raffaele Marciello in the winter of 2009-10, and now, nearing the end of his fourth season as a Ferrari Driver Academy member in single-seater racing, he sits embroiled in a fight for the Formula 3 European Championship title.

First, let's get some preconceptions out of the way. The name itself - Raffaele Marciello - sounds superfast, and as a result many of you probably have stereotypical mind's-eye images of a short, swarthy, deep-voiced Latin. But 'Lello', as he is known to everyone around him, stands a whisker under six feet tall, with an unassuming-shy posture and a softly-spoken manner.

Watch him hustling his Prema Powerteam Dallara-Mercedes around the track, though, and it's clear there's plenty of fire.

That's not to say he's a wild or even flamboyant driver; on the contrary, his steering inputs are extremely direct and consistent. He is at his best when conditions get tricky or the barriers get close; notably, no-one has been able to hold a candle to his raw pace at Pau in 2012 or at the Norisring in '13.

Former Ferrari F1 chief engineer Luca Baldisserri is the head of the Ferrari Driver Academy, and liked what he saw straight away.

No-one could hold a candle to Marciello on the streets of Pau © LAT

"'Lello' has been with us since the start of the programme in 2010," he says. "He is one of the drivers who was under our supervision in karting the year before.

"When we decided to do our first selection in February 2010, he was one of the five drivers that we started with.

"To be honest, our selection for the first year was a little bit based on the results, because our experience was not so great. At Ferrari we had never been involved in young-driver scouting.

"But it wasn't just on classification, we were also seeing who was the most promising driver - fast, and maybe with some bad points but which we were sure that we could work on."

For his first season, Marciello went into the Formula Abarth European Series with Italian team JD Motorsport, taking third place in the championship.

It was a super-competitive season, not just through racing on the track, but via politics off it. "It was difficult because there were 40 cars," remembers Marciello. "I was only 15 so I didn't feel any pressure, and it was good until I crashed badly at Imola. After that we had some problems with engines; my second engine was not so good..."

He stepped up to Italian Formula 3 in 2011, joining the Prema team that he has raced with to this day. Again there was no championship title, but the speed and race wins were there; it was just a case of getting to grips with the demands of making the most of the tyres.

"Some races I was fast, some I had a lot of problems - I was young and didn't really concentrate," sums up Marciello.

So he was quick, but not 100 per cent convincing quite yet.

At 16, Marciello showed flashes of pace but lacked consistency © LAT

If ever there was a crunch point for Marciello, it was his step up for 2012 to the F3 Euro Series, which would run hand in hand with the FIA's revived F3 European Championship. (Even more so as there had been a disappointing trip to New Zealand to compete in the Toyota Racing Series, which gave rise to some controversy, with FDA alleging favouritism to local drivers on its Twitter feed. 'Lello' won't talk about it much, other than to offer "It's a beautiful country" with a wry smile).

Running alongside the experienced Daniel Juncadella, Marciello had a great benchmark in Prema's European F3 team, and the squad would become the first of the series' big guns to really get a handle on the new-generation Dallara F312 chassis.

The new boy set some impressive testing times, but that's a fairly common occurrence in F3; it's putting the lap together when it counts where the rookies often struggle.

First time out, at Hockenheim, there was a win, but it was only the reversed-grid race.

Then came Pau. With the European and British championships combining, Marciello beat every top-class F3 driver in Europe to take two pole positions and dominate both races. It was his first street event. He was only 17 years old...

"At Hockenheim I had a puncture in qually, so I was not at the front in the first race," he explains. "Pau was important, but I was also very fast and close to 'Junca' in winter testing. Yes, Pau was important but the team already knew what I could do."

Mattia Oselladore, Marciello's engineer since he graduated to European F3 in 2012, adds: "He was surprising. He was young, and in the first collective test he did at the beginning of the 2012 he was very, very quick.

"We did not expect such a young driver with not a lot of experience to be so competitive already. He also had quite good technical knowledge; this is the main difference between him and lots of other drivers, and comes because Ferrari teach him a lot about the technical side of the car. He knows what the car does and has a good idea what he needs.

"When you test something, he gives you feedback that is always correct; he is also quite good in the fact that if he doesn't feel something, he will say, 'I don't feel anything'. So you can trust him a lot. Some drivers will always try to give you an answer, even if it's wrong!"

Marciello made it 'look easy' at Pau last year © LAT

Talking about Pau, Oselladore agrees that it was a surprise: "Yeah, yeah, yeah! But for him everything looks quite easy - he can do very good things in a very easy way."

While the competition between Juncadella and Marciello spurred the whole team on, the younger driver perhaps wasn't quite ready for the pressure of a title push, and confesses to having made "too many mistakes" in the second half of the season.

"It was also a nice rivalry between him and Dani," says Oselladore, "because the first part of the season it looked like they could fight together.

"'Lello' had a not very good second part of the season, but it was very useful for him and all the team to have very competitive drivers. When you have new cars, that's very important for testing a lot of things. Formula 3 is very different in this way from Formula Renault and a lot of other categories."

The pressure may have been off for 2012, but not so for 2013. For the first time, Marciello was remaining in a championship for a second season. "This is the first year where he needs to put everything together to try to win - it's definitely a big pressure," says Baldisserri.

Has he handled it? Well, sometimes he's been blistering, other times he's recovered well from problems in qualifying, such as at the Red Bull Ring, but last weekend's round at Zandvoort was a nightmare.

Also, there did seem to be a few bumps in the road back in June, when there was talk of an outing for the Ferrari F1 team at the Silverstone young-driver test, plus a GP2 round at the Nurburgring by way of preparation on the Pirelli tyres.

"We dropped that decision, not because of the results, but because the Formula 1 team could use their race drivers at the young-driver test," says Baldisserri. "But when he sees that there are a lot of parallel programmes, then he seems to lose focus.

"Last year he was very, very quick with little testing, so he showed that the talent was there, but we do struggle a bit to keep him focusing."

Ferrari are helping Marciello to improve his focus © XPB

How can the FDA do this as part of its commitment to its drivers?

"We do a lot of work on coaching," says Baldisserri. "Drivers have to be 100 per cent OK with their physical training, we have a group of psychologists at Ferrari who are working with him to release the pressure and work on stress, and we do simulator jobs. We try to give a driver a 360-degree service."

Oselladore, who has been with Prema's F3 team since 2007 and ran Roberto Merhi to the '11 Euro Series title, has great faith in Marciello.

"He's managed the pressure quite well," he says. "It's not easy trying to win a championship with such strong competitors, but he's young and he's done well.

"He's very quick in qualifying and races and I think he can have a very big future."

If Oselladore can pinpoint one area in which Marciello needs to improve, it's racecraft: "Maybe he needs to be a bit more aggressive in races. His laps are very quick, but his fighting is sometimes not as aggressive as other drivers."

The future? It's probably not the be-all and end-all that he beats main rival Felix Rosenqvist to the F3 title. Yes, results are important in F3, but just as important in your progress up the ladder is proving your potential, and both drivers have done that in emphatic style.

Baldisserri has hinted at the FDA's plans for Marciello for 2014. And there's work on getting him more closely integrated with the F1 team.

"We are all based on the inside [of Ferrari], so we share information," says Baldisserri, "but the F1 team don't work on drivers. They are 100 per cent focused on car development.

"Next year, we are looking to use 'Lello' as a supporting driver, maybe do some jobs with a three-year-old car. His main job will be to learn how to drive [an F1 car]."

Whichever you look at it, Raffaele Marciello is living every 18-year-old Italian's dream.