1,000 Greatest Drivers: Andrea Bertolini

Possibly the world's most obscure ten-time champion.

I’ve never had Bertolini on any of my lists before probably because he was the pro driver in relatively uncompetitive pro-am classes, but I now think this was a mistake as when I look at his career in toto, it looks far more impressive than I thought it would. As with all sports car drivers, I might shift a lot of these years around as it can be difficult to determine the relative prestige of sports car series against each other and he competed in many, many different sports car series. Nonetheless, even if he isn’t as famous as most of the major WEC and IMSA stars, he was clearly the most successful driver in FIA GT, which was just as prestigious even if it never quite seemed to get the same hype and the fact that he carried so many drivers on different teams and even in different series means he’s more legendary than I thought even though he doesn’t really have a legendary reputation except amongst Ferrari insiders. Even the fact that he tested Ferrari’s F1 cars for over 20 years and they kept him on continuously might be sufficient for greatness, but he definitely did way more than just that. I don’t think I’m going to list Michael Bartels though since I don’t think he did enough without Bertolini even if he did win a couple Nürburgring 24 Hours and a Macau Guia Race in addition to his FIA GT titles.