Imola Circuit

Motorsport venue in Italy

Imola, by the Santerno River

A riverside circuit in Emilia Romagna named for Enzo and Dino Ferrari, Imola hosted the San Marino Grand Prix for a quarter century and the sport's darkest weekend.

Imola is, in spirit, a Ferrari home game. The circuit lies beside the Santerno river on the edge of the town, about 40 km east of Bologna, and with the team based at nearby Maranello it has long been counted among Ferrari's home tracks; its official name honors Enzo Ferrari and his son Dino. Motorcycles raced first, in 1953, on a semi permanent course without a single chicane, and cars followed in 1954.

The lap climbs to Variante Alta, where drivers brake harder than anywhere else on the circuit, before dropping toward Rivazza. For years its signature was Tamburello, a bumpy left hander taken flat out, with little space before the concrete wall that divided the track from the river. Nelson Piquet and Gerhard Berger both crashed heavily there in the late 1980s.

Imola entered the championship in 1980 by hosting the Italian Grand Prix, the first time since 1948 that the race had left Monza, and Piquet won. Italy, it turned out, had room for two Grands Prix, and Imola was given one of its own, the San Marino Grand Prix, held there every season from 1981 to 2006. That race carries the weight of 1994, when Roland Ratzenberger was killed in qualifying and Ayrton Senna died after crashing at Tamburello in the race. Tamburello and Villeneuve were turned into slower sweepers with gravel traps, and many felt the circuit lost some of its old character.

When the San Marino race left the calendar, the pits and paddock were rebuilt under Hermann Tilke, and the current 4.909 km Grand Prix layout dates from 2008. Formula 1 came back in 2020 for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, won by Lewis Hamilton. The 2023 race was cancelled when floodwater from the Santerno reached the circuit, and the event resumed in 2024 and 2025.

Across 32 championship rounds from 1980 to 2025, Michael Schumacher won seven times, more than anyone, and Max Verstappen won the most recent. Imola was left off the 2026 calendar, but endurance racing, superbikes and cycling keep it busy beside the river.

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