Simulation-led development
Maserati logged about 200 hours in the dynamic simulator and 1,000 hours of virtual analysis before MCXtrema reached the track; Bertolini contributed from the early stages and drove the first official outing at Varano.

People
Racing driver and Maserati chief test driver
Antoine Martin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The record
Italian racing driver who became Ferrari's youngest road-GT test driver at 19 and later Maserati's chief tester. With Michael Bartels in the MC12 he won FIA GT titles in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010. After retiring from professional racing in 2025 he remains Maserati's chief test driver.
Bertolini was born in Sassuolo on 1 December 1973 and took a mechanical technician's diploma at the Istituto Tecnico Ferrari in Maranello. He started racing in minikarts at 11, stopped at 16 when the family could no longer afford it, then won an Italian off-road motorcycle title. Ferrari made him its youngest road-GT test driver at 19. In 2001 he used holiday leave to contest FIA GT at Monza in an Art Engineering Porsche 996 GT3-R.
Ferrari signed him as a factory driver at the end of 2001 and he raced JMB's 360 through 2003. In 2004 Jean Todt and Antonello Coletta sent him to Maserati's GT1 programme, whose development he led from the 2003 prototype while also testing Ferrari Formula 1 cars. He won late-2004 races with Mika Salo, then with Michael Bartels took FIA GT titles in 2006, 2008 and 2009, the 2010 GT1 World Championship, and Spa overall in 2006 and 2008. In 2011 he won Superstars in a Swiss Team Quattroporte EVO.
When Maserati left GT1 he moved to AF Corse's Ferrari 458 for the first FIA WEC season and won GTE at Sebring. With SMP Racing teammates Viktor Shaytar and Aleksey Basov he won the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours in LMGTE Am and that year's FIA Endurance Trophy, after the 2014 ELMS title. With Louis Machiels at AF Corse he became a long-running Pro-Am pairing, including Spa class wins in 2012 and 2022.
He retired from professional racing after the May 2025 GT World Challenge Europe round at Monza, remaining in Ferrari Corse Clienti and, as of July 2026, Maserati's chief test driver, tasked with Project GT4. As Maserati's chief test driver, he worked on MCXtrema in the dynamic simulator from the early stages and conducted its first official track outing at Varano de' Melegari in February 2024. Maserati also credits him with helping to study and design the MC20 steering wheel, from which the GT2 Stradale wheel evolved.
Maserati logged about 200 hours in the dynamic simulator and 1,000 hours of virtual analysis before MCXtrema reached the track; Bertolini contributed from the early stages and drove the first official outing at Varano.
On the MC12 he treated mileage as the method: after Fiorano, tests rotated through Paul Ricard, Monza and Vallelunga, often 700 to 800 kilometres a day, covering tyres and aero while he also tested Ferrari's Formula 1 cars.
Maserati credits him with helping to study and design the MC20 steering wheel. The GT2 Stradale wheel is that layout carried forward, with shift lights in Alcantara, on a road car he did not style.
The stations
In the register
The files above are the register's own record of this name. The people index holds everyone the register credits.
In their words
“Taking a new car to the track always results in a special, unique feeling, as is the case for the MCXtrema.”
Andrea Bertolini · Maserati, 26 March 2024
Sources