Being a Pro in ELMS at 21: story of Enzo Trulli

On Sunday, April 13, Enzo Trulli claimed his first ELMS victory, a series in which he has been competing this year as a professional driver, signed by Team Algarve Pro Racing. The following weekend he was back on the podium in China as a Porsche driver. Let’s take a look at the second life of a driver who chose an alternative path for his career.

For anyone who thinks carrying a “racing surname” automatically paves the way to F1, and that somehow the road to the top of the pyramid is easier “if your father raced in Formula 1,” let’s be clear: it doesn’t work like that. While it is true that several “juniors” have made it to F1 – a certain Max, for example – and that many others have managed to spend a few seasons there, it is equally true that plenty of drivers with famous surnames or Formula 1 family backgrounds never reached the destination for a variety of reasons. Some are still active, others eventually stopped trying altogether. Among those reasons, especially for those whose fathers worked in motorsport, there is often one key principle: “paying to race? No thanks.” That mindset frequently marks either the end of a career or at least the end of pursuing certain paths – driven by the realism of people who know how the system works.

Enzo Trulli’s story is particularly unique in this context, as his journey has unfolded across very different championships from his karting days to the present. Extremely fast in karting, where in 2020 he shared the tent with Kimi Antonelli for several races (Enzo took the first two OK poles of the year in WSK, with Kimi second), his final karting race was the OK World Championship in Portimão, where he raced with Birel Art, before moving into cars at the age of 15, like many others.
After winning the UAE F4 Championship on debut, Enzo seemed destined for a rapid rise through the single-seater ladder. And indeed, despite his young age, during the difficult pandemic years he managed to find openings toward more prestigious championships, although from the very beginning his guiding principle remained: “do not pay to race,” but instead let results speak for themselves while waiting for opportunities.
The opportunity with Carlin in F3 for 2022 came after Enzo impressed in Euroformula Open, taking several podiums in his debut season. However, for various reasons – primarily the lack of testing in a category with an extremely compressed race weekend schedule – Enzo was unable to fully express his potential that year.
2023 became a year of rebirth in the highly competitive and selective Super Formula Lights Championship (the Japanese equivalent of Formula 3). Despite struggling on certain circuits, Trulli managed to win a couple of races and also secured a pole position, although his experience in the series ended without the possibility of remaining with Team Tom’s for the following season.
After spending much of 2024 on the sidelines – apart from a few wildcard appearances in the Italian GT Championship – a major opportunity emerged again in 2025. The young Italian driver quite literally sent in his résumé to take part in the talent pool assessment through which young drivers would be selected for potential calls from teams. Enzo thus became a Porsche Selected Driver, succeeding Dorian Boccolacci, who had been promoted to Porsche factory status within the driver roster used for 911 GT3-R programs since 2020. “I just sent a résumé, like the kind you send when looking for a job. They called me, I flew to China and… I passed the interview” he says with great simplicity.

 

He got into the car in Shanghai for the first time early in 2025 and immediately took pole position, winning on debut and fulfilling the dream of one day becoming a factory driver. Everything happened rather quickly because, in parallel, Algarve Pro Racing – where he had been working as a Driver Coach in the European Le Mans Series LMP2 Championship – offered him the chance to partner their Bronze-rated driver Michael Jensen.
His debut resulted in victory in the Pro/Am category, and the season ahead looks exciting for Enzo, split between his official “career” commitment as a Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific driver and his ELMS campaign, where he once again stood on the top step of the podium:
“I never focused exclusively on Formula 1 because, as everyone in the industry knows very well, it’s a path that is never linear and above all requires someone willing to invest enormous amounts of money. I like being a racing driver, and I believe it’s a profession where you should be paid in some way, rather than paying to compete in championships that are merely stepping stones to F1, without any guarantee that even winning those championships will lead to a call from a Formula 1 team.
The GT world can offer great satisfaction, and now that I have the privilege of being part of the Porsche family, my goal is to stay with them and progress through the development program until I reach the highest level racing for this historic motorsport brand.”

 

Thinking about the single-seaters you drove up to a certain point, do you notice differences both in driving style and in the type of racing?
“First of all, they’re all race cars. Driving is obviously the foundation, so the way you drive an F3 is the way you drive an F2 – which I’ve never actually driven – and also the way you drive a prototype. If you’re a driver, ‘handling the car’ is not really what you should be worried about.