Pierluigi
In Formula 1, a wrong decision can cost millions, as you can easily imagine.
Imagine you’re a Formula 1 team, you’re racing, and with just a few laps to go it starts to drizzle, so the driver radios the pit wall, should I pit or stay out?
Will it rain? Will it stop? It’s a decision that has to be made within seconds, and you certainly can’t make it by instinct. Because in my opinion, instinct doesn’t exist in Formula 1. What is certain is that you cannot improvise.
To avoid improvising, everything in Formula 1 is driven by data. In the garage… but also back at the factory, very often. There are dozens of engineers following the race in real time, monitoring all the available data during the race, including the car’s telemetry, but also the weather data, along with every other piece of information that can be collected during a race.
And based on everything that was studied beforehand, during testing and during the car’s development, they’re able to tell the pit wall, what the best decision is at that specific moment.
So everything is based on data. In Formula 1, you could say the driver doesn’t really win, even though when we watch a Grand Prix we naturally focus on the drivers, or maybe on the pit wall, or the mechanics changing the tires.
But behind it there’s a much more complex system, and that’s what makes the result possible. So it’s the system that wins. A system built on methods, procedures and data, which is the only way to consistently achieve victory.
Davide
So we could say that what looked like entertainment to you, for us was simply everyday work.
The face of the desperate mechanic trying to fix the mess that had just happened. It was work. But we absolutely loved it.
I’ve basically been passionate about engines my entire life: cars, motorcycles, anything with an internal combustion engine.
And my academic path was planned with the goal of ending up there. I still remember being in middle school when I wanted to attend a science high school because I had been told that would allow me to study mechanical engineering, which was the path to Formula 1.
So imagine me at 10, or 12 years old, already convinced that’s where I belonged. Then at university, once I got there, I did everything I could to get involved with motorsports as soon as possible.
Here you can see me with my elbow bandaged, I’d just injured it. I was the technical director of my university’s Formula Student team, a racing competition between universities.
I hadn’t even graduated yet when Dallara called me and hired me to work in the structural analysis department for their Formula 1 projects.
For me it felt like walking into an amusement park, because imagine being a newly graduated engineer getting paid to do what you love most. Up to that point I had lived my life with blinders on.
If there had been a crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, I wouldn’t even have known where it was.
Formula 1 was the only thing that existed, and I absolutely loved it. There are so many stories behind some of these pictures. The one on the right, for example, looks like it was taken in the afternoon, but I think it was around three in the morning. I was working in structural analysis, and there were only two days left before the first Barcelona test.
Just imagine the situation. The car is about this long, and there are around 150 people who all need to work around it at the same time, and there’s simply not enough room. Formula 1 is incredibly efficient, and people think very logically, like this: the day has 24 hours, there’s not enough space for everyone, so let’s work through the night.
You quickly realize that Monday was just like Saturday, which was just like Wednesday, which was just like Sunday. Day was the same as night. There were no schedules.
At that stage we were testing aerodynamic components. I was responsible for the structural side of those aerodynamic parts, and at that moment I could actually see the work I had designed becoming reality. Imagine the fear that something we had built might fail somehow.
But I loved that environment because I felt that everyone around me spoke the same language. There was data, not opinions. Whenever you had an idea, you had to explain it, but not by saying, “I think this works.”
Everyone would look at you and say, “Hold on. Prove it. Show me the data.” I absolutely loved that. And then there was the passion that drove everything.
It really was an incredible boost.
Pierluigi
Exactly. I have to say my path was very similar. I’ve always been passionate about motorsports, especially racing.
I used to watch every Formula 1 Grand Prix with my father, and that’s where my passion began. My first real experience in motorsports was also Formula Student, which gave me the opportunity during university to learn how to design a race car and also to drive it.
As you can see in this picture, I was also one of the team’s drivers. Sorry, Formula Student, not Formula 1. I never drove a Formula 1 car. Formula Student.
I was also the team leader at the University of Florence, and during that experience, which continued throughout my PhD, I had the opportunity to work with Ferrari.
I started an internship there, specifically in the composites production department.
I worked as a production engineer, overseeing the manufacturing of carbon fiber components, or more generally, all the composite parts of the car.
Basically the entire car except the engine and gearbox, because almost everything is made of carbon fiber.
I was involved in the development of several components, and my job was essentially to industrialize those parts.
In other words, I received designs from engineers or analysts like Davide, and my job was to make sure they were manufactured exactly as intended, turning what the designers had envisioned into a real component.
