Italian journalist Giorgio Terruzzi pinpoints "true magic of Formula 1"

There is an element that still gathers thousands of Formula 1 enthusiasts around a screen in February and during the tests, even though the actual season has not yet begun: the interest in technology. The engineering innovations, the solutions found to gain those thousandths, hundredths that can make the difference between the last and the fifth row, always intrigue, perhaps, for their confidentiality. In recent years, in fact, no one exposes themselves, no one explains what has been done. Some aspects are indeed secret, but don’t believe that in the paddock engineers do not constantly study other cars, looking for inspiration (or even openly copying).

And in these weeks of motor racing silence, Italian journalist and motorsport expert Giorgio Terruzzi wanted to praise the projects and the work in the factory. “There is a fundamental aspect of Formula 1 that surprises me every time. Ten teams, ten working groups made up of different people operating in different places, around an original project destined to compete on micro time scales. Just take a close look at a car to perceive enormous complexity. Every detail decided after long studies, from screws to the lifter for pit stops. Machines like highly sophisticated objects, which hide under seemingly similar shapes, the true characteristics, what works, what works a bit less.” – he pointed out.

“Secrets and mysteries for us who, in the end, manage to recognize each car thanks to the colors. If they were all the same color, I believe it would be extremely complicated to follow a race,” wrote the Italian journalist on the Red Bull website.

“In front of the stopwatch, we marvel, perhaps, in the face of a tenth of a second that separates this or that car, without really evaluating the entity we have in front of us (a one-second gap over five kilometers is trivial) and without considering how magical it is to see ten absolute prototypes on the track, designed and conceived by different people in different places, which, once compared, produce performances that are actually very close to each other. The subsequent thought concerns precisely the applied technology. Which is obviously the result of an interpretation of regulations based on shareable data, on certainties, on rigid rules that concern the conception and development of a single-seater. So we are talking about people, those who actually build a car, owners of a knowledge unknown or almost unknown to us (I use the plural while assuming rare exceptions). This is the topic that fascinates most and, at the same time, is neglected. […] The true nature, complex and fascinating, of Formula 1, in fact, remains closed off from the debate,” motorsport expert Giorgio Terruzzi concluded.