Future shaper-in-chief of Ferrari feel takes the baton
For the last 26 years, Dario Benuzzi (pictured right), Ferrari's head test driver, has had the world's best job all to himself. Day after day, following yet another struggle to warp the time/space continuum around Fiorano's 1.83 miles, Dario's words into an engineer's ear have helped sculpt the roadgoing character of every roadgoing Ferrari of the last quarter century. Tickled with your Testarossa? Credit Dario. Miserable with your Mondial? Dario again. He's so highly esteemed that when the Olympic torch passed through Maranello on its way to the Winter Games in Turin, Benuzzi was selected to carry the flame into the factory.
The author offers driving tips to Rafaelle de Simone.
But these days the legendary man in black sunglasses is getting help from a 26-year-old protg who's likely to become Maranello's future shaper-in-chief of Ferrari feel. "My name, Rafaelle. My surname, de Simone. Rafaelle de Simone."
"I started as a mechanic and began racing when I was 17," begins the wiry, warm-eyed Rafaelle in accented, but meticulously precise English, "and now I'm beginning my fourth year with Ferrari." For all the gesticulating passion Italian conversation entails, Rafaelle speaks in serene, liquid sentences. The hands move only when they're on a steering wheel.
His typical day starts at half past eight with an engineering briefing, but that's the last thing predictable about it. "I move a lot. Often I test 100 percent of the car's components, so there might be an acclimatization test in the north of Europe one day, brake testing with Brembo the next, and tire testing with Pirelli after that. The 599 has a team of 40 persons, and we all work hard here at Fiorano because increasingly our owners are driving their cars on racetracks." Eighty percent of the track testing happens here, with the remainder divided between Ferrari-owned Mugello, Hockenheim, and the Nrburgring. Yet that accounts for no more than 30 percent of Rafaelle's time; 60 percent is on the roads around Maranello where the manettino steering-wheel switch affords quick subjective comparisons of ride and handling settings. Ten percent is spent reviewing data. And when does his day end? He smiles. "Depends. If you reach the required result by six p.m., you can go to dinner. If not, it may be midnight."
All this should give de Simone the countenance of a Ferrari authority, but Rafaelle immediately rejects the mantle. "My father and grandfather knew such cars as the 333SP directly. I am young," he smiles. "I can only read about Ferrari's history." A daunting proposition given the piles of books already written about the goings on in Maranello. But lap after lap, de Simone is beginning to add his name to them.
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