One of the many pleasures of Formula One is the wry British commentary we get on TV here in the States. These guys are insanely savvy about racing. You get more insight into the teams, cars and drivers than you can keep up with, as well as witty asides like Martin Brundle today, about an unforced spin-out on a high speed turn near the end of qualifying, where he said that the Renault driver let “ambition run ahead of adhesion.” The sport is full of language. A car with the right balance and high performance is said to be “on song.” Bits of degraded tires that accumulate like black snow on the track during a race are called “marbles” or “klag.”
Of course F1 is multi-lingual as well, being a global sport with teams all over Europe and races on five continents. This weekend’s race is fascinating in that it’s a first for F1 on the track, which is an otherwise famous venue in Tuscany called the International Autodrome of Mugello.
F1 had to rebuild its entire calendar for 2020 like other spring-to-autumn sports, and it tried to keep travel costs down for its teams as it did so. So following last week’s longstanding and historic race at Monza, they arranged to move only 300 km to Mugello. This turns out to be a fantastic 5 km course set in some hills for elevation changes and long views. It’s a postcard setting and a very fast track, even though it has a lot of turns. High speed turns are the most exciting thing in F1, so qualifying was great and the race should be a spectacle (ESPN2 at 8 am Sunday morning!).
But this was about language. As with some other road courses, the turns at Mugello have names. At Mugello, you have Scarperia (a right-hander) into Palagio (a left) and a very quick, downhill Casanova (yep, for real) into Savelli, which leads to the best of all, a long, double-apex right hand sweeper that pushes the driver to 5 g called Arrabbiata. You know the word. It’s a spicy tomato based pasta sauce. But the word itself in Italian means angry. And Italians use it for the angry hungry feeling we call ‘hangry.’ I’m struck that hangry is a quality racing drivers have to bring to every corner.