Profile

Luca, you joined Panasonic Toyota Racing back in September 1999. How did your career path lead you to Cologne?
Going back to my university days, I studied mechanical engineering at Pisa in Italy and I also went on to complete my PHD in the same subject. During this period, I was also able to spend some time in the United States. Upon completion of my PhD, I was hired by Ferrari to work in their racing department. I was there for ten years from 1989 to 1999, but not always in the engine area. I was actually hired initially on the chassis side, as I had experience in composites, especially from my time in the US. But being in the calculation department, my eyes were opened up to what was being done in other technical areas. Step-by-step, little be little, I was moved on to the engine side. From 1995 I was Project Leader of final Ferrari V12 which raced in the 1995 season. In 1996 I became Project Leader of the 047 and 048-coded engines that were used by the team. The last engine I worked on was the 049 V10, but my subsequent move to Toyota meant that I did not have the chance to follow this engine during its racing life.

Were you always interested in Motorsports?
I was always interested in motorsports and always said that I would work in motorsport or in research and development. Basically I got the chance to work at Ferrari and I thought at the time that I had to try. It was a bit of a dream for me being Italian and if I had not tried it I would have spent the rest of my life thinking “what if?”

What do you think you would have done had you not joined Ferrari?
Hypothetically, I think I would have continued my studies at university. I already had a post graduate fellowship at MIT, so my life was actually already mapped out when I got the chance at Ferrari.

Were you an F1 fanatic?
I always watched Formula 1 on television but was interested more from a technological standpoint. I was not especially mad on Ferrari, but there was a period of time when I followed Gilles Villeneuve. Forghieri was my hero from a technical point of view. For a young engineer he represented the best for everyone to aspire to.

The Secret to Reliability is in the Manufacturing Process and the Pursuit of Quality

Toyota engines have always had a good reputation but it seems the results are only just starting to show this. How do you evaluate Toyota’s progress since the first race in 2002?
I am pleased with the results so far. Generally we have always done a good job even if the results have not been there. The quality of work is not evident when you do not get the results but for me it has always been there. It has been almost like we have had the gears in place but up to this season we have not been able to put them all in the right sequence. It was a similar experience in my previous company when we had good packages but when things were put together, the end product did not produce the expected result. 2004 was a disappointing season when we expected good results but did not perform well. The results this season are the product of a long and difficult process, but I think we should be happy with what we have achieved at each stage along the way. It has been a continuous improvement process and also last year we showed some potential.

Toyota reliability seems to be far and away superior. What is the secret of producing and maintaining engines at such a high level?
This is the result of a complicated process we put in place from the very beginning and not just a result from the engine. From design and production through Quality Control up to the quality of assembly, if any of these steps fail, you will never get the reliability. No-one is failing engines due to design mistakes these days. Typically, whenever we have a failure, the problem is traced back to production or batch problems, so we had to learn to improve that over time. In a certain sense design has to be robust enough to have a good repeatability on the production process. What we are seeing this season is the result of four to five years of activity from the team as a whole unit. This season we have run 44 engines in 11 races with the supply to Jordan as well and in those 44 we have seen just 2 failures in race weekends, both of which were minor issues at Jordan. In between the targets, we are also proud to have let the teams run a lot of mileage in practice sessions to help the set-up of the car. We are consistently amongst the teams with the highest weekend mileage and I think this can also be deemed as a tremendous success.