Sabrina Faija
08/08/2020 - 9:01
- Clarín.com
- sports
The Argentine Nicolás Bianco's phone rang at his home in Faenza, northern Italy, on the night of June 7, 2017. Not even six months had passed since he had signed his contract with Toro Rosso, the Formula 1 team owned by Red Bull, and quieter days awaited him at the factory, as car attendants Carlos Sainz Jr. and Daniil Kvyat were on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, preparing for the Canadian Grand Prix.
-Nico, everything okay?
-Yes.
-What are you doing?
-I'm eating.
-Do you have the passport?
-Yes.
-Well, at 5 in the morning you go to Canada.
-Than?! For! How? What happened?
-One of the boys got hit. Come get the clothes and you go.
" I arrived after a 50-hour flight , because in those cases they buy the first available ticket. I hadn't slept at all. They told me to go to the hotel to get settled and that they were going to pick me up. I didn't understand anything or what was there. When I got to the pit , they introduced me to the chief mechanic, they showed me to the car and told me we were going to try the pit stop . I had never tried a pit stop . I have the video of my first pit stop and it was a disaster . But that's the way it is. They are things that have to happen and they happen ", recalls the Argentine mechanic from Alpha Tauri from England, shortly after the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix of Formula 1.
His letter of introduction arrived on that seventh date of the 2017 season, in the car of Sainz Jr., who in the first lap starred in a bunt, hit a wall and destroyed the Toro Rosso. "They put me in because one of them was injured and he turned around. And they threw me inside. I had been working for six months and when I arrived I didn't understand anything. On top of that, I was touched by Sainz, who touched himself and destroyed the chassis. And the pit stop It also went wrong. What a disaster! ", he adds, although he does not hold a grudge against the Spanish pilot. On the contrary, he believes that he is the best with whom he worked.
VIDEO 🎬 Accident between Sainz, Grosjean and Massa that leaves Madrid out of the race https://t.co/bJooNYRXFp # F1 pic.twitter.com/RrPDY4guAc
- Spanish Grand Prix 🇪🇸 (@spanishgp_) June 11, 2017"The team is plotting to give you a hand. I was not up to everyone. And I see it with each new one that arrives, that it is not up to the task. When I look at them, I realize that I was like that, doing the himself - he explains in dialogue with Clarín -. Run, run, run, you live running all the time ,because you have to arrive with the times to do everything and in the first race you run like crazy. Now I do it calm, I manage the times. ANDif there is any problem, you calm down because you know what you have to do and you will move forward ".
His accent mixes a strong Cordovan from his native Marcos Juárez with the cadence of the Italian who has spoken every day for four years, when he settled in Milan to work for the WTCC JAS Motosport team. This season, in addition to being the rear rear mechanic of the Russian Kvyat's car, Bianco is in charge of changing the right rear wheel in the pit stops of the Alpha Tauri team and for that task he trains physically and mentally.
Nicolás Bianco, working on the Toro Rosso team car Photo: Red Bull Press
-How do you choose to be in the pit stop ?
-It's all based on training. And they see a lot of personality too: if you are precise, if you put a punch, if you are calm ... There we all have to do something: of the 24 people who can be outside the pit lane , we are 19 who have to work in each pit stop . You practice and what works best for you, you go inside. Of course he has a responsibility, but it is the most beautiful of the weekend. It's a complete adrenaline rush. The car reaches 60 km / h and you stop there at nothing. I'm on the inside and I see the car pointing at me, do you understand? And I don't see it there at all and I say, with a thousand adrenaline rush, "let it be what God wants." If he passes a little bit, he grabs me in the middle (laughs). But the pilots are trained.
-From the TV it looks easy and fast. How is work? How hot is the tire?
-They have more than 100 degrees, depending on what rubber you wear, and first you have to take it outside. I hug the rubber band, which weighs six or seven kilos, I take it outside and the first thing I do is put it on the floor because even though we have all the special suits and gloves, it burns in our hands. There I hope the car arrives. It's three seconds, you don't wait long. And at that moment each one has a way of finding their inner tranquility, each one does something different to lower the tension and the adrenaline. For example, I support the rubber, I lower the visor and there is nothing else. There is one that sticks to the head. Each one has a click with which they calm down to make the pit stop , which is two seconds.
-There is a chapter of the Netflix F1 documentary ("Drive to Survive") in which the same Haas mechanic makes a mistake when putting the tire of the two cars. Did something like this happen to you?
-In those things they also train us, you see? You have to lower a curtain if something bad happened to you. It also happened to me in a pit stop that did not work out, but we know what to do to lower the curtain, to forget about that pit stop . Like that part is cut and we get into the other. There are the double pit stops , one can go wrong and the other car is coming. And there we have to have only one thing in mind. Or how happened the other day, with the shock of Daniil. I didn't even have to think about what happened, because I heard that everything was fine and they called me to do the pit stop for Pierre (Gasly). That is why he trains physically and psychologically. We have the same training as the pilots. Exactly the same.
Papers? What roles?
Sitting I wait. Nicolás Bianco, along with the rest of the mechanics of the pit team. Photo: Red Bull Press
Cars always caught Bianco's attention. He spent his childhood in his grandfather's workshop and as soon as he finished high school he got into motor racing. First in Marcos Juárez, until he reached the Super TC2000 at the hands of Víctor Rosso, general director of the RAM Racing Factory, a structure that the Honda Racing team carries out. It was he who prompted him to try his luck in Europe and made him contact to try out as a mechanic in Italy.
"I came with an employment contract ... in theory. But we arrived in Italy with another boy, we went to the team and they asked us for the papers. 'Yes, here are all the papers to become citizenship' , I said. But no They needed me to have citizenship. And I went with the money counted to spend 20 days on vacation and start working. So I spent almost four months without working and in Europe, which is not cheap, and pay for citizenship . It was a It was quite a hard part, but everything went well and I spent a year with the JAS Motosport, in the WTCC, where Pecho ( Pechito López) was racing, "he explains.
However, his way of working did not conform to the style that his boss wanted. "You have to calm down a little when you're here, a lot 'yes, sir' and Nico isn't like that, Nico has to know everything," he has a broad smile that is reflected in the video call. "As here you work under contract and you can't leave it overnight, I reached an agreement with him: he told me that if I found something better, I was free to go. And you can't put your finger on it: I'm Argentine, I'm hot-blooded , "he adds.
"I started looking for something and out of nowhere it came out that a team in Emilia Romagna was looking for a mechanic. And in Emilia Romagna there are a lot of teams and there are both Formula 1 teams . I asked which team it was for, but they answered that I didn't they could say, but they liked my profile and they were going to put me in contact with them, "he recalls.
But his insistence convinced the representative of the human resources agency: "I'm telling you, I'm telling you. It's a Formula 1 team." About those meetings of an hour and a half each, he confesses what they told him: "In Emilia Romagna there are two. They clarified: 'It's not red' and I knew it was Toro Rosso. And I went to four interviews with them. In the first I didn't stay in the group, because they were looking for something else. But they had the profile because the boss liked it, they contacted me again and then I was selected ",
He returned to Milan, said that he had achieved that "something better" that they demanded of him, and moved to Faenza. The Toro Rosso factory is in the same place as Minardi, although there was little left of "old Minardi", Bianco acknowledges. "The new headquarters was built around it: it is huge, everything is perfect, white and neat," he compares.
-What do you think they liked about you?
- They like the Argentine's personality when solving a problem. I know what I have to do and I jump on my head to do it. I don't think about what might happen if I don't. It broke, you have to fix it and I'm on my head, I don't care about anything. I think they like that. This weekend, for example, we had a problem with an air intake and I solved it with a bit of tape, because in qualifying the car has to go out. Does not matter how. They asked me: 'Will he hold out?' . And I told them: 'Hold on, don't make a problem, let's go . ' In those things we South Americans have a plus.
-And why isn't there an Argentine pilot? Is the only impediment economic?
-I think so. That there is no pilot is due to financial support. It's a lot (money) to get there. When you arrive with a sponsor, it is much easier. You need talent, obviously, and there are many talented to arrive, but financial support is key.
-How long do you have a contract at Alpha Tauri?
-Our contract is indeterminate. When you get to the race team, you have an indeterminate contract. You are free to go whenever you want. You have to give considerable notice, but I think all teams have them. Although within the team is the test team , who know what to do but are not on the track, it takes a long time to be a track mechanic. That's why when a mechanic decides to leave, they put the other mechanic in for four or five races so that later he can take his place.
A season in the shadow of the coronavirus
The pit stop of Alpha Tauri, the team in which Bianco works in Formula 1. Photo: Red Bull Press
Everything was ready in Australia for the start of the Formula 1 season. But on March 13, the day the ten teams were due to start training, the Grand Prix was canceled. "We were sharing the hotel with McLaren Racing and between 9.30 and 10 I received a message from the team principal saying, 'Just so you know we have a positive case at this hotel,' " says Graham Watson, Alpha Tauri CEO. , in the documentary "Open Doors".
"It was very difficult to come back without doing a race, with all the problems that were in the whole world and us on the other side," recalls Bianco. " We did not know what we could find when we returned to Italy. I lived it with fear, because I did not know what could happen and for the authorities we were dangerous people, because we were traveling around the world. So we had to be locked up 15 days. Imagine my house: I went to a race thinking that I was going to be outside for 15 days and I didn't even have a package of rice, "he says.
"The team behaved very well: I would send them an email with what I needed and they would bring me things to cook. Afterwards we were able to go out alone to do the shopping, until little by little everything opened. I was also lucky to be in a town that only had three cases, which did not progress, and that I live in a rural area: there are fruits around, I could do my walk quietly and I trained inside. I was comfortable, I did not suffer from it, "he completes.
-What is the biggest change in making a World Cup in the middle of a pandemic?
"Now I realized one thing at Silverstone." When you enter, there is a huge park that is always full of people. I think it is the race with the most people and the most sponsors. And the sadness that he gave me and the whole team, because we all stayed like this (and he opens his mouth), without understanding anything. Although for us the work is exactly the same, nothing changes us and all we have to wear is a mask, doing a career like that is not the same. Race weekend has a different flavor. It's not the same, do you understand me?
-How did Sergio Pérez's positive for coronavirus live in the paddock ?
-And the question of Checo ... I'm quite sorry about that. Luckily it's okay and nothing happened. When they started with the tests, we thought that among so many controls, perhaps one would pass by. But it really works. A pilot had it. So on the one hand happy because the controls really work and on the other I feel very sorry for Checo .