Bridge HQ, Autodromo di Modena

One unit, a circuit outside the door

We work from a leased industrial unit inside the Autodromo di Modena, on the infield near the paddock. Workshop, instruction room, sim suite and office are under one roof, and the kart circuit, main circuit and pit lane are a short walk away. Track time is our working tool, not an occasional treat.

Site plan of Bridge HQ A schematic of the unit: the instruction room and the workshop along the top, the sim suite and the office below. The workshop’s garage door opens onto the paddock and the pit lane, with the armco and the main circuit beyond. The kart circuit sits on the other side of the unit. Kart circuit Main circuit Pit lane Armco Paddock Instruction room Workshop and garage Sim suite Office Bridge HQ
Schematic. Not to scale.

The workshop

Our fleet of karts and F4-spec single-seaters lives here, with prep bays, lifts and the tools to do our own mechanical work. Ilaria Benassi runs the karts; Davide Sorrentino runs the F4 cars.

Students spend time in here as well as in the seat. We call it data-and-spanner: read the lap, then go and find the reason for it on the car. A driver who understands the car can tell an engineer what it is doing.

A student and a mechanic at an F4-spec car on a lift, a telemetry laptop on a trolley beside them.
Data-and-spanner work on one of the F4 cars. Photograph: Lena Hoffmann.

The instruction room

A high room with high windows and a polished concrete floor. In the afternoon the light comes in as long rectangles across it. This is where we review telemetry on tablets and the big screens, hold classroom sessions, and use the mechanical rig that simulates g-forces.

It is also where we hold open days, partner visits and outreach sessions. The room works for both without being rebuilt.

The empty instruction room: the bridge logo on the far wall, a g-force rig, folding chairs and a steel table of tablets under a bank of screens, afternoon light in long rectangles across the concrete floor.
The instruction room in the afternoon. Photograph: Lena Hoffmann.

The sim suite

The simulators let students learn a circuit before they drive it and repeat a corner until it is theirs. The suite exists in part because our simulator partner supplied the rigs at well below cost in our first year.

A student in a simulator rig in a dark room, lit by the screen, an assistant coach leaning in beside the seat.
A sim session with Bruno Galli. Photograph: Lena Hoffmann.

The office

Small, on purpose. The walls carry the logo and photographs of kart tracks Alexander raced on as a boy, and one more wall of photographs: every student who has finished the programme, wherever they are now.

Berto’s moka pot lives here. He considers machine espresso an abomination, and visitors are told so.

A desk by a window: a Bialetti moka pot and an open leather notebook with a pen, the bridge logo and photographs of kart tracks on the wall behind.
Berto’s desk. Photograph: Lena Hoffmann.

The pit lane

Outside the door. It is our outdoor classroom, and the place most days end: backs to the armco, legs out on the tarmac, looking down an empty track while the light goes.

Two people perched on the pit-lane armco at sunset, seen from the chest down: one in a white race suit, one in blue holding a helmet. Their long shadows stretch across the tarmac.
The end of a session, at the armco. Photograph: Lena Hoffmann.

Why Modena

A working circuit

Modena is about 25 kilometres from Maranello, in the middle of Emilia-Romagna’s Motor Valley. It is a modest circuit with none of the grandeur of the famous ones, and that is the point.

The people here on a weekday are club racers and karting families, not hospitality guests. Our students learn in a place that has not been dressed up for them, which is the kind of place most of them will race in for the next few years.

Being inside the circuit also changes the arithmetic. When the track is outside the door, a session costs a morning, not a day of travel, and seat time stops being an event.

L’università del fare tutto con niente.

The university of doing everything with nothing.