Porte aperte a Modena

Once a year we open Bridge HQ to anyone who wants to see how the programme works. This year’s open day fell in the middle of the June residency block, so the visitors got to see the Class of 2028 at work.

About 200 people came through the workshop over the day: current families, families thinking about applying, partners, people from the circuit, and a good number of children who had come to look at karts and stayed to sit in one.

What happened

• The workshop ran continuous tours. Ilaria Benassi talked visitors through setting up a kart; Davide Sorrentino had one of the F4 cars on the lift with its telemetry on a screen beside it.
• The sim suite was booked solid. Bruno Galli ran 10-minute sessions all afternoon and kept a leaderboard, which a nine-year-old from Formigine led for most of the day.
• The instruction room hosted two short talks: Adamo Bianchi on what the performance-education syllabus covers, and Berto Marchetti on what we look for in an application.
• The kart circuit ran demonstration sessions with the current students, who were better at explaining what they were doing than they gave themselves credit for.

For families thinking of applying

The questions we heard most were about money, school and safety. The short answers: families are not asked to pay; school comes first and we work around it; and we never leave a student alone with a single adult. The longer answers are on our page for families.

Applications for the 2029 intake open on 1 September.