Dubai: His eyes sparkle when the legendary Michael Schumacher is mentioned during a casual conversation. “Michael and I are good friends,” Costantino Bertuzzi blurts as he serves me a cup of fresh brew at his Attibassi Café at the recent Nad Al Sheba Ramadan Sports Tournament.
What started off as a search for coffee to bide me through the night games in fact turned out into a chance meeting with one talented racing driver.
“We go long back when I was a test driver with Ferrari and Michael Schumacher was at the top of his game as the world’s best-ever Formula One driver,” he shrugs as we settle in for a cuppa.
“I come from a family with engines in their blood,” Bertuzzi boasts.
And as it turns out, it is no vain boast. His father Camillo was part of the family business Astra Veicoli Industriali, a factory with 1,800 plus workers. After World War II, the factory was involved in repairing American trucks and tanks and very soon they started building their own trucks, dump trucks, heavy duty truck chassis, military trucks and power generators.
Between 1960 and 1962, go-karts, which appeared overseas in 1957, arrived in Italy from the USA, and Bertuzzi’s father started racing these little machines. Subsequently BM Motori was born in 1970, the first Italian firm to build frames and engines for go-karts. BM Motori went on to win World and European Championships for years and among the drivers who figured behind the little engines were Ronnie Peterson, Keke Rosberg, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Beppe Gabbiani, Elio de Angelis and Eddie Cheever to name a few.
Bertuzzi’s father died of a heart attack in 1981 when he was just 43 years old and the youngster was forced to chart his own course in the world of motorsport. He had started off testing go-karts when only six years old, and after his father’s untimely demise the young Costantino started racing motorcycles. By the time he was 15, Bertuzzi had won the Italian Moto Championship against more than 200 participants.
In the next two years, Bertuzzi became a factory Honda rider and he achieved a third place in the world championship Under 21 Class, but had to give up motocross racing following a bad accident. By then he had graduated from The American School of Switzerland in Lugano after which Bertuzzi started his career with cars.
“My debut with cars was in 1988 during my military service where I served in the Italian Army for 15 months as part of the Athletes’ Corps. My first race was the Sardinia Rally, a five-day off-road rally up and down the rocky mountains of the Italian Island of Sardinia where I finished fifth,” he recounts.
After dabbling with the Italian Touring Car Championship, the Tottoli Ford racing team to race with the new Ford Escort Cosworth, and three races of the European Hill Climb Championship, Bertuzzi turned his attention to the Italian GT Championship in a Porsche 911 Turbo where he claimed two third place finishes in the two races he participated.
“In 1995 I was employed full-time at the BMW Racing and Acrobatic School where one of the tasks for me was travelling to Moscow’s Red Square to film some acrobatic performance sequences on ice with the new BMW 325i Coupe,” Bertuzzi recalls.
In 1996, the young Italian entered the racing world of Ferrari, spending the first two years with the F355 Challenge, then considered a proper Italian Championship by the Italian Racing Commission. In 1996, he won the World Ferrari Challenge title, but lost the Italian Championship at the start of the final race due to mechanical failure.
“In 1999, Ferrari hired me to develop the 360 Challenge with Enzo Ferrari as a driver come technical engineer. In the same year I became a test driver for Pirelli, while also testing for BMS Scuderia Italia’s Ferrari 333SP that ultimately went on to win the Prototype World Championship,” Bertuzzi smiles.
“That was the time I came in close contact with Michael as test driver for Ferrari and the team trusted me on my inputs as there were two sides to it — as a driver and as a technician,” the 38-year-old says.
Following the skiing accident at the French Alpine resort of Meribel in December 2013, Schumacher’s health condition has been kept under close wraps by his wife Corinna and their two children, Gina and Mick. And perhaps the only reliable source of information, thought intermittently, has been the seven-time German champion’s long-time manager, Sabine Kehm.
“Yes I do keep in touch with Corinna just to enquire about an old friend. But of late, like so many others in keeping with the family wishes, I have kept in touch through common friends of the Schumachers,” he admits.
“To anyone who did not know him, Michael came across as a very tense, unfriendly and curt person. But you have to really be with him to know him. By all means he had a sense of humour and he always related with everyone on the team. But perhaps, his terse exterior was due to his focus on racing as a thorough professional,” Bertuzzi offers.
By 2001, Bertuzzi had amassed more than 450 trophies along with the recognition of being a great race engineer and test driver. Still under the Ferrari wings, the young driver shifted base to Orlando County, California, US to manage the Ferrari set up at the Beverly Hills 360 Challenge Racing Team. At the same time he was also working as a test driver on the 360 GT programme that was being privately supported by Michelotto that brought the car to its debut at the 2002 Rolex Daytona 24 Hours, where he has raced nine times.
So what sets him apart from the rest? “It’s my passion for this sport,” he argues.
“I’ve been in racing bikes and cars for over 30 years and I have collected 457 trophies. I have this passion that will never end. I am always the first one to go to the racetrack. Even if my race is at 12 noon I will be there at 7am and I will be the last one to leave,” he adds.
“I have done it for so long and I have no plans to stop now. My passion will go on for a long, long time,” Bertuzzi smiles.
