[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: You're listening to the Motorsport Prospects Podcast.
Hey, it's Mark from Motorsport Prospects and welcome to the Motorsport Prospects Podcast. This is where we dive into the world of motorsport with the people who live and breathe it. From driver coaches and sponsorship experts, to team owners, pro drivers and more. You're going to hear real stories, practical advice and insights you can actually use, whether you're just starting out or already chasing success on the track.
Now, I've often been asked why I started Motorsport Prospects. And the reason I started Motorsport Prospects was after hearing the same question time and again from drivers, aspiring drivers, their families and advisors. That question was, who can I trust?
Many struggle to find reliable guidance, so I created Motorsport Prospects to help them make informed decisions. The professionals I feature on this podcast, like Franco, represent that trust. A quality drivers often tell me is hardest to find.
So if you work with drivers or racing teams, building trust is one of the most important things you can do. Over the years, I found that being clear about what you offer, following through on your promises, and genuinely caring about what your clients goals are makes all the difference.
So I've put together some practical advice in my free white paper, the Three Essentials for Motorsport Business Owners, which shares simple ways to strengthen relationships, attract the right clients and grow your motorsport business. Naturally, you can find it in the show notes
[email protected] so let's get started.
My guest today is Franco Chiochetti. I'm pretty sure I pronounced that right. With over 25 years of engineering and management experience in the motorsport and automotive industry, Franco is the CEO and founder of Race On. His company specializes in providing cutting edge engineering solutions and strategic advice to clients in this competitive and dynamic sector.
Welcome to the Motorsport Prospects Podcast, Franco. Thanks so much for taking the time out to speak to me.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: Thanks very much for the invite, Mark. It's my pleasure.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Now, the podcast is very simple.
I have one question and it's the question I think any driver, aspiring driver, would like to get an answer from people such as you.
So the question is, based on your experience and expertise as a motorsport professional, what would be the one most important piece of advice you can offer a current aspiring race driver?
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Yeah, from my perspective and this, this advice is not linked solely to to drivers. In my opinion, it's linked to anyone in the motorsport industry.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Get a professional on your side.
You know, you need to have someone who you're rubbing shoulders with who's able to teach you right. You know, when you're coming out of karting, going into track Racing or you're coming out of university, going into your first real life job, you know, you need to be rubbing shoulders with those people who are going to move you forward and for sure you can, you will learn, you will learn at the same time if you don't have those people.
But your, your learning and growth will not be exponential and it needs to be exponential. In this day and age of AI and accessibility to information, you need to have that exponential growth in the early time of your career.
And I guess you can look at it from a finance perspective. It's like compounding interest. You know, you can start in, in the beginning, you start saving small amounts and if you just leave it there with time, it just at some stage becomes exponential.
So actually I had a, I worked very, I worked with a very high level driver early in my career, I'm not going to mention names, but a very, very successful and very wise driver.
And he made a very nice analogy and he said, you know, you need to see your career like a toolbox. Mechanics toolbox.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Your task is to fill each draw with tools.
Because if you are one day in the desert somewhere working on a Dakar car and you have a specific problem, you need to have the tool in your toolbox to fix that problem.
Otherwise you're going to need a lot more time. And I think that's, that's a very, very nice way of putting it. And I hope he's, he doesn't mind me stealing his idea, but it is very true. You know, you need to be filling that toolbox and it's, it's a race, you know, when you finish university or when you finish your car career and you're moving on to cars, it's a race as to who's going to get where first.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: You know, so you need to have as many advantages along the way to be one step ahead of those around you.
And that's why, you know, if I had half a million, I mean I, I'm not in the driver management business or anything like that, so I don't know what the real costs are. But just, just as an example, if I had half a million dollars or euro to invest in my motorsport career, would I do five years spending a hundred thousand euro or would I do two years spending 250?
Now my perspective is I will do two years spending 250 because if I haven't succeeded after those two years, then probably I need to get another job anyway.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah, good point.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: That's, yeah, you don't know that invest Early.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And you're, you're right. And it is an investment.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Absolutely.
You know, I've seen it with young driver. I know. And they keep asking me advice. They're not from Europe and they want to race in Europe and they're like, what should we do? Where should we go? I'm like, you need to do this. Yeah, but we can't afford it. Said if you can't afford it, then don't, don't do anything because you're going to spend a lot of money on trying to get where I'm telling you to start.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: You know?
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: It's not easy for sure. Because, you know, it is a big investment and not everyone succeeds, so.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. No, you're right.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: If I'm a young racing driver and I'm starting my, my, my track career, I want to, I want to have an experienced engineer on my side because I don't know anything. I'm starting from zero.
I want to have someone on my side who's able to, when we do a track walk, say, take care of this curve because if you hit this curve, you're going to break your plank. Take care of this or do this. Yeah. You need to take it to break early because you need to focus on the exit.
Yeah. You need to drive more V style and not. And not U star these type of things. You know, a young driver starting in a, in a team with a young engineer is not going to get that information because a young engineer's going to be learning at the same pace as the driver. And I, I was one of those young engineers.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: I started my career in Europe as a rookie with a rookie driver.
It was in the dtm, so it was a very high level championship. But we learned together.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: You know, and it just takes longer.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: Right now this, this will lead into.
So you started and run a company called Race On.
What exactly does Race on do? And I, I think we've already basically heard the answer without the name Race on, but maybe let the listeners know a little bit more about what Race on is all about and why you think it's important.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I started Race on together with my partner.
Firstly, because we had the opportunity, I mean, just to start a business from nothing is very difficult. So we had a, we had an opportunity, we had a springboard which was super important.
But the main task at Raison were two things. To supply high level engineer engineers and expertise and to take care of people.
Now engineers, they like to do engineering stuff.
They hate all the other stuff which goes around it, right?
So my idea was how can we have top class engineers focusing on what they enjoy doing and we as a company take away all the bullshit around.
We put them in an environment where they can really focus on doing what they enjoy.
At the same time, we, we said we want to focus on, on high level engineers because, you know, we, we, we didn't really want to get involved in this early stage motorsport because it's very, very difficult, it's very cutthroat.
So we said we're gonna, we're gonna stick to the high level.
But saying that, you know, at some stage we need to also give back to our industry.
We need to give back to young engineers, we need to give back to young drivers. So we'd be pretty much interested in doing some sort of mentoring, you know, whether that's okay or for awful for drivers, and see if I can prove my concept. You know, at the end of the day, that's my concept of you need to, you need to have, you need to rub shoulders with the right people at the beginning.
So can we prove the concept?
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Can you walk the walk, as they say?
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Exactly. You know, and that, that's a little bit my character. I like to be challenged and that's a little bit of a challenge. You know, can you actually put your money where your mouth is?
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Perfect. So if somebody wants to, to challenge you and take you up on this, where is the best place they could find information on race on?
[00:11:02] Speaker A: I mean, our website.
Our website's probably the best place because there, there's an opportunity, there's our email address and there's an opportunity to make a meeting direct with me.
I have had some engineers trying to do applications via those links, but that's not the reason for that. You know, we have on our website we have the opportunity for people to apply for jobs. We also have the opportunity for people to request a meeting with myself and that meeting, please, no Engineers. If you're looking for a job, please apply via the correct links on the website.
And anyone who wants to understand more about Raison and what we do and, and if we can help them, please feel free to, to book a meeting with myself.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Perfect.
Well, that's, Thanks a lot, Franco. That's really, that's really fascinating. And I, I actually, I think the concept has a lot of merit.
So if, you know, if you want to get a hold of Franco, as he mentioned, the, the Race on website, I will post all the links in and so that you can get access to them.
One last question before I let you go.
What is your favorite racetrack? Current or historical?
[00:12:24] Speaker A: That's such a difficult question because there's so many really, really good ones. But I mean, three spring to mind and they're not going to be your classic ones. I mean, most people say Suzuka or Spa or something like that.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Bar is a great racetrack. I love it. But I think the Nurburgring, Nordschleifer, okay.
The Green Hell, just because it's such a challenge and you know, it's one thing to go fast, but it's another thing to navigate the traffic in the, the championships that they drive there.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: The other one, which I really, really loved and only got a chance to, to, to engineer on that track once in my career.
How can I really.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Yes, I remember that when they would literally disappear into the forest and with all the mist, the low hanging mist and.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
Really? Yeah. You know, it's sad to see you can literally see the outlines of that forest run from, you know, satellite photos. But it's, it's all covered in trees now.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: Wow, that's that. Yeah, that brings me back. I mean, I've been following racing for quite a while and I do, I, I do miss that track. That was, it is definitely, you know, if a racetrack has a soul, that was the soul of that track and that was hacked right off. So it's unfortunately just another, just another track. But. No, that's great. That's really interesting.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: I need to put a word in also for my home country, I mean, Kailami.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: You know, I was coming from Italian parents, but I was born and grew up in South Africa and studied in South Africa and I started my motorsport career in, in South Africa. So Kailami is also quite close to my heart and it's a fantastic track.
It's really, really nice a lot. Very challenging if you speak to some people who've been there.
Very, very challenging racetrack. So.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: And hopefully F1 will be back sooner rather than later. I mean, yeah, it's, it's looking, it's. Well, it's looking, it's looking like there's things are moving forward. We'll have to wait and see. It's always, as in everything with motorsport, it's always about money. But it would be great to see F1 racing on that track once again.
Well, so thanks so much, Franco, for having, for being on the show and really appreciate your insight.
That's it for this week. This is Mark from Motorsport Prospects reminding you to stay fast, stay focused and keep chasing the checkered flag.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: Thanks Mark
[00:15:15] Speaker B: thanks for listening to the Motorsport Prospects Podcast. For insights, advice and the latest news racers can use, visit motorsportprospects.com.
