Guest Author - Christine Blachford

Renault driver Giancarlo Fisichella isn’t exactly having a stellar season so far this year. His championship winning team seems to have taken a step backward and is suffering from a lack of pace during races. So, perhaps to take his mind off recent poor performance, Fisichella has announced that he and some others from his management team are going to be opening a motorsport academy – the very first to be completely dedicated to motor sport and the art of racing.

The new school will be based near Rome, in Fisichella’s home country of Italy, and will have courses to start students in careers such as race engineers, telemetrists, mechanics, and team principals. There will also be specialist courses for some of the more business orientated careers in the business. Public relations and communications executives are just a couple of the options available. All the courses end in a diploma, but more importantly, the opportunities to network and be known to the existing and upcoming teams in Formula 1.

This is a really good idea from Fisichella, if only because a lot of press goes to how to get into Formula 1 as a driver, but there’s little talk of how to get some of the supporting roles within a team. A lot of the roles in F1 are about who you know rather than what you know, but if you want to get started, it’s going to be a really good way to get in at the bottom of the career ladder, and then work your way up through the ranks (as you get to know more people).

Still, the sport would be nothing without the drivers, so the academy will of course cater for them as well. It will also feature an homage to the founder himself – Fisichella. The school will actually be situated inside a larger complex, one featuring a museum about the man himself, plus the headquarters of any and all racing teams that Fisichella and his management people do business with.

So, if you want to be a racing driver, or one of the people that makes racing happen, and you have a bit of time and money on your hands, and you don’t mind going to Italy, this could be just the Motor Racing Academy for you. For the rest of us, it’s a nice idea, but a bit of a dream really.