Not a Purchase, a Contest
"I didn't come all the way to Monza to negotiate."
"......?"
"The way drivers settle which of them is the better man out on the track, I wanted to offer you a kind of contest, Chairman."
"A contest? With me?"
"If contest sounds too grand, bet will do just as well."
A house wound tight with the hunger to win. Better, a hundred times over, to prick that love of a fight than to hold out a carrot. And sure enough, the answer came.
"A contest...... I hear you've been making a bit of money lately. What is it? You want to crush me with capital?"
I smiled, thin and easy.
"Hardly. To the Ferrari family, possessors of the most brilliant history in motorsport—how could I make so vulgar an offer?"
"Then what is it you mean to say?"
"Only what I said before. That I wish to trade a few constructive thoughts, for Ferrari's future......"
"Hold out your hand to Japan? Give up the stubbornness and borrow a Japanese engine?"
He must have heard the same thing more times than he could count. Chairman Lorenzo's eyes went thin, and trembled.
I chose the next words with care.
"I've heard a wind of change is blowing through F1 as well. And that Japanese capital sits at the center of it. But does that mean Ferrari ought to chase the fashion?"
"......?"
"As you always have, you should be the one to lead the new trend. Isn't that why Ferrari's footsteps are the history of motorsport itself?"
The words had barely left me. This time his eyes began to tremble with a different meaning.
Yes. That would do.
"Forgive me. It's Grand Prix weekend—I hope I haven't taken too much of your time."
"......"
"I look forward to a chance for a serious conversation, once the race is over."
About the time his gaze fixed on some point out along the track, I bowed and slowly took my leave.
The next night, Chairman Lorenzo sat staring blankly at the television. On the great screen, the players of Modena FC were busy sweeping the pitch.
He loved football, yes—but enough to watch a match while the Italian Grand Prix was still going on? He wished it were only that.
Lorenzo was forcing his eyes through a game they weren't even taking in, trying to scrub a nightmare of a day out of his head.
They had rushed a new chassis in to replace the car the fire had eaten whole. And then—of all things. Two laps or so around the track, and the smoke climbed again. The race ended without them ever having run it properly.
Damn it.
That was not the only thing burning him. Sensing his moment, the driver who had been in the car set his mouth running in front of the press, as if he had been waiting for it. Dressed down by a second-rate driver he would not have glanced at in the days of glory.
Pathetic.
Lorenzo laid a hand, for a moment, over the photograph of his grandfather on the table. Founder of Ferrari, the most emblematic figure in all of motorsport. Had Grandfather lived, he would surely have thundered.
"I have no face to show you."
Just as Lorenzo let his head fall in shame, the television, ignorant of his heart, poured out a roar.
Thirty-four minutes of the first half. Already the fourth.
Batistuta. They called him Bati-goal, because the net bulged before you could finish saying his name. The striker. He was certain they had said the man was the owner's own signing.
So the real owner is someone else?
Lorenzo drew a single card from the inner pocket of his suit.
He had already looked into Park Jihoon with some care.
An investor who strikes gold with everything he touches?
Manchester United, I'll grant him.
But buying Modena, a second-division side—wasn't that a scheme you could see straight through?
In the end he means to win my favor, and swallow Ferrari whole.
His head insisted on thinking so. And yet—
"I wanted to propose a kind of contest to you, Chairman."
His grandfather, a gambler the world would not see twice.
"Damn it."
So even I, such as I am, inherited Ferrari's blood. Is that it?
After the self-mocking smile, the truth was that he wanted to hear the man out. Refuse when the time came to refuse—but once, at least, he wanted to know why that word, contest, had been in his mouth.
To be still more honest: because this was Ferrari. The saying that they must lead the new trend had shaken him.
Far from leading any fashion. He was the Lorenzo who had gone from waiting room to waiting room, begging for next year's drivers.
"Hah."
He quietly lifted the frame he had covered. In the photograph his grandfather laughed, unabashed, before an early Ferrari.
"I was just afraid."
Lorenzo went on, as if airing a grievance to the old man.
"The car swallowed in flame before it had even run properly... it lay over the future of the Ferrari I lead... and I couldn't bear how afraid that made me."
"I know it's pathetic. But do you know what shames me more?"
"That young man I met yesterday. Park Jihoon. A formidable businessman who succeeds at whatever he puts a hand to. I wondered if he might have some answer for us, too."
"The truth is, I was looking forward to seeing him again."
He felt he might be scolded on the spot. The grandfather in the black-and-white photograph only went on smiling.
Damn it. How had it come to this?
Right then, the roar broke from the television again.
The hotel suite.
"You really think Chairman Lorenzo's coming?"
I nodded at Tennessee's question.
"How can you be sure? Because of where they finished?"
Ferrari's final place was all but last. The lead driver, out early in the fire. The second driver, home a full lap down on the winner.
"It isn't only the result."
"Then what?"
"Tigers don't give birth to cats."
However poor the recent results, Lorenzo was still of the Ferrari line. In the will to win, he had no equal. Having spoken of contests and bets to a man like that, I would never see my words laughed away.
"And he'll be curious."
"Curious?"
Since the season opened, Modena FC had been riding an unbroken run of wins. Five goals a match, grinding the opposition underfoot.
What had brought on a change like that? And could Modena's change be grafted onto Ferrari? Expectant curiosity would have its share as well.
"Didn't you only give him a card?"
"Yeah."
"Then how's he supposed to know where to reach you?"
Where I was staying—thirty minutes would be enough to find that out.
At that instant, as if to prove the thought, the phone rang.
"Yes."
"Sir, you have a guest in the lobby."
"A guest?"
"Yes. He says he's Chairman Lorenzo of Ferrari."
I let the corner of my mouth rise, quiet and pleased.
A member of the staff showed me to the meeting room. Chairman Lorenzo was already there, in a red tie. I bowed with due courtesy and sat down across from him.
"Modena won again today, I see."
It was Lorenzo who spoke first.
"That's thanks to old fans like you, Chairman, who still remember to cheer."
They had traded only a line apiece. Lorenzo's lips stirred, as if his patience were already gone.
"Did you buy Modena to win my favor?"
"Yes."
"More honest than I expected."
"You aren't a man who can be lied to."
Lorenzo let a beat pass, then spoke.
"If winning my favor was the aim, I would say you've succeeded well enough. Thanks to that, I have a place to set my heart."
"I'm glad, if so."
Right then—
"Let us not circle the point. In the end you mean to take Ferrari in hand, don't you? Am I wrong?"
The words came out of him the way a driver floors the throttle.
"Why won't you answer? You've got the world's greatest fashion house in your grip, and now you mean to hoist Ferrari up as a trophy besides. Isn't that it?"
Not entirely wrong, perhaps. But there was something that had to be set straight.
The many companies that had sent their overtures Ferrari's way had surely wanted the carmaker—the firm that built the sports cars.
But.
It must have been the first proposal of its kind.
"......!"
Lorenzo's eyes flew wide.
Of course they did. A racing team was nothing but a beast that ate money. And still, the reason every team poured vast budgets into keeping one? To show off a company's engineering. Put simply, it was advertising.
And here was someone offering to run that team in their place?
"You mean... you'll spend your own money to advertise our Ferrari?"
"You could say that."
"Why volunteer for a fool's errand?"
"Because the team in question is Scuderia Ferrari."
"......?"
"In the whole history of F1, to run the only team that has started every season without missing a single one—wouldn't that be an honor without equal, even for me?"
"But what am I to do? We are not an ordinary company."
I knew that.
Every other company kept a racing team in order to advertise. Only Ferrari had built road cars so that it might earn the money to race. The company's own history made it plain.
"Your grandfather founded the racing team first, in 1929. To raise the funds to run it, he began building sports cars in 1947."
In plainer words: Ferrari's root was the racing team.
"Then what you're proposing is that we sell our root. How could I ever allow that?"
"I never said sell."
"No—only a moment ago you said you wanted Scuderia Ferrari......"
Right then—
"Don't tell me. You said you wanted it, and never once said you would buy it. Is that... what you mean?"
He would remember. Those words about wanting a contest with the chairman. I had laid them down ahead of time for this exact moment. The chairman had the look of a man recalling them.
Did the curiosity that had never been satisfied pass through his mind once more? Just as he waited in silence for my answer—
"Before I come to the point, there's one thing I want settled."
"......?"
"Do you agree that the Ferrari racing team is in crisis?"
"A frightening question."
"......"
"It sounds as if you're asking me to admit the fault is mine."
"Do you agree?"
He turned my words over, then opened his mouth with weight.
"Agreed."
"Then do you also agree that overcoming the crisis will take innovation that cuts to the bone?"
Lorenzo held his silence for about ten seconds. This time, too.
"Agreed."
He answered, heavy.
"Then allow me to tell you how to bring Ferrari back to life."
"......?"
"Just as Modena FC has offered football a new paradigm."