The One-Percent Bet
After Manager Wenger took charge, Modena FC went into a thorough remaking of its very constitution. Meals eaten on a whim gave way to a diet built on nutrition science—french fries were out of the question, and even ketchup was strictly forbidden. Vegetables and seafood came first, the whole aim being to make the body as light as it could be.
The football changed along with the food. Italy had always been famous for sitting deep and building the defense before anything else, but Wenger grafted onto Modena a game of fierce pressing, rapid switches from defense to attack, and his own dazzling passing. It was like someone striding into the Bronze Age with iron in his hands. Shown a kind of football that was entirely new, the opposition could only stand there and take it.
"The same kind of change is coming to F1."
"...?"
"The heart of a car is the engine. True. There is a reason everyone pours astronomical sums into developing one. But."
I held Lorenzo's eyes and went on.
"From here on, we will have to concentrate on aerodynamics every bit as much as on the engine."
In football terms, the engine was burst speed, and aerodynamics was fitness. Speed is something you are born with. Fitness, though, can be built as far as you like, once you bring in a healthy diet and scientific training. Just as with Modena FC.
There was an objection, of course.
"I grant the necessity of aerodynamics. But why should it matter more than the engine?"
"Because no matter how fast a car is, it still has to hit the brakes before a corner."
"...?"
"The moment you brake, a design optimized for the air will come into its own."
A race of fifty laps or more, lasting over an hour. The longer it ran, the more the design would have to matter.
"If you were to run Scuderia Ferrari, the first thing you would do is put forward a new paradigm. Is that what you mean?"
"Yes."
"And that paradigm is aerodynamics?"
"Precisely."
He would want to ask whether the engine was not still the more important of the two. This was still that kind of age. But perhaps because the precedent of Modena FC was already standing there in front of him—
"..."
Lorenzo seemed determined to spend as few words as he could. After a short spell lost in thought, he opened his mouth with some difficulty.
"Suppose we do as you say, Director Park, and pour ourselves into optimization. How far up could we actually climb?"
"We would have to take first. Obviously."
"Not your resolve. A realistic target..."
"First."
"Without borrowing a Japanese engine... you believe efficient design alone can aim at first?"
"Of course."
By now Lorenzo would have something to say. Finishing first in Serie B, and beating Juventus in Serie A to lift the trophy, were problems of an entirely different order.
"Do you actually think that makes sense?"
"I am a man who handles money. I never invest in a thing that has no chance."
I asked for fifty-one percent of Scuderia Ferrari—five hundred billion won simply to buy the stake, and another five hundred billion as operating costs across two years.
"If I fail to keep the promise, I will return every share."
Fail to win the title, and a trillion won would vanish outright. It was, quite literally, an outrage among outrages. Sure enough, Lorenzo's eyes went wide.
"You would stake that money on Ferrari beating McLaren within two years and taking the championship?"
"Yes."
"By the odds, it would not even come to one percent."
"Fortunately, it is not zero."
"Ha!"
His surprise lasted only a moment.
"Don't tell me... this proposal was what you meant, when you said you wanted a contest with me?"
Late as it was, he had seen through me.
"You are betting on ninety-nine percent, Chairman, and I on one percent. Will you accept the contest?"
"Why pick a fight this reckless..."
"Because it is how I take Scuderia Ferrari in hand. Of course I have to accept the risk."
"...!"
The astonishment had not yet cleared from Lorenzo's eyes.
"One condition. If I win, you will have to persuade the people of Italy yourself."
"Persuade them?"
Ferrari was a company that had offered up a new paradigm and held fast to the top of the industry. Raise the importance of aerodynamics in a motorsport world built around the engine, and lift the trophy once more, and then what?
"Director Park will be remembered as the helmsman who made Ferrari the most Ferrari it has ever been?"
I nodded, and nodded again.
"So you want me, the owner, to step forward myself and win the fans over. Is that it?"
"Everything I have said is a story that begins only if I take hold of that one-percent chance."
Would he accept a challenge this reckless?
"Hoo."
In place of an answer, Lorenzo let out a long, deep sigh.
A few hours later, Chairman Lorenzo made his way, for the first time in a long while, to his grandfather's garage.
The place was full of Ferrari's monumental cars, from No. 1, which the founder had built by tightening every screw with his own hands, to posthumous works that had been finished and yet never unveiled. What Lorenzo chose among them was an old racing machine. In the photograph his grandfather rested a hand on this very car, smiling bright as anything. The model that took his first victory. Put it up for auction, and what would it fetch? Turning the idle thought over, he sat down without a word in the driver's seat.
The space was so narrow it was uncomfortable even to turn the wheel. His grandfather had sat here, eyes on nothing but the road ahead, and taken the cup again and again. Who would ever have predicted that an engineer walked out of Alfa Romeo, with hopelessly little money, would build a car this good? And yet his grandfather alone had always gone about declaring that he would astonish the world.
A quiet huff of a laugh. Ball that confidence up tight, breathe life into it, and would his grandfather not be born? As a boy he had honestly thought so. Today it felt as if he had found one more person of the same make.
Everything I have said is a story that begins only if I take hold of that one-percent chance.
No—how could a man speak of a one-percent chance and still look that sure of himself? He had no way of knowing. Even so, in life, his grandfather's face must have looked exactly like that. The day he had passed rival after stronger rival and at last seized first, turned toward a world struck dumb with shock.
What did I tell you? I said I'd astonish you, didn't I?
Grandfather would have shouted it, flush with triumph. Yes. His own odds of success must have sat under one percent as well. He had brought it off in splendid fashion, and that was how he became the founder of Ferrari.
"It's been a long time, Grandfather."
In the stillness of the garage, Lorenzo murmured it to himself.
"These past few days I've been looking for a driver. Today, I think I've finally found the right one."
Not an F1 car, of course. A driver to take the wheel of that vast enterprise called Scuderia Ferrari. I'd rather hold the wheel myself. But Director Park resembles Grandfather more than I do.
"You can be angry with me. It won't change a thing."
The car was already out on the track. What else was there to do? From here he could only trust the driver, and leave it in his hands. A bitter smile had just touched his mouth when a cry, near enough to a hallucination, came flying into his ear.
A ball knifed into the arc. The moment Bati takes it, he turns— Goal! Gooooal!
Meanwhile, in Naples, Italy.
So this is the homeland of pizza? He had only ever heard of it. When would he have had cause to come all the way to Naples just to eat the stuff? Honestly, he liked American pizza better, and he had certainly never cared much for Italian wood-fired pies. Still... I'm getting ready to go into the pizza business, for what it's worth. I ought to taste it on its home ground at least once.
Devon found a pizzeria a hundred years old. The toasty smell of flour reached him from well down the street. It'll be good. Maybe because the meal hour was long past, he could order at once.
"Everything on the menu."
"T-to go?"
"I'll eat it here."
"Ah... all of this, by yourself..."
The waiter looked badly thrown. He ran his eyes up and down Devon's bulk, and seemed to be trying, somehow, to understand.
Let's have a look. Devon headed deeper into the shop, toward the oven, and from a little way off watched the craftsman bake. American pizza was simple: put the dough in the oven and you were done. Italy was not. They set the pie on an iron peel, slid it into the wood-fired oven, and then round and round it went—three minutes of positively dazzling control, if that was the word, until it was baked. You would need hands like that to lay the scent of the flame evenly across the dough.
But it isn't suited to a franchise. If the taste changed with the baker's skill, every shop would drift from every other. And above all, you can't mount a wood oven on a food truck.
About the time Devon was turning these thoughts over by himself, pizzas were marched out—if delivered was the word—in a line across his table. What a sight. From then on it was tasting time. Chewy, properly chewy. A healthy flavor. Every ingredient had been left whole and itself. This was cooking. Real cooking, not unworthy of a Michelin star.
Even so. I still like the American kind better. And why wouldn't he? If I'm paying for it, there ought to be a hit strong enough to wake all five senses. He told himself that, and still he ate. Bite after enormous bite, Devon sat where he was and demolished one pie after another.
How long passed that way? Before he noticed, people had even gathered just to watch him. Let them. Devon simply reached his own conclusion.
Neapolitan pizza and I are not walking the same road!
Still, now that he had felt for certain what pizza from the old country did well, a signature pie that let the ingredients speak in full would not be a bad thing. Tomorrow, I run a food truck in Naples.
One item on the menu. Only one. Hawaiian pizza, buried under pineapple.
A line existed to be crossed, so he would bring the ingredients' own flavor out on purpose. At the thought of teaching the pizza purists a lesson—
"Heh heh heh."
The laugh slipped out of him before he knew it.
"Chairman Lorenzo handed over Scuderia Ferrari?"
Tennessee looked as if he simply could not believe me.
"Money's nice and all, but how do you give away your own roots..."
"He didn't sell."
"Huh?"
If I had tried to buy Ferrari shares with cash, Lorenzo would have refused, flat and final.
"He took the money, so how is it not a sale..."
Put it unkindly, it was wordplay. Put it kindly, it was a change of frame. In the real world, that difference mattered more than anything.
"Ferrari was in a crisis, and it needed new leadership more than ever."
If I proved what I could do with a championship, then I could make a formal demand, could I not? Give me the driving force to carry Ferrari's innovation onward.
"And that driving force... is the fifty-one percent?"
Even after the explanation, his face said he still did not understand.
"You've proved you're someone Ferrari can't do without, so they hand over fifty-one percent as a charge to finish the great work of innovation?"
I nodded, and nodded again.
"You're just twisting it. In the end he took the money and gave up the shares. Same thing."
I let out a short breath of a laugh. The same words can swing a result a hundred and eighty degrees depending on how you deliver them. Apply that subtle difference to advertising and you become a copywriter. Use it in politics and you become a campaign man. Put it on the international stage and you become a diplomat. The names differ, but borrowing the power of words is all the same.
"This is hard. Way too hard!"
Hard or not, you've got to do it, man. Maybe he read it in my eyes. Tennessee changed the subject at once.
"Mmm... anyway. Did you pay it all? You said you were going to haggle."
"Got a discount. A fair one."
"How much?"
"Not a won more, not a won less. Two hundred billion, exactly."
"What... how?"
Promote Modena FC to Serie A this year, and next year put them in reach of the Champions League, and Lorenzo had agreed to squeeze his eyes shut and take the club for two hundred billion won. At first he had looked ready to edge away from it. But I had bet a trillion won on a one-percent chance! Give him the slightest jab and Ferrari's native will to win seemed to catch; in the end he nodded despite himself.
He would have run the numbers, of course. Right now the most popular stage of all was Serie A. He must have judged that buying a top-four side, in the greatest league of the age, for two hundred billion won was no loss. And taking Modena for himself had probably been something of a lifelong dream, besides.
Wait. And since football had come up. I wonder if Manchester United is still running all right. Maybe it was only because I felt the nearest fire had been put out. For a while I found myself thinking of the Manchester United I had forgotten.