As a lawyer, Alessandro Alunni Bravi used to fly below the radar – but in his new remit of Alfa Romeo team representative he’s had to get used to being front-of-house. Over the course of a lap of the classic Targa Florio route in Sicily he explains how chasing performance took over from his previous ambition of chasing the mafia…
WORDS OLEG KARPOV PICTURES ANDREW FERRARO
Those who have met Alessandro Alunni Bravi will be familiar with his lawyerly facility to casually retrieve historical facts and figures from the depths of his memory. Ask him what influenced his choice of career and two dates spring forth.
23 May 1992: Italian judge Giovanni Falcone was killed near the town of Capaci on the A29 motorway on his way from the airport to his hometown of Palermo. The explosion, which also claimed the lives of Falcone’s wife and three policemen accompanying him, was so powerful that it registered on local earthquake monitors. It was an act of revenge by the Sicilian Mafia in the wake of the Maxi Trial, considered the biggest trial in world history, in which 338 members of the Cosa Nostra were convicted.
“On 19 July, Falcone’s ally Paolo Borsellino was killed along with five members of his escort in another bombing in Palermo,” Alessandro explains over breakfast with GP Racing at the luxurious Villa Igiea in that very city. “I was 17 at the time, and I said to myself that I wanted to study law. I wanted to become a lawyer because I have this sense of justice. I wanted to become a judge, go to Palermo, and fight against the Mafia. This was my dream.”
He had another passion, though: motorsport. Growing up in Passignano sul Trasimeno in central Italy, the student of the traditional Liceo classico, who studied Ancient Greek, Latin, and Italian literature, spent weekends either at the Autodromo dell’Umbria in nearby Magione or mopping the floors at the factory of Enzo Coloni’s Passignano-based racing team, which competed in Formula 1 between 1987 and 1991.
“I was going there with my bike,” smiles Alessandro, “I could just knock on the door and ask, ‘Enzo, can I watch the cars?’, and he’d say, ‘Yes, but first you need to do the job’, so I had to sweep the floor to earn my entry ticket.
“Enzo was a family friend. My father was also passionate about motor racing. When he was younger he had a small single-seater, which he eventually sold to Enzo. And that’s how Enzo started his motorsport career.
“That passion transferred to me. We were always at the circuit in Magione, and if there were no races there we’d go to see hillclimb competitions in Umbria. We also went to see Formu
