Cristiana Pace, the Italian engineer who created Formula E
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Behind the Formula E, there is a woman, and she is an Italian. Management engineer, mechanical address, he spent more than 20 years on the Formula 1 circuits dealing with the development of safety systems. Data analyst and technology developer for the Federation International De L’Automobile (FIA). He then transferred the technologies of Formula 1 even outside the racetracks. In 2013 he led the project for the first battery models for electric single-seaters. An invention that will allow the Formula E championship to take off, one year later, in 2014.
In 2015 she returned to school. She did a PhD on sustainability and at 40 he changed his life. She is Cristiana Pace, now lives in Silverstone in England, it is founder and CEO of Enovation Consultinghis company: analyzes and processes data to help sports companies develop strategies to be increasingly sustainable. His clients include Formula 1 teams, Formula E, national and international circuits, and the AS Roma football club. “There is a very significant phrase which says: 25% of people believe in science, while 70% believe in sport. If sport were able to set an example and convey a message on sustainability, we could change the world: this it’s my vision”
From Rieti, scientific experimental high school, the long-standing desire to become an aeronautical engineer. “But in those years it was still a choice precluded to a woman”. He graduated in Bologna in management engineering. At the age of 20 you are already at the Imola racetrack doing your first technical checks. At 21 he works on the Euro 3000, the single-seater launched by Pier Luigi Corbari, former sporting director of Alfa Romeo and breeding ground for world-renowned F1 drivers such as Filipe Massa. “He was my first mentor, my second dad. The man who told me: you will struggle because you are a woman, but keep your head down, work and show that you are capable. At that moment prejudices will collapse like a house of cards”. And so it was.
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A master’s changed her life: she enrolled in motorsport engineering at Cranfield University, based in England on a former military base, which offers only top-level masters and where you can find the greatest experts in the world for professors. “During that year I joined the French JMB GT team as a race engineer. It was the official Ferrari team. We won the GT championship with a Ferrari 550, finishing second in N-GT with Bartolini and De Simone”. In that year she is also a strategy engineer at the 24 hours of Le Mans …
The idea was to return to Italy in September after the master’s degree. “But what Italy offered me in 2002 wouldn’t help me grow. I decided to stay in England and have an interview with a Magneti Marelli startup, then M Motorsport”. They take it and put it on the track in Formula 1 to help the FIA download data (data logger).
10 years in Formula 1 and Cristiana Pace works with great masters, develops incredible safety systems, such as an ante litteram form of GPS, to see on a screen where the car was on the circuit. The much used Marshalling System. In 2007 during a dinner, Charlie Whiting, historic FIA race director, told her: there is always a problem with flags. The pious say they never see them. I’d like to have a system where I can ask them if they’ve seen them. No sooner said than done. Cristiana and a team of engineers make it: this is how the electronic flags. Its also the idea of the technology that creates the link between the medical car and the vehicle: if an accident occurs, the doctor inside the car knows the driver’s condition in real time, such as pulse, blood pressure and other vital functions.
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Beautiful inventions that bring Cristiana into the spotlight. At this point, frank williams, founder of the Williams Racing Cars team, calls her for a proposal.
“Do you want to create Williams Advanced Engineering, the technological spin-off of Williams Formula 1? We use the technology developed in the circuits and in the Formula 1 cars in other sectors, such as the medical sector”. He enters as employee number 2, in a short time he finds himself leading a company with hundreds of people. “We have created inventions for NHS England, such as an incubator that uses Formula 1 active suspension technology to transport premature babies in an ambulance without making them feel the vibrations. Systems to treat diabetics remotely and other important things”.
The Formula E battery project was born from a “nice incident” with the chosen supplier who was then unable to deliver the work. “The world of motorsport is small. Fred Vasser (Spark at the time) knew that at Williams Advanced Engineering we had the technology to produce batteries (both F1, KERS and automotive ones like the one in James Bond’s Jaguar CX-75). They contacted me I asked for help. I worked with my team on what could be useful, Williams gave me the ok and I left. Without this battery, the championship would have foundered”.
In 2015, life changes. She decides to go back to university to do a PhD in sustainability. “Everyone told me: it’s a trend, it will disappear. I wanted to be ready to demonstrate that sustainability was also important to the sports industry and Motorsport”. She was still doing research when the then former president of the FIA, Jean Todt, called her for advice: “He had to go to Davos at the World Economic Forum to talk about sustainability. He wanted to understand. I led his sports department in what then in the 2020 was published as the FIA Environmental Strategy. I understood that there was room and in 2018 I founded my company. We are a “data driven consulting”, we do not do sportwashing. We analyze the data and build on them sustainability strategies, with reduction and improvement targets following the ESG protocol”
From Rieti, always passionate about innovation. “My father worked at Texas Instruments, where American culture reigned already in the 80s. There was the “Bring your kids to work day”, the day when everyone could bring their children to work. I was 8 years old and I went to see what my father did and I was fascinated by all that technology. At the age of 9 we already had electronic games and computers at home, such as the TI-99 4.
“I was the one who at home fixed the things my brother broke. I’ve always wanted to be an engineer. But already at 14 I understood that it would not be easy. In middle school I got a 4 in an essay because I wrote about what I wanted to be when I grew up. The teacher told me bluntly: “You won’t be able to be an engineer. If a woman likes mathematics, she can only be a teacher”. When I was doing my first tests in Formula 1, the mechanics wouldn’t let me touch the car “because it was bad luck”. There were parasol girls as a stereotype. It was unthinkable that a woman was an engineer and she could download the data, check that your software was OK and understand the setup and electronics. Now that I’m over 45 what I want to do is try to help other girls go down this path.”
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Pace is ambassador of a FIA program called FIA Girls on Track: she goes to schools to teach coding and talk about engineering, mathematics, science, together with racing cars, female doctors who work in racetracks to create new role-models.
What made the difference for you? “I’m ‘piccious’ they say in my part. If someone tells me it can’t be done, I do everything to show you that it can. I’ve always had people around me who have helped me a lot to understand. My mentors: Pierluigi Corbari , engineer Luca Chinni, Charlie Whiting and Mike O’Driscoll, as well as my dad. I asked a thousand questions, they go around with a black notebook to take notes. I have always been supported by my mentors.
“I have a mechanic husband. 15 years ago they wanted to fire me because he worked in a competing team. Charlie Whiting defended me in front of everyone, showing me total trust. After this fact, my husband decided to leave Formula 1 and allow me to have a career. I was pregnant, he did the first few years at home, so I was able to continue travelling. Then when our first child got older, he started working again and made a great career. Today he is managing director of one of the largest minor formula teams in Europe. Most of the drivers in F1 and FE have passed through him. We have three sons aged 15-12 and 7 years old. The secret? Transform the couple into a team”
What does your story teach? “That if you have a dream, you have to persevere, overcome obstacles and try to follow it. And then you can always decide to change your career. At the age of 40, I decided to do a doctorate to bring sustainability to Motorsport”. In 2022 Cristiana won the Grace influential positive impact Award, and became an ambassador of this program, created by The Princess Grace Foundation (the foundation of Princess Grace of Monaco) for her merits and efforts in the field of sport sustainability.
In 2021 Cristiana was also nominated among the top 50 female engineers from the Guardian and by the association of women engineers, in the UK, for a device that she and other F1 engineers have designed together with the Oxford hospital, to avoid the contamination of doctors during the Covid19. “I don’t consider myself a Beautiful Mind. There are many in Italy but unfortunately in our country there was, at least in 2002, the right culture. We are plants ready to flourish where the right soil is. When I decided to leave, Italy was not yet equipped to be the land where so many Beautiful Minds could grow. Today? It has changed, but there is still a lot to do. And I’m confident.”
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