Bernard Cahier photo - posted by his son Paul-Henri Cahier
"A madman, but also a genius,' was how Niki Lauda described Mauro Forghieri who designed the cars and engines and ran the Ferrari team when Lauda was there. Forghieri was born in 1935 and went to Ferrari shortly after getting his engineering degree from the University of Bologna. He took over the Prancing Horse racing department in 1961 and stayed there nearly 30 years. Now the designer of Lamborghini's Formula 1 engines, Mauro Forghieri has a love-hate relationship with his life's work.
"Yes, I was fighting sometimes with Niki Lauda. I was his boss, so he had to follow what I am saying to him. Usually, it's difficult that a boss be loved by the people who work for him. But Niki is also a friend now. And he can tell you that he had a lot of results with us. Because he won two championships and almost a third one. He learned to race in Ferrari, he learned to work on a car in Ferrari. Maybe I was learning from him also.
"I put twenty-eight years of my life in Ferrari, you know. I think there is a little bit of it still inside myself. I was involved in 55 of the victories they had. But, for me, Ferrari's the past already. It is a nice story, a nice memory. Me with Ferrari. Sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet.
"After 30 years in this sport, it's much too long. Yes, I am enthusiastic about the work. But not about the environment. Too much business I don't like. We are always fighting to have enough passes for the mechanics. Can you imagine this? We don't have enough passes to come to work. I buy the other day a pass to come here, to park the car in the paddock! Yes me. But when I travel around the paddock I see everywhere there's cars and people that have nothing to do with racing. I don't know how they get them. I don't want to know. But I am disgusted about that. My voice doesn't count. It's like a voice in the desert. But I think that something is going very wrong with racing. Especially Formula 1.
"When you are working in Formula 1 you work because of enthusiasm, not because of money. You work for the racing. Now I am manager of the engine and gearboxes, not all the car. We are less involved with the racing, unfortunately. We cannot influence the team. It is less stressing today, but, of course, I would prefer to have our own team. I miss the racing. But maybe it's time also for me to also miss some races.
"I design not only engines. Sometimes for my wife I design jewellery. I design many other things, for furniture, for houses. I like to make drawings of many kind of things. Even when I was young I was designing and making projects of different things, not only of racing cars. The furniture I design is modern. Today you cannot design traditional. Nobody is interested in it. I like the traditional. My house is a seventh century villa close to Modena. I restored my house completely with much original art.
"I like very much indeed paintings. When I travel around the world I try to visit all the museums I can. I collect some paintings, of course not Raphael or Michelangelo, but some good paintings of the sixteenth century. I like the Italian painters, and others too. Rembrandt is a favourite, and Breugels. Also I like very much the Impressionists. I have a good painting by an impressionist that cost a lot of money.
"But when I am picking something for my house it is not because it cost a lot of money. I take it in my house because I like art. Anything can be art, a photo, a Lamborghini engine. Everything that is born with mathematics and human hands usually can be art. When I say artists use mathematics it doesn't mean they have been at university. When they are choosing a certain sequence of colour, or writing in music, they are using a skill. And this is mathematical order. So, sometimes, the natural feeling of a man is much higher than what you can find from study. Don't forget, Einstein, he didn't find his intelligence because he was studying in the school. He was a genius, by himself.
"Art and engineering are very close. Michelangelo was an engineer. When you paint the Chapela Sistina, you can't be only a painter. You must have knowledge of everything. Chemistry, engineering, and so on. And when you study the composition of a painting, you must have a deep feeling of what is construction.
"Anyway, in racing, when I tell you that I am preferring the olden days it is because I was very young then. Now I'm old. I honestly have to say that the present days are better, especially because mechanics work less. The life is easier now. But from a human point of view, for human relationships, and human feeling, the past days were much better. It was much easier to be in contact with the other people. Today you see motorhomes, closed sections, closed pits. Everybody has his own life without any contact with the other. That's bad in my opinion. But sponsorship and the kind of racing that you have today, which is much too expensive in my opinion, forces people to be like that.
"The people are accustomed to have different lives. They are forced into a different life. In the past we have seven, ten Grand Prix per year. And maybe a few tests. Now we have a race or test every weekend, at least every weekend. And so we are forced to have a quicker life. We don't choose the life, the life choose us. It is upside down.ex
"People in racing, often they have family problems, because they travel too much. They have no time for human relationships, they cannot have a normal life. They don't know what it means Sunday, Saturday and Friday. Some people, inside and outside Formula 1, come here because what television and newspapers are saying about racing. Inside is nothing special. There's a lot of work to do. But the people of today enjoy to believe it is possible for everybody to win. To be like the star. Like Prost. Or like the star in the movies or the star in golf or in tennis. Everybody sees himself in the place of the star. I believe this is so. The fans believe it too. Otherwise, I cannot explain why people are staying outside of the fence watching three hours inside the paddock.
"Honestly, sometimes I don't have much pleasure to be here. I told you that the life takes us. We are not in charge. All my life I was involved more deeper and deeper in racing. And, you know, I have tried twice in my life to say stop. When I say no more Ferrari, I go away. I try to change my life. Because I have my own life, I have three sons and a family and I need money to live. And then the people come to me again and want to pay me for what I am able to do. And so I've been forced to be back again. And sometimes, when I was away from it, I missed racing. So I enjoyed to be back. It's the same story, always up and down."
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