Giorgio Piola: I'm more of an artist, not a designer

Words and pictures: Roman Klemm and his archive

The work of 78-year-old Italian Giorgio Piola is known, whether you like it or not, by every Formula 1 fan. Since the late '60s, his sketches and drawings have explained to readers of the most influential specialized magazines the technical tricks and inventions of engineers down to the tiniest detail. However, he never drew his own car. During Minardi Days in Imola, I attended his lecture on F1 technical development and then asked him a few of my own questions.

RK: You are, of course, a well-known name in the F1 world, and I've known your drawings since I was a child. How long have you been a "member of the F1 circus"? 
GP: I've been drawing my whole life; the first magazines started publishing my pieces in the late 60s. From 1970 onwards, I got commissions from the most influential papers in Italy, and soon after from leading magazines in England, France, and Germany (Autosport, Sport Auto). Then came the "rest of the world".

RK: But with your works, you were only 'commenting' on the work of others. Have you ever felt like diving into your own design? 
GP: Actually, no. I don't have the education for that. I think I'm more of an artist than an engineer—though of course I need to know all the details of what I want to depict. 

RK: So you've never painted anything entirely from your 'own mind'? 
GP: There was only one exception. In the mid-70s, Ford was introducing their new F2000 Formula for cars with slicks and wings. An Italian team asked me to design the body for their single-seaters. I went for it because they offered me the cockpit of their second car as a fee! They had Tecno-F3 chassis from Jean-Pierre Jaussaud, and I gave it a front end that looked like a Chevron, along with side panels and a wing. Our No. 1-driver won the championship that year, even beating Teo Fabi, and that made me proud of my work.

RK: Since you didn't want to design technology yourself, do you remember any times when you just had to shake your head at what others came up with? 
GP: More than once! The first thing that comes to my mind is the McLaren M28 designed by Gordon Coppuck. Back then, teams still invited us journalists to their car presentations and showed us the cars in relatively detailed fashion (see photo). It was the end of the 1978 season. At that time, the F1 Lotus Mk79 - the "wing car" - was dominating, and everyone was trying to copy it. It was known that the Mk79 didn't have a very stable chassis. Yet it kept winning. Chapman's wing car principle was such an advantage that his drivers didn't even have to give 100 percent to win. Coppuck, who had previously made a name for himself with his brilliant M23 (see Piola's drawing), therefore designed a very robust, boxy wing car. But when they showed us its side pods, I thought it was a joke. They were way too narrow! And it was the side pods and the bottom of the car with the wing profile that created that ground effect. Coppuck just didn't get it.

RK: Did you publish that back then?
GP: I don't think I commented on it publicly. John Watson, who was McLaren's driver at the time, was a good friend of mine, and I told him that Coppuck was an idiot that day.

RK: So, how did it turn out?
GP: We all remember how Watson and Tambay struggled with the M28 in 1979. During the 12th Grand Prix of the season in Zandvoort, John came up to me and said, 'You were right - he's an idiot. That car is hopeless…'