Petrolicious

Umberto Galli: Ferrari’s Model Maker (2021x7)

Air date: Feb 16, 2021

Umberto Galli built his first scale model of a Ferrari Formula 1 car as a teenager in the early 1980s using a humble kit of scissors, glue, and cardboard repurposed from shoe boxes in lieu of lightweight alloys and composites used for the real deal—with a packet of felt-tip markers supplying the paintwork. Today he is a senior aerodynamicist at Ferrari working on Formula 1 cars with almost two decades of tenure. He still builds scale models, only now they go into the team’s wind tunnel instead of the bookshelf in his childhood bedroom.