This article is part of our Origin Stories series, an inside look at the backstories of the clubs, drivers and people fueling the sport.
Alessandro Alunni Bravi is one of the few people who can walk through the Formula One paddock largely undisturbed.
The Italian team representative is the front-facing figure for Sauber, but nobody chases him for autographs or photos like the drivers or his famous contemporaries, like Mercedes’ team principal Toto Wolff or Red Bull’s Christian Horner. Yet his life remains just as busy.
He doesn’t remember the last time he went to the movies or out for drinks with friends. His life is spent traveling the world each race weekend, striking a balance with his social life and dedicating time to his family back home. Alunni Bravi doesn’t regret his choices, but that doesn’t negate the difficulty of working at the pinnacle of motorsport, which pushes everyone to the limit.
Alunni Bravi has lived many lives throughout his career, starting as a young lawyer who wanted to fight the mafia. Now, he’s a team representative of Sauber as it transitions into an F1 works team. He’s learned how not to take himself too seriously and how to strike the balance of being a firm but empathetic manager. He’s faced challenges, whether it’s shaking off perceived images or trying to overcome deficits like how Sauber sits plumb last in the standings with zero points.
But deep down, he’s stayed, as he puts it, “a normal guy with normal ego.”
The law and the mafia
Nestled in the heart of Italy, south of Florence, lies Passignano sul Trasimeno, the municipality where Alunni Bravi was raised.
It overlooks Lake Trasimeno and is located in Italy’s land-locked region of Umbria, known as the “Green Heart of Italy.” It’s now the home to more than 5,000 people. Hardly a booming metropolis, but Alunni Bravi says the population was less than 3,000 people when he grew up there.
“When I went to the primary school, we were five in the classroom,” he said. “So small, it was a very small school. But still, the friends I have are the same friends that I had at the school and the college. So each time I go there this small village where life is very normal and people does normal jobs, this gives me such big energy; not because I say, ‘Okay, now I reach something important.’ Just because I remember that small guy dreaming about this.”
Though the village was small, it was the home of one F1 team — Coloni Motorsport, which competed in the series from 1987 to 1991. And nearby was a small motorsports circuit.
“My church on Sunday and Saturday was the circuit and this Formula One team,” Alunni Bravi said, “and that was my childhood dream.”
His end goal wasn’t to become a driver. That dream, he said, was beyond his reach: His family didn’t have the resources to support a racing career. Instead, he said he tried to figure out how to combine his “profession with my passion.”
Alunni Bravi’s initial career was nowhere close to the racing world. In 1992, two Palermo judges were killed by the Sicilian Mafia, the first being Giovanni Falcone in the Capaci bombing while on the A29 motorway and the second Italian judge being Paolo Borsellino in a car bombing. The assassinations led to Alunni Bravi wanting to become a lawyer so he could work as a judge in Palermo fighting against the mafia.
He studied law at the University of Perugia, graduating with honors and a Ph.D. in Civil Law, though in Italy, you don’t get paid when you initially start practicing. Alunni Bravi needed to earn money somehow during this period, and he still loved motorsports. So his winding path to F1 took its next turn: He became a journalist for Autosprint.
“After I would say six to eight months, I don’t know why, but they decided that I need to go to Formula One as an F1 journalist, because people loved the articles, how I was writing, and the passion, they can see,” Alunni Bravi said. “My approach was the one of a fan that wants to describe and to share the feelings about motorsport.”
But one of the biggest barriers he faced was language. English wasn’t his first language, nor did he learn it in school. He spent three years studying French instead.
“I remember in 2002 I went to my first grand prix for Autosprint in Interlagos in Brazil with a very, very big luggage, where I put everything together — a camera, a small printer, a fax because that time you need to fax the classification to the editor, with everything to record and my computer,” Alunni Bravi said. “My first interview was with Mario Theissen. (At) that time, (he) was the team principal at BMW Sauber F1 team. The editor-in-chief said, ‘Ale, you know English?’ I said, Yeah, of course, very, very well.’ I think I knew 20 words so I was preparing with my friend Roberto Chinchero, that is still a journalist for Sky and motorsport.com.
“The question, he translated for me, and then I recorded everything and he helped me to translate and to do the article. This was really funny moment, but to show that I try everything to get into this world.”
His legal career continued, though. Alunni Bravi misses those early days in public hearings for criminal cases. Dressed in the black vest and standing in the tribunal, he found cross-examinations the most interesting part of being a criminal lawyer. Some of this later influenced his next chapter.
“The ability of a lawyer is not just to know the laws, but also to understand (the) person in front of you and how to reach your target by putting on the table the right question,” Alunni Bravi said, later talking about the importance of “how to interpret the psychology of the people in front of you.”
Alunni Bravi became a successful lawyer in his city, becoming involved in notable trials and teaching at the university. One case he commented on was the Microsoft case, when the company was accused of being a monopoly and violating two sections of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
“That changed completely the regulation in U.S. in terms of OEM equipment for the big PC producers,” Alunni Bravi said. “So I was a serious lawyer, and I was quite successful, but the passion completely steered the direction of my life towards motorsport.”
The law and motorsports
As time passed, Alunni Bravi’s career drew him closer to motorsports.
He became the team manager and managing director for Coloni Motorsport, when it competed in Formula 3000 International (similar to today’s Formula Two), between 2002 and 2003 before he moved on as the general manager for Sardinia, the organizer and promoter of the Cagliari Grand Prix and Rally Italia Sardinia (a round of the World Rally Championship). Simultaneously, Alunni Bravi was a lawyer for numerous drivers, like a few competitors in MotoGP.
Multitasking became a vital skill of his.
He spent three years in the World Rally Championship world before he went on to hold numerous roles, such as being the team principal and managing director of Trident Racing for three years while it competed in GP2. But in 2010, he began working in driver management with Nicolas Todt. (His father, Jean Todt, is a former Ferrari team principal and former FIA president.) The company, All Road Service, worked with the likes of Jules Bianchi, Charles Leclerc, Felipe Massa and Pastor Maldonado, among others.
He discovered that cross-examination and driver management required similar skill sets.
“When you need to close a business deal, you need to understand their targets,” Alunni Bravi said. “You need to understand what they are thinking, what they need, always starting from their needs. You need to have an open and transparent dialog with the drivers and the relationship, the mutual trust that you are able to build, to establish between you and a driver, is a key.
“All the rest doesn’t matter, really.”
Alunni Bravi eventually launched his own driver management company with Todt. But six months later, Fred Vasseur came calling. He wanted Alunni Bravi to join Sauber.
Alunni Bravi had wanted to work directly with Vasseur for some time. The two worked together indirectly for several years: When both were at ART Grand Prix and when Vasseur brought Alunni Bravi on to handle contract negotiations with various stakeholders like the promoter and manufacturers for Vasseur’s chassis company, Spark.
“So, for me, the target was to be able to work with Fred in the future,” Alunni Bravi said. “And of course, Formula One was a target for both of us, and that was the main reason why I joined Sauber, not because of the Formula One team, but because (of) the chance to work with Fred.”
The move happened in 2017, starting with Alunni Bravi being part of the board.
One of the most significant moments in Alunni Bravi’s Sauber career was the Audi negotiations. The German manufacturer bought a 100 percent stake of Sauber earlier this year and will join the grid in 2026. Alunni Bravi navigated it all largely solo from Sauber’s side.
“We didn’t appoint any lawyer or law firm, so I was really the only one. And I remember very well when we had the first meetings in Munich Airport at the Audi Conference Center, that was always me alone on the Sauber side,” Alunni Bravi said. “And on the other side, there were representatives of Audi, of the auditing firm that were appointed for the due diligence process, a lot of lawyers, and I was the one drafting the contract and discussing every aspect.”
Alunni Bravi didn’t find the contract or negotiations fairly complex. It starts with taking into consideration both parties’ interests and then striking the right balance. You need “to have a clear vision of what you want to get from a transaction, and not change your idea.” And lastly, it was important to have an understanding of how the company operates and know each department. These components are similar to running a team like Sauber in this chapter.
The company is in a transformation phase, but Audi decided to have Alunni Bravi be the managing director and now team representative, taking over as of Jan. 2023, when Vasseur left for Ferrari.
It’s taken time for Alunni Bravi to shake off the image of being a journalist. It took time for people in the paddock and motorsport world to see him as a manager and a lawyer, something he felt was normal.
“You need to gain the trust of people. You need to prove to be professional, not just one day. You need to be consistent,” he said. “You need to work hard, and I think it’s always important what you do the next day, not what you have done.
“I think that we are not what people say about us. We are what we have done and what we will do.”
The next chapter
When Alunni Bravi thinks of himself from the early days of his career, he begins laughing.
“He was really genuine, he was really shy, and he was just so determined,” he said, “because I want to also to prove to my parents, my friends, that I can do something important.”
Considering that he graduated in law, the expectation was that he would become a big-shot lawyer. Yet, he chose to pursue motorsports and manage drivers. “People say, ‘You are completely crazy. You are losing the opportunity to be a professional,’ and, of course, in my small village, to be a lawyer is a kind of status,” he said.
He was set to prove it was his right path. But Alunni Bravi’s F1 future is unknown. Jonathan Wheatley, Red Bull’s sporting director, will become Audi’s team principal “by July 2025 at the latest,” according to Audi. Meanwhile, Alunni Bravi’s contract is through 2025.
The next five years are important for Alunni Bravi “to be in a role where I can complete my professional career and reach another level.” He wants to be able to contribute to a team’s success — it may not be with a traditional motorsports team either, given his extensive interests inside and out of racing. He added, “It’s not necessarily linked to the position, just the quality of work that I can do and where I can express myself at the best.”
His eye is more on “entrepreneurial challenges more than sports challenges, if I need to have a look outside of motorsport.” Alunni Bravi doesn’t want to return to the courtroom and do cross-examinations anymore. But he has started working on a book.
It’s not a legal book but rather one he describes as “a love story, starting in Palermo because I love Sicily.” Due to the demands of his job, he’s only written the first chapter, but he hopes to finish writing it one day.
“I love to write. I love to read books. This summertime, I spent two weeks and I brought together with me three books of Friedrich Nietzsche that I love, and I read all the three. I think you need to have a passion and interest outside of Formula One to be able to switch off completely,” he said. “I have a passion that is cars and motorsports so this is compromising. Books are something that helped me to really stay out from the business.”
If Alunni Bravi stays in this world, the goal remains the same: winning. The success, though, does not define happiness for him. It’s people and relationships. He credits his wife for helping him take the first step to changing his career, moving from his “well-established forensic” and legal career and diving into the motorsports world.
“When I told to my wife I would like to become a lawyer, but work in motorsport, so not to work in a law firm, but to assist drivers and to start with motorsport, someone else would have said, ‘You are completely crazy,’ Alunni Bravi said. “She was immediately supportive to say, ‘You need to do what you love to do, what is your passion. I will be there. I will help you in any case.’ And I can tell you she was the only one trusting me. Not my parents, not my friends, not the owner of the law firm. I was a famous lawyer.
“When you arrive, it’s never the last step that counts. It’s always the first one that starts steering the direction of your life.”
Origin Stories series is part of a partnership with Chanel.
The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
(Top photo: Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
