Formula 1 is the most prestigious motorsport series in the world, and a place in its exclusive paddock is coveted by anyone with the dream of working in elite circuit racing.
Some are fortunate enough to be called to Formula 1. But for Michael Italiano the sport got in touch via a late-night text message.
“Hey mate, coming home. Just finished my last race, would love to chat and see if you wanted to pursue a career in being my coach next year,” it read.
It was December 2017, and the message was from Daniel Ricciardo.
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“I thought he was completely just having me on,” Italiano tells Fox Sports. “So I wrote something cheeky back — but no, he was being serious.”
Ricciardo and Italiano had met through a mutual friend in their early teens and had remained in touch. Daniel left for Europe to pursue his racing career, while Michael built his reputation as a strength and endurance coach in their native Perth, training athletes for national and international competition.
“But we never ever spoke about working together,” Italiano says. “I wasn’t actively pursuing a role in motorsport. I was training athletes, but I didn’t have a passion to follow Formula 1. I just had a passion to train athletes.”
But when F1 calls — or texts — people tend to answer.
“We had a good sit-down,” he says. “I didn’t want to just be a part of his entourage; I wanted to actually make a difference to his career.
“The last thing I wanted to do was move my life to Europe and then all of a sudden the dynamic just isn’t working.
“He gave me his expectations, I gave him mine, and the good thing was we were on the same page.”
It started a whirlwind four weeks in which Italiano’s life abruptly changed.
Their meeting was in mid-December, and by mid-January he was relocating from his native Perth to Europe in time for the F1 pre-season, trading his dozens of strength and conditioning clients for a single globetrotting racing superstar.
“A pretty big responsibility!” he says. “And I kind of just fell into the role.”
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‘I LIKE TO SAY I KNOW WHAT I‘M DOING’
The relocation were just the start. Next he had to figure out how to actually train a racing driver — a completely different prospect to the footballers, rugby players, golfers and mixed martial artists that dominated his former clientele.
“When I initially came here I treated motorsport like any other sport,” he says. “There’s a specific way to train a footballer, there’s a specific way to train a rugby player — I thought there was going to be a set protocol to train these guys, but there’s not.
“There’s no protocol. There’s no real theory or study behind how to train motorsport athletes.
“How do you train g-force? I had no idea, so I had to go digging there.
“Understanding the physiological loads of just the car — what are the demands? Because obviously you need to know the demands so that you can profile the athlete, you can profile the sport and then you can understand how to train to complement what they’re actually enduring.
“That’s where I was like, ‘Okay, this is my time just to figure something out and see what works’, and I realised that you’ve got to be very versatile in this role.
“I kind of pulled little fundamentals from each sport’s specific type of stuff and condensed it into a way of training a motorsport guy.”
By 2020, having followed Ricciardo from Red Bull Racing to Renault, he felt like the transition was complete.
“The more I was studying motorsport and the science of motorsport and obviously the sport science behind that I started realising this is a proper niche,” he says. “There are not many people doing what we do. Yeah, there are 20 drivers, but there are also only 20 coaches as well.
“I guess that‘s when I was like, ‘Okay, let’s accept this’, because I was still trying to keep tabs on other athletes and other sports codes, but that’s when I started to dive deep into motorsport and thought, ‘You know what? This is my niche, let’s run with it’.
“It took me a while. I like to say I know what I‘m doing now!”
HOW TO TRAIN A FORMULA 1 DRIVER
There may not be a protocol to training a Formula 1 driver, but there’s a clear set of physical challenges that separates them from other athletes.
“For the first couple years I was probably a bit of a sponge where I didn‘t want to overcoach, so I sat back a little bit,” he says. “Because Daniel was a senior driver — he had his set ways of training — I was just seeing how he did things, and then year by year I just slowly started incorporating a few things that I felt would benefit him.”
To imagine what it’s like to train a Formula 1 driver for the immense physical strain of racing well above 300 kilometres per hour, it’s illustrative to compare it to what might be a more familiar training regimen, like that used for AFL.
While some of the fundamentals are similar, they’re deployed in a completely different way to ensure the driver is at their best behind the wheel.
“Muscular and endurance stuff in the gym, those two are probably the primary carryovers,” he says.
“But if people know football, it‘s a very dynamic and explosive sport, so there’s a lot of power, speed, agility work — you probably don’t need that in Formula 1!
“There is a cardiovascular element to motorsport because of the g-forces, the vibrations, the car and then also the heat, but with AFL you‘re probably training in a higher heart rate threshold that what you would as a motorsport athlete.
“You‘re not getting up to 90 per cent of your heart rate threshold; you’re probably ranging from 130 beats to 160 beats per minute. That’s usually the range you train in.
“I would say the neck is different too, but the AFL guys have started working on their necks, so there‘s a bit of similarity there because they’ve got forces coming from every direction which can cause whiplash.
“There’s a correlation with a weak neck and getting concussed easier, so they’ve actually started training their necks quite a lot and using neck harnesses the way we do.”
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MIND OVER MATTER
There’s a second crucial element to being a Formula 1 trainer that often flies under the radar. Hidden in the relatively vague job title is the role of confidant.
The driver-trainer relationship is an extremely close one, and with 23 races on the calendar, drivers and trainers are spending more days together than ever.
They share the good times and, arguably more importantly, the bad times, and therefore mind management, integral to performance, is a significant part of the job.
“With Daniel it was very easy because we were friends, so it almost felt like hanging out as mates,” Italiano says. “He knew when I had coaching hat on, and he knew — and I also knew — when to be a friend. So that dynamic actually came about quicker than I thought it would.”
But that dynamic came to an end this year with Ricciardo leaving full-time competition.
Italiano was faced with another decision: leave F1 or continue his own career apart from his childhood friend?
“I could have stopped last year when Daniel stopped,” he says. “I could have gone to another code.
“But the truth is I actually love the sport and I love what it‘s about and also the athletes, so I was actually very grateful when the opportunity to work with Yuki (Tsunoda) came about.”
You couldn’t imagine a more different pairing.
Italiano and Ricciardo are a similar age and have a similar upbringing. They share the same Australian accent with familiar open Perth sound and even have similar mannerisms.
Tsunoda is 11 years younger, 20 centimetres shorter and only a few seasons into the culture shock of his relocation from Japan to Europe.
“I did the same process,” Italiano says. “I sat down and said, ‘Look, write down your expectations, I’ll write down mine and then let‘s come up with a set of standards’. That way no communication gets lost between us two.
“And to be honest, with Yuki, it‘s actually been very easy as well.”
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‘WE CLICKED REALLY QUICKLY’
Italiano may have arrived at just the right time in Tsunoda’s career too.
The Japanese driver in his third season of Formula 1, but his crash-prone 2022 meant renewal this year was never guaranteed. It was only the promise of his undoubted speed, occasionally but not consistently glimpsed, that convinced the team to keep him on for another campaign.
Few doubt that Tsunoda has the talent to establish himself as an F1 mainstay, but his mental fortitude has remained an open question. Last year Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko even hired him a new psychologist to try to normalise his performances.
It’s a situation of which Italiano was acutely aware when he took up the role of Tsunoda’s chief ally.
“There‘s a lot still for him to learn and improve on,” he says. “And then there are elements that I really do think I can help him with from a mental perspective.
“That‘s why this role excited me, because I know I can make a significant difference in his life not just as an athlete but as a human, nurturing him and teaching him my experiences that I went through in my 20s and 30s and how he can apply that to himself and be a better person but also be a better professional.
“Unfortunately in this environment he doesn‘t have time to mature. He needs to mature quicker than the average 22-year-old, so that’s something that I’m trying to nurture in him and teach him.”
Tsunoda says he’s immediately felt the value of having Italiano by his side.
“With Michael it’s really good, we get along so well,” he said. “We clicked really quickly.
“For me it‘s really important to have a really good relationship rather than just a business relationship with my trainer because we’re travelling to 23 races and we spend most of the time with each other.
“So when I face a bad moment or a good moment, I want to share more of those moments because I feel more comfortable, and that helps a lot with having a consistent mindset going into the sessions.
“He also gives me some of his experience with Daniel as well, which is good.
“So yeah, I’m really happy with Michael.”
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‘THE BIGGEST LEARNER IS THE TEACHER’
It’s not as simple as reprinting the Ricciardo training program and relabelling it with Tsunoda’s name, however, and the lessons have been flowing in both directions in this new relationship.
“I think over time the biggest learner is the teacher,” Italiano says. “I learnt a lot off Daniel, the senior he is and the professional he is, and there are elements that I will carry over from Daniel to Yuki.
“But I’ve also learnt that not every coaching and leadership style works for everyone, so some things that would trigger Daniel on a positive note don’t trigger Yuki on a positive note.
“That‘s something that I really honed [during the pre-season], actually understanding his key motivators, understanding how I can motivate him and what triggers actually work with him.”
That was one of two key takeaways from pre-season testing.
“He‘s actually reminded me what it’s like to be a 22-year-old again,” he laughs. “Every day we’d sit in the morning and have some breakfast and I’d be like, ‘Are you sore, are you tired?’ and he’s like, ‘Nope’. Oh yeah, now I remember — when I was 22 I never got sore, I could just recover that quickly!
“He wore me out. We would train twice a day and then he’d be like, ‘Okay, what‘s next?’. I’m like, ‘Let’s just relax now’ and he’s like, ‘No, let’s god jetskiing, let’s go buggying, let’s go play soccer’.
“My Whoop was buzzing — ‘your strain is too high!’ — because I‘m trying to keep up with him. It was my mission in Dubai to try to wear him out, and I didn’t get to wear him out.”
“But it’s honestly going really well.
“I can be a lot more immature and get away with it too, so it’s great, I like to throw some dad jokes here and there, and he appreciates it. We bounce off each other quite well.”
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So far the signs have been very positive for Tsunoda, who’s comfortably covered rookie teammate Nyck de Vries and has been a consistent performer in the first three rounds of the season.
By all accounts he’s risen to the challenge of the team leadership in what’s shaping up us a difficult campaign for AlphaTauri.
If he can convert that form into a new deal, there’ll be no doubting the influence of his Aussie trainer who answered that fateful text message just over five years ago.
