Io e Clay. Un’amicizia ad alta velocità

“Why do they do that?”, I used to ask myself as a child, watching the single-seaters whizz by, back when Formula 1 was still broadcast free-to-air, and my father would put the Grand Prix on the telly whilst digesting his Sunday lunch.

It is a question to which I have not yet found an answer.

Even when I observe individuals performing acts of goodness, the same question arises. Why do they do it? Why don’t they simply settle for being middle-class? This is where it ties in with the question about pilots: why are there people who set no limits for themselves? Why take risks? Why put themselves on the line? For whom?

These are the serious issues at the heart of "Io e Clay. Un’amicizia ad alta velocità" (Comunica Books Edizioni, 2026), written by Giacomo Tansini and Andrea Bernardini, with a foreword by Gian Maria Regazzoni and an afterword by Gian Carlo Minardi.

Tansini (born in 1955) is the founder and honorary president of the ‘Aiutiamo la paraplegia-Club Clay Regazzoni’ charity. A life spent amongst engines, from the workshops in Paullo to those in Maranello: travelling up and down the A1 motorway just to catch a glimpse of the ‘Cavallino’ god. And its high priests: this is how he made a name for himself in the Modena area, and with patience he evolved from a fan to a friend of the gruff Ticino-born driver. Their bond came to closely resemble that of a son with his father, so much so that Tansini was the last person to speak with Regazzoni by telephone on 15 December 2006, when the driver—whose career had been only temporarily slowed by the Long Beach accident—encountered the red flag on the A1.

Fathers and sons can achieve great things together: and it is precisely such a major fundraising effort that Tansini and Regazzoni have been undertaking since July 1994 in aid of paraplegics. Speed and frailty, vitality and illness: a mysterious combination, one that has been familiar to the Ferrari family since the days of the late Dino, who died at the age of twenty-four from Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Andrea Bernardini, in his debut, hits the ground running – so to speak – and brings Tansini’s memories to life with such clarity that it feels like reading a novel: the first visits to Maranello, the dreams and frustrations, the tragedy and ecstasy of Monza ’70, the joy of Monza ’75; and then the blossoming of a friendship, the arguments, the galas, the simple life that becomes heroic: an art that we Italians know well, but which we must not forget.

So, “Why do they do it?” Because they do. Danger is a serious matter when one puts one’s heart on the line: but the Bible reminds us that God will spew the slothful out of His mouth.

Giacomo Tansini and Andrea Bernardini
, "Io e Clay. Un’amicizia ad alta velocità
", Comunica Books Edizioni, 240 pp., 18 euros