Tonio visits Canadian secondary school students

As part of the activities surrounding the Canadian Grand Prix, five F1 representatives took a few hours out of their busy schedules to meet around 300 students from St-Henri secondary school in Montreal. Besides Tonio, Steve Clark from Honda, Jean-Pierre Raymond from Renault, Silvia Hoffer from Williams and Gino Rosato from Ferrari were available to answer questions from students. Through the discussion, students got to learn more about the sport as well as related career opportunities.

The questions, from the mostly young males who approached the microphone, were aimed at Tonio, and were about speed, speed and more speed. “What’s it feel like, the G-forces? That must be huge!” said one young man in baggy pants. “Did you ever crash? Did the car break into a thousand pieces?” asked another teenager.

Tonio patiently explained that the driver’s section is very solid and resists breaking up, whereas most of the rest of the car is made of carbon fibre that shatters on impact.

“What does it feel like when you look down and the speedometer says 360 kilometres an hour?”, asked another student. “We don’t look down,” Tonio replied with big laughs.

At least a couple of times, some students tried to find out a race driver salary but Tonio avoided a clear answer. He confirmed that his salary was far from those of champions like Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso! As you can see in our gallery, Tonio really enjoyed this Wednesday morning in Montreal.