Always staying competitive: Behind the Visor with Gabriele Minì

Gabriele Minì will be hard at work over the break as he details to us, working alongside Alpine F1 Team as part of his duties as a junior driver for the French outfit.

The PREMA Racing driver explained what else he gets up to in his spare time, which he doesn’t have a lot of, and there’s always an element of competition even when he’s not in the cockpit.

“To be honest, everything I do outside of the track is always based around or related to racing. For example, I like to train a lot and do quite often in the week, unless it’s a race week. I will still, but a little bit less than usual.

“During my normal week, I go and train and I’m happy to do that because it’s good. I need the strength and drive. In other sports, I like to play against friends, especially since I’ve been with PREMA. I’ll play against teammates.

“I also quite like bowling, but that is usually just me going with friends for a bit of fun. Nothing really crazy otherwise.

“I think this is also pretty well known by now, but everyone that knows me knows that I like to complete Rubik’s Cubes. I learned a new one just a few days ago. It’s called Square One. Look it up, you’ll see it’s really, really messy. It’s really complicated, but I still can’t solve it fast enough.

“I had to learn how to do them again from scratch to solve this new one, and I can complete it, but I started slowly with Rubik’s Cubes. It’s a good thing to be able to complete one I think. I can do the normal ones in about 12 seconds.

“I also like to drive in the simulator. I can drive with my friends, and I’ve done a few endurance races. We did the 24 Hours of Daytona in the LMP2 split and we finished in second position. We also did the 12 Hours of Sebring in the second split, and we won that one.

“So apart from bowling and Rubik’s Cubes, everything I’m doing is pretty much based around motorsport. The training and simulator are focused on motorsport.

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“I’ve finished studying now, I graduated two years ago, so for the moment I’m taking a break from studies. It would be just too busy if I tried to do that alongside racing, simulator and working with PREMA.

“I enjoy the training camps and training days. I’m always away from home but now we have a few weeks, but even then, I’ll only be home for one week fully, then every other week I’ll be going to Alpine and doing race reports with them.

“It’s always really, really busy. I don’t have too much spare time, and I just want to focus on racing, and we’ll see where I end up.

“Working with Alpine is really useful. I’m able to compare myself to the F1 drivers in Pierre and Franco, which is really good. I can look at their strengths and their differences in the way they drive. That also helps my speed which, at the end of the day, is what you want.

“Then of course, I’ll be supporting them, also at the track having that support from them, those guys being there giving tips or just being able to follow from close up, that’s a big help.

“It’s a very racing driver thing, but you want to be the best at everything. There’s a big challenge in the things I enjoy doing. For example, the simulator sessions. I want to be the quickest. I’m not there to be slower than the others, so there’s something very competitive in that.

“Also, the Rubik’s Cubes, you want to complete them as quickly as possible. For me, I want to win everything.”