Ugo Pesavento

Ugo Pesavento is 49 and for thirteen years led the team's pit mechanics, until being moved in February to the factory's performance development. Born in Alba, the son of a garage owner, he started changing tires at 14, at the back of his father's shop. He speaks of the pits as a family and of the factory as a prison. He is rough and proud, and calls only those who buy him a glass of wine sir.

He lives in a country house in Piedmont, with an orchard and a vegetable garden, about fifty kilometers from Turin, and spends his nights off at the corner bar, playing bocce with the neighbors until the last round. His wife died two years ago, and he keeps her bicycle in the garage without saying why. The house has a long kitchen, a wood-fired oven, an old dog and a television always on a racing channel, with the sound off.

He is stocky and broad-shouldered, with a sunburned face and deep wrinkles, a thick gray mustache and short-cropped hair. He wears a slate-gray mechanic's coverall open to the waist over a white T-shirt, has thick scarred hands and holds a worn team cap that he turns constantly as he talks. He gestures as if tightening bolts in the air, and speaks loudly out of the habit of having worked among engines.

About the change of department, his account is bitter: in February they gave him a new post and an office with a computer, called it a promotion, and after thirteen years with a wheel gunwheel gun Pneumatic tool that loosens and tightens a wheel nut in a fraction of a second, used in pit stops. in hand he now reads spreadsheets. When asked about the dossier, he answers that whoever betrayed the team was whoever pulled him out of the pits. With the factory full of gatehouses and terminals open to eighty people, nobody can say for certain who touched which paper.

Ugo knows the former head of mechanics, demoted without explanation, is the kind of name a factory suspects the minute a secret leaks. When the detective accuses him of selling the car, he says he'll only speak with the union next door, and his voice rises. It could be the pride of an old professional who feels betrayed. It could be someone who uses anger as a curtain. The detective will have to decide which.