Built slowly. Driven fast.

By Carel Nolte

There are some things you should not rush.

Traditional balsamic vinegar, for one.

Building wealth, usually.

Building people, definitely.

Building a Ferrari? Well, that requires both extraordinary patience and the ability to go very, very fast.

I spent a few days in Maranello and Modena recently with a group of EasyEquities clients, partners and team mates, hosted by our friends at Pablo Clark Racing. EasyEquities is the title partner of Pablo Clark Racing, a relationship I am increasingly proud of because the more time I spend around motor racing, the more I see connections with investing.

Not because either is about getting rich quickly or driving quickly.

Quite the opposite.

Both reward preparation. Both involve risk. Both need data. Both require knowing when to push and when not to. Both can punish arrogance remarkably efficiently. And in both, one great lap means very little if you cannot keep doing it.

PCR understands this. They’ve been part of the South African motorsport landscape for more than four decades, with a particular connection to Ferrari. But what I especially like about what Paolo, William and the team are doing today is that they are not simply polishing beautiful old cars and going racing.

They are investing in what comes next.

Their Motorsport Development Programme, launched in 2024, develops young South African talent not only as drivers but across the motorsport ecosystem. There is engineering, telemetry and data analysis, performance psychology, sponsorship, media, race craft and the rather important skill of learning how to behave like a professional before somebody decides to pay you like one.

That matters.

Talent is everywhere. Opportunity isn’t.

Which is another connection to EasyEquities that needs very little explaining.

PCR also recently helped produce a magnificent book, 70 Years of Ferrari Racing in Southern Africa. It is 384 pages, contains more than 650 photographs and traces Ferrari racing in our part of the world from 1955 onwards. Paolo wrote the foreword and the book is dedicated to his late brother Giorgio Cavalieri, one of the important figures in Ferrari’s South African story.

History matters I think – but more so if you use it to build the future.

A factory that doesn’t feel like a factory

Maranello is one of those places where a brand has escaped its buildings.

Ferrari is everywhere.

The road names. Restaurants. People. Shops. Sounds. Test cars suddenly appearing beside you. The famous gates. Fiorano. The museums. The people standing around photographing cars that would probably attract rather less attention almost anywhere else.

And red, obviously.

Although one of the things you quickly learn is that Ferraris are absolutely not all red.

Each car is astonishingly personal. Colours, stitching, materials, combinations and details are specified for owners. Ferrari has turned customisation into part engineering, part fashion and part theatre.

We were exceptionally fortunate to tour the actual Ferrari factory. This is not the normal museum visitor experience – factory visits are reserved for clients and Formula 1 sponsors.

It is pristine.

But that wasn’t what struck me most.

It was calm.

People everywhere, yes. Robots. Technology. Engineering. Production lines. Machines. Data. Parts. Movement.

But very little frenzy.

Helena and I kept commenting on it.

Perhaps there is something in that.

I think that we tend to associate innovation with noise. Hustle. Whiteboards. Meetings. People racing around being terribly important.

Yet here was one of the world’s most famous engineering businesses bringing together humans, machines, nature, design, AI, technology, craftsmanship and nearly 80 years of institutional knowledge – and doing it calmly.

You need energy to innovate.

I increasingly think you also need calm.

Ferrari itself describes Maranello as a place where innovation grows out of tradition. I like that. You don’t have to destroy what came before to build what comes next.

Which brings me, inevitably, to the Ferrari Luce – their electronic car.

I may have been the only person in our group who loved it.

Possibly the only person in Maranello.

Maybe Italy!

Ferrari’s first fully electric production car has four doors, five seats and more than 1 000 horsepower. It was developed with Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s LoveFrom and is an enormous statement from a company whose emotional language has always included a screaming engine.

Some Ferrari purists looked at me as if I had suggested putting pineapple on their pasta.

But I loved the audacity.

What is the point of having extraordinary history if history becomes the reason you are frightened of the future? (Although, I do have a niggle that Ferrari may have gone this route to get EU subsidies to build new facilities and in a year or ten, no more e-Ferraris …)

Starting late

Another thing I loved learning again was Enzo Ferrari’s story.

The mythology can make it feel as though Ferrari simply appeared fully formed from the head of a genius.

Life is almost never like that.

Enzo had already raced cars, managed drivers and founded Scuderia Ferrari in 1929. He established Auto Avio Costruzioni in 1939. But the first car actually carrying the Ferrari name, the 125 S, only came through the gates at Maranello in 1947.

Enzo Ferrari was 49.

Almost 50.

I love that.

Sometimes it takes decades to become an overnight success.

His son Piero is still involved today as vice-chairman. A trust established by Piero holds about 10.67% of Ferrari. There is something rather wonderful about that thread still running through a business whose cars now contain technologies Enzo could never have imagined.

And then there is Formula 1.

For all the money, engineering, data, heritage, passionate supporters and some of the best drivers in the world, Ferrari has not won the Formula 1 drivers’ championship since Kimi (my one poodle named after him) Räikkönen in 2007 or the constructors’ title since 2008.

That fascinates me.

It is also a useful business lesson.

Resources don’t guarantee results.

History doesn’t guarantee results.

Talent doesn’t guarantee results.

Neither does money.

So what is missing when all those things are present and you still don’t win?

Leadership? Culture? Decision-making? Alignment? Patience? Too much pressure? Wrong decisions at precisely the wrong moments?

I don’t know.

But they are questions worth asking in motor racing and in business.

Black gold

And then, amongst all the Ferraris, one of the highlights of my trip had almost nothing to do with cars.

Almost.

Acetaia San Matteo.

Sandra and Luciano Cocchi make traditional balsamic vinegar on their family property outside Modena.

Actually, “make vinegar” feels a bit like saying Ferrari makes transport.

Sandra grew up there, among the vineyards and with the smell of balsamic vinegar around her. She and Luciano initially maintained the family acetaia simply because they loved it. Over time it grew and they eventually began opening it to visitors because, in Sandra’s words on their website, they love sharing their passion with people who possess that wonderful human quality: curiosity.

Curiosity.

There it is again.

The traditional balsamic process is slightly mad and completely magnificent.

Cooked grape must is aged through batteries of wooden barrels. Over the years, portions are transferred between barrels as evaporation takes place. Different woods contribute different characteristics. Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena PDO must age for at least 12 years; the extravecchio version for at least 25. And eventually, before it can carry the designation, expert tasters judge it.

Years.

Not weeks.

Not a quarter.

Not an algorithm promising 27% before Thursday.

Years.

Luciano is a master taster (there are less than 20!) and hearing about the years of learning, tasting and continual training involved made my insurance CPD and Class of Business training feel rather less onerous. The formal journey towards master-taster level can take eight or nine years, with ongoing tastings required to keep the palate trained.

Which brings me to one of my favourite Sandra moments.

She spoke with enormous pride about their son, who is a successful financier in Switzerland.

And then, with the perspective of people who grow grapes, tend barrels and wait decades for the result, she suggested that he didn’t really have a proper job like theirs. Yes he can make millions, but he can also lose millions.

I work in financial services.

I kept quiet.

Mostly 🙂

We tasted. We learnt. We drank their wine. We ate wonderful food. We laughed a lot.

Sandra and Luciano are generous, clever, engaging, hardworking people. The kind of people who make you feel better about the world because they care so deeply about doing something properly.

Their acetaia now contains more than 500 barrels.

We even came home with a tiny, extraordinarily old bottle connected to production dating back to 1904.

This will not be going onto a Woolies salad.

And, because 1 + 1 so often equals 22, South Africa somehow appeared in an attic full of barrels in Modena.

There was the connection through Paolo Cavalieri.

And then Sandra showed us the beautiful little crocheted covers on some of the barrels.

Made in South Africa.

Of course they were.

Links everywhere, if you bother to look.

Fast and slow

Perhaps that is what stayed with me from this trip.

Ferrari looks fast.

Balsamic vinegar looks slow.

But both are actually about time.

Thousands of hours of work before the race.

Years of engineering before a car.

Decades of knowledge passed from one person to another.

Twelve or 25 or 122 years in barrels.

A young driver doing lap after lap and learning to read data.

An investor putting away the first R100 and doing it again next month.

An iconic company launching its first electric car nearly eight decades after its first V12.

None of it happens in one dramatic moment.

We talk a lot about legacy.

I am not sure I really understand the word.

Perhaps legacy isn’t something you construct for people to talk about after you are dead.

Maybe it is much simpler.

Do the best you can today.

When you get it wrong, admit it.

Say sorry.

Learn.

Try again tomorrow.

Help somebody else where you can.

Build something.

Back someone.

Stay curious.

Life is very short.

And it is a gift.

One more lap

Thank you to Paolo, William and everyone at Pablo Clark Racing for a very special few days, and for everything you continue to do for motorsport in South Africa.

EasyEquities is a very proud partner.

There may also be unfinished business in Maranello.

On 14 March 2027, the Mezza Maratona d’Italia – Enzo Ferrari Memorial takes place. The half-marathon route goes through Maranello, Fiorano and Modena and, rather magnificently, runners actually pass through the Ferrari factory grounds and around the Fiorano circuit — places normally closed to the public.

I have a Comrades to train for.

So perhaps I need to go back.

For research purposes, obviously.

And if Ferrari need someone to drive the Luce while I’m there, I remain available.