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This article first appeared in GP Racing magazine.
Last year Formula 1 reached its 1000th world championship grand prix. Amid much pageantry and retrospective brouhaha at the race in question - China - the commercial rights holder also paid tribute to the grandee storytellers of the paddock, awarding one of its newly minted celebratory precious metal coins to the journalist who had covered the most F1 races.
That record belongs, indisputably, to Giorgio Piola, for whom China 2019 was his 811th working grand prix.
Drawing has been among Piola's passions from an early age. In his teens he adopted cars as his preferred subject and went to college to study engineering but, at the age of 18, having fired off a collection of his illustrations to the Italian magazine Autosprint, Piola received a letter that would change his life. The editor invited him to cover the Monaco Grand Prix for them and compile a technical report.
