True Breakthrough: Pietro Fittipaldi's Debut in Formula 1

PIETRO AT THE BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX 2020

On December 6, 2020, Pietro Fittipaldi made his debut in Formula 1 in Bahrain with Team Haas. He replaced his teammate Romain Grosjean, who had a fiery accident a week before, suffering burns to his hands and a foot lesion. After his first race, Pietro was confirmed to drive in Abu Dhabi the following week, in the last race of the season.

Three years before on December 7, we had celebrated with his family his World Championship, which had also taken place in Bahrain. During those three years, Pietro never stopped believing, regardless of seemingly unsurmountable obstacles. When he reached out to me, I insisted we focus on positive, optimistic and constructive perspectives, putting aside defeatist or catastrophic thinking.

A performance is a promise; it’s about how you use your potential to confront obstacles to find a way to win. You might run out of time and resources, but you never surrender. That’s what the sports audience appreciates and wants to absorb: how you love the challenge and use your grit to find solutions as you aim for a win.

In business, it’s also what your superiors, colleagues and clients want to see: Are you a box ticker or a solutions designer? Do you perform and get results or make excuses?

Pietro’s story confirms one of my core perspectives on life: when you know who you are and live on-purpose, new doors open that you never knew were there. Breakthrough is not a metaphor; it’s the mindset and lifestyle of the optimizers.

The Fittipaldi Brothers’ path to success is marked by friendship, determination, and the Breakthrough steps of Imagine, Improve, Inspire and Ignite I describe in my book “The Glass is Full and a Half.”