Massimo Rivola
| Massimo Rivola | |
|---|---|
| Born | 7 December 1971 Faenza, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Education | University of Bologna (degree in economics and commerce, 1996) |
| Occupation | Motorsport executive |
| Employer | Aprilia Racing |
| Title | Chief executive officer (amministratore delegato) |
| Known for | Restructuring Aprilia Racing; director of the Ferrari Driver Academy |
Massimo Rivola (born 7 December 1971) is an Italian motorsport executive. Since 2019 he has been chief executive officer, or amministratore delegato, of Aprilia Racing, the MotoGP team owned by the Piaggio Group. Language editions describe the role differently: English and Italian sources give chief executive, while Spanish and Portuguese sources call him sporting director, and at least one is internally inconsistent on the point. Rivola built his career over two decades in Formula One team management before moving to motorcycle racing.
Rivola's working life has been spent inside racing organisations rather than in general industry, and his titles, from marketing manager to team manager to sporting director to chief executive, describe leadership of racing teams and driver programmes rather than of a conventional manufacturing or services company.
Early life and education
Rivola was born in Faenza, Italy, on 7 December 1971. He graduated in 1996 in economics and commerce from the University of Bologna.
Career
Minardi and Scuderia Toro Rosso, 1998 to 2008
Rivola began his career in Formula One in 1998, joining the marketing office of the Faenza-based team Minardi. In 2000 he took on responsibility for the team's sponsors, and by 2002 he had been appointed marketing manager. In 2003 Rivola was promoted to deputy team manager, and in 2005 he became sporting director and team manager.
As sporting director and team manager from 2005, Rivola worked with drivers including Marc Gené, Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber, Jos Verstappen and Justin Wilson.
After Red Bull GmbH acquired Minardi and renamed it Scuderia Toro Rosso, Rivola stayed on in Faenza as team manager from 2006 to 2008, continuing to work with drivers including Vitantonio Liuzzi and Sébastien Bourdais. The team's first race win, at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix at Monza with the young Sebastian Vettel, came during Rivola's time as team manager.
Scuderia Ferrari, 2009 to 2016
In 2009 Rivola was brought to Scuderia Ferrari by Stefano Domenicali to serve as sporting director, a role Domenicali had himself previously held. According to Polish-language sources, his responsibilities in the role covered circuit matters, regulatory issues and logistics. At Ferrari, Rivola worked with drivers including Felipe Massa, Kimi Räikkönen, Fernando Alonso, who replaced Räikkönen in 2010, and, from 2015, Sebastian Vettel, who had moved to Ferrari from Red Bull. Rivola remained sporting director until 2015; according to Italian-language sources, this made him the longest-serving sporting director in the team's history.
During his years at Ferrari, Rivola was also involved in developing junior drivers for the team, including Jules Bianchi, the first driver he put under contract, in 2009. Bianchi's protégé, Charles Leclerc, later passed through the same driver pipeline.
Ferrari Driver Academy, 2016 to 2019
In 2016 Rivola was put in charge of the Ferrari Driver Academy, a position he held for three years. Under his direction, academy drivers won titles in Formula 4, Formula 3 and Formula 2, and he oversaw the development of drivers including Antonio Fuoco, Guanyu Zhou, Callum Ilott, Robert Shwartzman, Giuliano Alesi, Marcus Armstrong and Enzo Fittipaldi. In 2016 he also helped bring Antonio Giovinazzi into Ferrari. The academy's best-known product during this period was Charles Leclerc, who became, in the team's own account, the first driver developed through its junior programme to reach Scuderia Ferrari in the team's 70 years of history. According to Italian-language sources, Rivola pursued Leclerc's development with particular determination, in part to honour the memory of Jules Bianchi, who had died following a racing accident.
Aprilia Racing, since 2019
After ten years at Ferrari, Rivola left the team and Formula One in 2019 to accept a proposal from the Piaggio Group to restructure Aprilia Racing in MotoGP, becoming its amministratore delegato, or chief executive. He inherited a team built around riders Aleix Espargaró and Andrea Iannone. In 2020 Bradley Smith replaced Iannone, and Smith was in turn replaced during the season by Lorenzo Savadori, fresh from winning the Italian Superbike championship.
In 2021, after the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic period, Rivola persuaded Andrea Dovizioso to join Aprilia as a test rider and, in what Italian-language sources describe as a surprise signing, brought in Maverick Viñales, who arrived after a difficult final spell at Yamaha. That year Aprilia Racing took its first premier-class podium, at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
Sources vary on the precise title Rivola holds at Aprilia. Italian and English-language sources describe him as chief executive, or amministratore delegato, and the career narratives in the Spanish and Portuguese-language sources use the same term. However, German-language sources describe the post as sporting director, and the introductory lines of the same Spanish and Portuguese sources likewise call it sporting director rather than chief executive, so those two sources are internally inconsistent on the point. Polish-language sources do not record his move to Aprilia at all, ending their account of his career with his time at Scuderia Ferrari.
In 2022 Aprilia competed as a full factory team for the first time under Rivola. Espargaró won Aprilia's first MotoGP race, at the Argentina Grand Prix, also his own first win in the category. Across the season, Espargaró and Viñales combined for nine podium finishes, and Aprilia finished third in the constructors' championship. Alongside the MotoGP programme, Rivola's Aprilia Racing also began building motorcycles and championships aimed at young riders, including the 250 Sport Production and the Trofeo 660.
Assessment
By the measures available in the record, Rivola's tenures have generally coincided with periods of competitive improvement: a decade as Ferrari's sporting director that sources describe as the longest in the team's history, a Ferrari Driver Academy stint that produced multiple junior-category champions and, in Leclerc, a driver who reached the senior team through its own pipeline, and an Aprilia Racing rebuild that moved from no MotoGP podiums to a maiden win and third place in the constructors' standings within three seasons.
The early part of his Aprilia tenure was also marked by instability in the team's second rider seat, with the line-up changing twice within about a year, from Iannone to Smith to Savadori, before Rivola settled on Viñales alongside Espargaró in 2021. The available sources are largely descriptive career summaries rather than independent critical assessment, so a fuller external judgement of his decisions, for example on team strategy or personnel, is not supported by the material at hand.
The disagreement among sources over whether to call Rivola a chief executive or a sporting director points to a genuine feature of the role itself. As amministratore delegato of a factory racing team owned by an industrial group, his job combines conventional business leadership, such as running the team as a commercial operation for the Piaggio Group, with sporting decisions of the kind he made throughout his career, including rider signings and driver development, in a way a company chief executive's role typically would not.