Page 68 of Formula Freedom
Her eyebrows lift. “On a Sunday?”
“Sure. It will be mostly empty, but you’ll get the best behind-the-scenes tour ever given in the history of Matterhorn.”
Lara laughs, bumping me with her hip. “Now, how can I say no to that?”
The drive to Dübendorf doesn’t take long—twenty minutes northeast through tidy roads and pine-fringed suburbs. I take the Audi RS7 today—matte gray, understated, fast as hell. It’s the perfect car for Zurich. Luxury without flash, performance without ego, and it handles the back roads like it was born for them.
I’ve also got a Ducati Panigale V4 S in the garage—sleek black with red accents, tuned for speed and escape as only a motorcycle can be. It’s for the rare days when I need silence and adrenaline at the same time. Days when the only way to think straight is to go two hundred kilometers an hour with the wind ripping past my helmet.
Today isn’t one of those days.
Today I’ve got Lara in the passenger seat, and the Audi’s the smarter call. Smooth. Controlled. Capable of disappearing into the rhythm of the city without drawing too much attention.
Matterhorn FI Racing’s facility sits behind a discreet security gate. The main building is angular and low-slung, all brushed steel, smoked glass, and pale Swiss stone. It doesn’t scream for attention, but it doesn’t need to. The architecture speaks the same language as the team itself—precision, purpose and quiet dominance. The building stretches horizontally across the property in clean, calculated lines, with a subtle M-shaped roof profile that nods to both the team’s name and the Alpine legacy etched into its DNA.
Frosted-glass panels break up the facade like a circuit board, and the Matterhorn emblem is carved into a slab of white stone near the entrance—no sign, no name, just the peaked logo.
Even the landscaping is deliberate—neatly groomed hedges, low ground cover, and a single row of larch trees lining the front approach, as though nature itself has been engineered into submission.
The guard waves us through the gate and Lara leans forward in her seat as we pull into the private lot. “It’s beautiful,” she murmurs, eyes casting upward through the windshield. “But intimidating.”
“That’s the point,” I say with a laugh.
Inside, Lara tips her head back and turns in a circle to take it all in. The lobby is huge with polished, cream stone floors that shine under soft, recessed lighting. Floor-to-ceiling frosted glass floods the space with natural light and brushed metal accents offer a contemporary flair.
A full-size Matterhorn FI race car sits on a raised platform near the center—its sleek chassis and aggressive curves bathed in a dramatic spotlight, the circular platform rotating slowly. Behind it, a curated wall of trophies glitters in tempered glass cases, spanning decades of dominance across series, continents and eras. World Championship plaques, Constructors’ awards, and vintage relics are displayed with museum-level precision.
To the right, a minimalist lounge area offers low-slung leather seats and a gleaming espresso bar made from Alpine stone. The Matterhorn FI logo is carved deep into the main wall, not just etched—like it was cut from the same glacier that inspired the name.
It’s not a workplace. It’s the sanctum of an empire.
“Wow,” Lara breathes as we walk through the atrium. “This doesn’t feel like a racing team. It feels like NASA.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
When I first came here, I was brand new to FI and completely overwhelmed. I remember walking through these halls and thinking I was a fraud—like at any minute, someone was going to pull my contract and tell me I wasn’t ready. A complete contradiction to the deeply held confidence that I was good enough to not only be here but win podiums.
Now it’s different. Not exactly comfortable. Earned. Every inch of this place has a memory attached to it—late-night briefings, hours in the simulator fighting jet lag, early-morning debriefs with Tariq over bitter coffee and barely functioning brains.
I wouldn’t trade any of it.
I lead Lara upstairs first to the executive wing. “Max Riedel, our team principal, runs most of his ops from here,” I explain, pointing to a glass-walled office that overlooks the main floor. “That’s his war room during race weeks.”
“And the rest of the team?” she asks, curious.
I nod toward the corridor. “Anita Frey—performance analyst. She’s usually buried in data. Felix Baumann is our chief race engineer. He’s the guy in my ear yelling in three languages when I miss an apex. And Tariq Masood—performance strategist. Probably the smartest man in the building and also the driest. They all have offices up here, but they tend to hang out in the development wing.”
Lara nods, eyes round with awe, keeping pace beside me as we head back downstairs and deeper into the development bay.
This is where the heartbeat lives—carbon fiber panels, wings stacked like art, the scent of engine oil and cutting compound lingering in the air. A few engineers are around today, low-key but focused. They nod when they see me, and I gesture subtly for them to relax.
No meetings today.
Just a tour for a special woman.
Lara pauses near one of the newer chassis builds—bare bones, sleek and matte black. “Is this yours?”
“Next season’s prototype,” I say. “Still being tweaked.”
