Visiting with Pirelli's "Superman," Salvo Pennisi

"So, you’ll be meeting Salvo Pennisi! He is our sort of" — Piero paused to find the right description — "our Superman."

You might think that would set impossible expectations, but after spending a couple of days with him, we totally agreed. I suppose I might have met a cooler guy somewhere in the past, and I may have met a nicer one (though I can’t think of who it would be); I know I’ve met some faster guys — but I’m certain I’ve never met anyone who’s nicer, cooler, and faster. Salvo optimizes that equation.

Although he’s held in high regard by Pirelli’s R&D, he’s not an engineer himself. Salvo grew up in a motorsport-obsessed family. His father was a well-to-do farmer who exported citrus products all over Eastern Europe. His passion was racing cars and speedboats. His dad gave him a moped when he turned 12.

“I became the terror of my little village,” Salvo admits. (He still owns the moped!)

Salvo began racing motocross, and later competed in enduros at a pretty high level. He was still in his teens when he started writing bike tests for Italian magazines like Super Moto Tecnica and Motosprint.

Back then — it was the late 1970s to early 1980s — Pirelli had a factory in Sicily where they made enduro tires, and they hired Salvo as a test rider. “I was maybe doing a good job,” he told me, “because in 1984 they asked me to go to Brazil to organize a testing program at the factory there.”

Though Salvo was still only in his 20s, Pirelli must have seen something in the young man, because the company then seconded him to Yamaha. For three years, he shuttled between Japan and Germany (where Yamaha also had a development department).

At the time, Yamaha and Pirelli used English as a common language. “You can imagine a young Sicilian in Japan,” Salvo recalled. “At the time I did not speak a word of English, so Pirelli sent me to school to learn English. They were taking care to build my career.”

His dual assignments were to liaise between Yamaha and Pirelli as an OE supplier and to study Yamaha’s modern and scientific testing department, in order to replicate it for Pirelli.

To round out Salvo’s extensive off-road experience, Pirelli arranged for him to be mentored as a road rider by Walter Villa (a four-time World Champion in the 250 and 350 classes in the mid-1970s.) Villa’s tutelage must’ve stuck, because one of Salvo’s very first road races was a wild card entry in the 1989 World Superbike Championship, and he scored a point! He raced a Honda RC30 in the Italian national championship in 1990 to help develop the tires used in World Superbike.

Because Pirelli’s an OE tire supplier, Salvo has been an insider on several really influential projects. He helped to develop one of the first motorcycle ABS systems with BMW in the mid-1980s, worked closely with Massimo Tamburini on the iconic Ducati 916, and helped to refine the handling of the first Yamaha YZF-R1.

It turns out that Salvo’s early experience as a journalist was useful. “One of the most important skills a testing department must have is the ability to communicate every aspect of the tires in a clear and transparent way,” he told me. “I try to transmit this to my employees; to be clear and to investigate, within ourselves, what we feel inside when testing tires and to translate this feeling into scientific information for the engineers.”

Salvo has managed all of Pirelli’s outdoor testing operations for over 30 years but I could see he’s now grooming the next generation of testers and managers. “In this sense, Pirelli is a great company that gives people the opportunity to grow and be part of a bigger project,” he told me. “You can imagine that I was just a young man in Sicily, far from the big technical centers of Europe, but because Pirelli has such an open mind, I was able to grow into this position.”

“We are living this, not as a job but as a passion,” he told me. At this point he’s spent about 40 years as a professional tester, and has racked up countless miles and endless seat time — everything from enduros, to a score of FIM speed and endurance records. He even recently set an unofficial world record by riding virtually non-stop from sea level to 6,000 meters in the Andes in a single day.

And after all that, he still jumped at the chance to ride up Mt. Etna with a visiting journalist and his wife. So, I believe him; the passion is real.