Fulvio Mussi has grown up with racing in his blood. Being half Italian his love of motor sport is automatic and the prancing horse his first real pet! Staunch Renault supporters may think the name is familiar and they would be right, Fulvio's father, also Fulvio, raced in Renault Fives in the early eighties, passing the speed gene to his first born. There has never been any doubt in Fulvio's mind that motor racing would be his chosen career although he was relatively old when he started racing competitively. Like most of today's modern drivers Fulvio started in karts, driving for fun at club level. His first serious Challenge came when he turned 16 and competed in the National Formula Honda Championship, a series running single seater race cars with mid engine, aerodynamic aids such as front and rear wings and on Dunlop racing slick tyres, his first taste of a real car, and what a car, this little 600cc machine was capable in the hands of Fulvio of 0 to 60 mph in under three seconds, a huge leap from his 16 horse power kart. The championship runs nationally on the well-known circuits including the British Grand Prix Circuit at Silverstone. This was seen as a giant step for Fulvio with relatively little experience to his competitors, but Fulvio felt that taking the jump early would give him an advantage into learning the circuits as well as obviously the enormous grey art of learning how to set up these very sophisticated racing cars. Fulvio missed out on the early rounds but with only six events out of the 14 for the season Fulvio was able to clinch the Scholarship Championship for 2002. During 2002 Fulvio was also entered into a few rounds of another championship called Monoposto a series for single seater race cars including old F3 cars, here Fulvio really made his mark, in the three events entered he finished in podium positions and established three lap records for his class, this may not on the surface appear that grand , but when you appreciate that he was in a class D car with a 600cc engine, and 20 or more of the cars were from senior categories with engine sizes in excess of 2000 cc, then you can understand why some very influential people within motor sport stood up and watched with interest. This put Fulvio in the limelight and the telephone began to ring. John Kirby, the man responsible for launching Juan Pablo Montoya's career, approached him. John set Fulvio on the road to his dreams of Formula One! After much discussion with his now own management team and talks with Formula One Teams it was decided that Fulvio should compete in the world renowned breeding pastures for young talent - British Formula Renault Championship, whose former champions include Kimi Raikkonen, Alonso, Jason Plato and many other well known drivers in world motor sport, but despite doing all the right things this is where Fulvio's troubles began. Winter testing was arranged with the championship winning team Fortec, who also compete successfully in Formula 3. During testing again Fulvio raised many eyebrows, on every outing being the quickest and often against previous champions. Meeting after meeting phone call after phone call negotiating for sponsors and marketing partners, but the recession in motor sport was getting darker and even interest from the top levels were cutting back and scholarship programmes that had once been funded by F1 teams were being withdrawn or diminished. We had now got to the time when final entries had to be registered and there was no guarantee of funding for the season. This meant that Fortec who had been holding a seat for Fulvio reluctantly had to sign a different driver, the limited budget available restricted Fulvio's drive to a new team, who wanted Fulvio's talent to launch there debut year in Formula Renault. Mechanical problems dogged the team throughout the year and it was put down to experience and a huge learning curve. 2004 dawned and more realistic targets where forged and Fulvio gained a new manager Dennis Rushen, known for managing Ayrton Senna. Fulvio was approached to drive in the Elf/Lawline Renault Clio Challenge and commenced testing with top team Mardis Gras, and things started to look up. Flare Recruitment came on board as partial sponsors and that meant that Fulvio could go ahead with registering for this year's season.