In recent days, we brought you the first part of our exclusive interview with Dino Beganovic, Formula 2 driver for DAMS and member of the Ferrari Driver Academy. In the article, which you can find by CLICKING HERE, we touched on the subject of the FDA and his experience behind the wheel of a Ferrari Formula 1 car during an official race weekend.
What many people do not know, however, is that Dino does not come from a wealthy family and did not “arrive” where he is today thanks to money. On the contrary, his story is very touching because, in order to pursue his dream, he had to make many sacrifices together with his parents. We at Formula1.it had the chance to discuss this topic with the young Swedish driver, and now we bring you his words.
“I did not get into motorsport in the traditional way. It all started thanks to my father, who was a great racing fan, with a love for engines, since he is also a mechanic in Sweden, and he was one in Bosnia too. Obviously he was never a driver, he is just a road car mechanic, but he always followed Formula 1, and I watched it with him on TV and it looked really cool.”
“Then one day I had the chance to try a kart at the track I had near home and, from that moment, we both fell in love with this world.”
As we all know, motorsport is one of the most complicated worlds to enter, because of its extremely high costs. Speaking precisely about this, Beganovic then added: “Obviously it took a long time before we could buy our own go-kart. It was very expensive because at the beginning everything had started as something fun to do as a family, then as I grew up the first very good results started to come, and with them more and more attention was focused on us. All of this required more and more money because we were also trying to climb the categories and I have to say that I was very lucky during my journey to meet Rickard Rydell, who is my manager and helped me a lot from a financial and contractual point of view.”
Thanks to that meeting, his climb became slightly easier, because until then it had been Dino and his mother who had to look for the sponsors that allowed him to race and live his dream: “From that moment I was able to stop thinking about it, focusing exclusively on driving, and that was a huge help for us because until then it had only been me and my mum going to different companies to look for sponsorships in order to raise some money. As we used to say at the time, though, a little bit of money from fifty different companies eventually adds up to a nice amount, so yes, we made a lot of sacrifices, but in the end it was worth it.”
The interview continues after the photo
Our long conversation then continued by addressing another very important topic for the young Swede. Dino is a very kind and approachable guy, and this can also be seen at the racetrack when fans approach him asking for a selfie or an autograph. From now on, however, at least for the moment exclusively in Sweden, his fellow countrymen will be able to discover a little more about the personal side of Beganovic.
In recent weeks, a documentary, “Dino vagen mot formul 1”, was released, showing behind the scenes of some key moments in the FDA driver’s career. Speaking about this to our microphones, he said: “This project is very important to me because it shows a bit of my journey and what we have been through. It is never as easy as it may seem most of the time, especially from a financial point of view and in terms of results.”
“It all started at the end of 2021 when I was contacted by André Wallström, the director of the documentary, who proposed his idea to me. To be honest, we did not have much to say, we were really excited to do it. Then SVT also joined the project, releasing the documentary, supporting it and investing in it.”
“It has been a great journey, and I like that André started following it so early. Inside there are moments from my winning season in Formula Regional, the year in Formula 3, part of my adventure in F2, but also the first test with Ferrari. It was very nice to have recorded all this, so that I can watch it again in a couple of years, but above all for now it is nice to have shown one side of my story, allowing especially Swedish people to see who I am as a person. I hope we can also release it with English subtitles so it can be watched abroad too.”
We thank Dino Beganovic, the FDA and Scuderia Ferrari HP for the courtesy and availability shown during the interview. Partial reproduction of this exclusive content is possible with prior citation of the author (Giuseppe Cianci) and of the source Formula1.it with a link to the original content.
Photo: Scuderia Ferrari HP
Read also: EXCLUSIVE - Dino Beganovic: from the Ferrari Driver Academy to the Formula 1 dream
