“We have a problem,” the manager said.

“What is the problem?” Didi called back.

“A strike,” the manager said. “In Milan.”

The manager called everyone under the awning, around the workbenches. Didi hunched over the steering wheel in the Spirit of Italy, scowling, as if impatience alone could get his vehicle powered up and motoring along the flats, while his team decided that as loyal members of the union, which was in contract negotiations and had voted to strike, they were obligated to strike as well.

The mechanics in Milan were conducting something called a work-to-rule strike, so the mechanics on the salt flats conducted their own work-to-rule strike. It was a way of striking without striking, as Tonino explained it to me. They were still getting paid, and not at risk of being fired and replaced. They simply went absolutely by union and company code on every single procedural element of their jobs, and their unions and procedures being Italian and deeply bureaucratic, each task, if accomplished according to code, took much longer than it normally would.

Didi, not in the union, not a company employee, but a celebrity racer with an independent contract, was furious.