Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has detailed a bizarre off-track encounter with American television host Jimmy Fallon, who interrupted his business dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant by sending a takeaway pizza to his table.
Domenicali made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, and the pair reflected on Fallon’s first experience of F1 at the Miami Grand Prix earlier this year.
Following an initial meeting outside Domenicali’s paddock office at the Hard Rock Stadium, they crossed paths later that evening at The Surf Club, a restaurant operated by chef Thomas Keller. While Fallon had already finished eating, Domenicali was enduring a lengthy wait for a business dinner.
Noticing the delay, Fallon approached the restaurant manager to organise a joke.
“I talked to her [and] I said, ‘I want to send him something funny. Can I send him, like, a half-eaten meatball or something?'” Fallon explained during the show. “And so she goes, ‘We don’t have that. I’m not doing that. We’re a Michelin Star restaurant. We’re not going to do that.’
“I go, ‘What can I send that would be funny?’ And she goes, ‘Why don’t you have a pizza delivered from next door?’ So I made them not serve you food and then deliver you pizza.”
The pizza arrived with a handwritten note attached to the box, reading: “Stefano, delivery just in case. Jimmy Fallon.”
The F1 chief kept the note to prove to his daughter that he had been with Fallon that day and brought it to The Tonight Show.
“I kept it because we were starving. So you save our dinner. It’s there. I’ve got a family. You are the hero of my daughter. So I wanted to bring it home to prove that you were with me,” Domenicali explained.
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