Francesco Bernoulli

thumb|right|300px Francesco Bernoulli is a character in Cars 2. Though thought to be an antagonist, he is actually just rude to Lightning McQueen at certain points.

Cars 2
Francesco Bernoulli grew up in the shadow of the famous Monza race course in Italy where he and his friends would sneak onto the track and race the famous Pista di Alta Velocita bank turn. He was an instant winner on the amateur circuit and soon became an international Formula Racer champion. The ladies love Francesco’s open wheels, youngsters look up to his winning spirit and fellow racers envy his speed. But Francesco’s biggest fan is Francesco himself, as evidenced by his racing number. As the most famous race car in Europe, #1 Francesco is a favorite to win the World Grand Prix, which also makes him Lightning McQueen’s chief rival.

For some reason, Mater can't say his name right. He's always calling him "Mr. San Francisco."

In the movie, he first appeared on the Mel Dorado show. Then when they talked about inviting Lightning McQueen, Francesco began insulting him. Mater didnt like Francesco insulting his best friend, so he called the show, telling Francesco to stop insulting Lightning. Then Lightning takes Mater out of the phone, and tells Francesco that he doesn't like Mater being insulted. Then they were having an arguement, and then Miles invites Lightning, and Lightning joins the World Grand Prix.

Later, Lightning and Mater meet Francesco at the party in Tokyo. Then when they finished their conversation, Francesco shows Lightning a bumper sticker saying "Ciao, McQueen!" Then when Mater tried the wasabi, mistaking it for pistachio ice cream, he laughs at him when he drinks from the fountain.

Then in the race, he was announced to be good on the streight-aways. When they lined up, he heard Lightning's catch phrase, "I am speed!" He decides to copy it, and say, "Francesco is triple speed!" Then in the dirt section, he fell behind to last place, but was able to catch up to 2nd place. Then when Mater was "going to meet his date," he accidentally gave Lightning some bad racing advice, causing Francesco to pass him and win the race.

In the second race, Francesco hears about Lightning missing his friend, Mater. Then he tells him that it's hard to be far away from home. However, he was at home, and his mama was in the audience. He tells his mama that he will win the race. For most of the race, Francesco was in the lead, but then Lightning passes him and wins the race.

In the third race, he was at first seen in the lead, but then Lightning passes him. Then, when Mater with his rockets zoomed passed him, he was hoping it was a bad dream. Then Holley with his wings passes him, and he freaks out again.

Then at the Radiator Springs Grand Prix, Sally meets him. Lightning introduces them to each other. Then Francesco sees Lightning's bumper sticker, which said "Ka-ciao, Francesco!" Then they raced, and he and Lightning were usually in the lead. When Mater passed him with his rockets, he freaked out.

==Specifications ==
 * Hometown: Porto Corsa, Italy
 * Top Speed: 220 mph
 * Zero – 60 mph: 2.5 seconds
 * Engine Type: 2.4-liter V-8, 18,500 rpm redline
 * Horsepower: 750

Development
While developing a Formula One character for the film, the developing team realized that a such open-wheeled car could make much more gesture than normal cars with fenders. Director John Lasseter said: "We don’t typically lift the tires off, partly because of the fender. But I thought, “Wow. To have an open wheel car, like Francesco, it gives us a lot more gestures.”. And so we thought, “Well this guy’s going to be gesturing like crazy. Let’s make him Italian, an Italian Formula 1 car. This will be perfect.”"

Bernoulli’s design took four months to be finalized. as the team worked out where to put the mouth and how to give an F1 car a “windshield” for the eyes. Indeed, F1 cars do not have a windshield. Additionally, they are very long. As says Character Art Director Jay Shuster, "Formula cars have long snouts, so we had to really inflate his form to get the real estate we needed.". Ultimately, the eyes were placed on a sort of helmet that is integrated with the body. The mouth is at the end of a foreshortened nose, and not underneath it as originally envisioned.

The fact that Francesco, as an open-wheeled car, has his suspension visible, posed some unusual problems to the animators. According to Shuster: “Francesco was the hardest design to complete because of his exposed suspension”. As supervising animator Dave Mullins said: "We always have fenders covering the wheels. So we can hide our dirty little secrets underneath the hood, because the chassis is moving around and stretching around. All you really see is the hard body of the car, and the wheels acting. With Francesco, we can see the connection between the wheels and the body. It was one of the big challenges trying to figure out how to support everything that’s going on with the body."

The original suspension had to be reinvented in order to support all the stretchings that Francesco's gestures would cause, and the team had important struggles to achieve a believable suspension. Jay Shuster said: "We realized that when he takes off his front wheels, he's stretched like a rubber band and it's really ugly. Something like that took about two months to figure out what was going on—we developed a whole telescoping arm that had a pivot point." “The kind of physical expression we were able to get from Francesco’s movement took a lot of work but really looked great in the end. He was able to achieve these really extreme poses.”

According to Story Supervisor Nathan Stanton, Francesco's character constantly reminded the development team of the character John Turturro played in The Big Lebowski. Consequently, John Turturro was chosen to voice Francesco.

Trivia

 * Francesco’s last name, Bernoulli, is a reference to Daniel Bernoulli, a Dutch/Swiss mathematician who published ground-breaking theories on fluid dynamics and the conservation of energy.
 * Francesco's pit crew chief is Giuseppe Motorosi.
 * On Francesco's side is a logo presenting the letters FR in a design similar to the F1 logo. It is the abbreviation of "Formula racer", his racing league.
 * Francesco's design seems like a typical modern Formula One design.
 * Francesco's tires are "Rotelli Tires Pasta Potenza" . Potenza makes allusions to Bridgestone's Potenza tires, which were used by all Formula One teams from 2007 to 2010. Note that "Pasta Potenza" would literally mean "the power of pasta". "Rotelli" is a play between Rotini, a type of pasta, and Pirelli, which is now the official F1 tire supplier. It is possibly also a reference to Italian sports cars being called "Pasta Rockets".
 * Francesco often refers to himself in the third person.