Building Need for Speed: Dino Dalle Carbonare, Speedhunter

2015-07-21
Electronic Arts

Bringing Japanese car culture to Need For Speed

Need for Speed is shaped by a community of urban car culture enthusiasts called Speedhunters. See how their unique perspectives are influencing the game in our ongoing series.

You always remember your first race. And it’s not always at a soap box rally.
Speedhunter Dino Dalle Carbonare was first exposed to racing in the hills of Northern Italy, watching climb events and rally stages with his father.

“Seeing prototypes and rally cars blast through hairpin bends and spit out flames from their exhausts had quite the impact on me,” he says. “I was pretty much ruined from then on, I’d say. In a good way.”

Those early experiences set Carbonare on a path. He now lives in Japan, where he’s turned his love of cars into a career. 

Carbonare works closely with the Need For Speed development team to ensure that Japanese car culture is accurately represented in the game. “I’ve assisted them with information about cars, tuners, and the overall scene in Japan as well as reference shoots so that they can recreate everyone’s favorite aero kits in the game down to the smallest detail,” he says. 

“I live and breathe Japan,” he continues. “I’m always more than willing to share my knowledge. I probably get carried away most of the time but the best thing is that there are so many car enthusiasts involved in the Need For Speed project we just end up going off on tangents.” 

Those tangents and other contributions from Speedhunters helps ensure that Need for Speed will be true to modern car culture.

“The cool thing is, we end up adding to Need for Speed in various ways – ways that will put a grin on the faces of car nuts who will eventually play the new game,” he says.

One of the perks of Carbonare’s research included taking a Pagani Huayra out on the Autodromo di Modena in Italy. “[It is] something I will never forget,” he says. “I kept expecting them to tell me that my time was up but they kept egging me on to go out again, and again. I ended up getting to know the car pretty well, turning off the traction and stability controls, and allow it to move around under me. What a day that was.”

His passion for cars goes way back. Carbonare’s first car was a zippy little Citroen AX Splash he drove while attending university in the U.K. “What the little French car lacked in performance it made up for in its lack of weight,” he says.

“It was around 650kg [1,433 lbs.] if I recall, and it was built poorly – flimsy in every way – but it was a ton of fun to throw around the corners and it introduced me to the art of liftoff oversteer [When rear tires lose traction due to throttle reduction].

No roundabout was ever the same after that. I spent the entire time trying to swing out the back, entering turns slightly too fast, backing off the throttle and giving the steering a decisive jab to use the car’s momentum to swing the back out. That and handbrake parallel parking maneuvers are the best memory of that little tin box,” he says.

Carbonare has owned his own dream car since 1999, a Nissan R34 Skyline GT-R, but his favorite car in Need For Speed is the McLaren F1.

A lifetime of living and breathing car culture leads to good taste.

Learn more about Carbonare by following him on Instagram.

Look under the hood of Need for Speed here.

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