The Tenths That Make the Difference
This past weekend, in Râmnicu Vâlcea, I experienced a race that taught me just how much every single detail matters. I finished in 2nd place, just a few tenths of a second behind a Mazda 2.
It was a tough race, where I gave everything I had, pushing both the car and myself to the limit. Even though I didn’t break 51.5 seconds, I felt that I had drawn everything out of the car, myself, and my limits.
What I experienced there reminded me profoundly how demanding it is to perform. In both racing and design, it takes years of hard work to master the moment when everything counts. It’s easy to see the beautiful building or the time on the podium. But what isn’t visible are those endless nights in Revit, SketchUp, or in the garage with cold coffee and a looming deadline. It’s in those moments that you grow, learning to understand the car through feeling, not technical sheets, and to connect with the project you’re working on, at the level of art.
In architecture, a good graphics card or a laptop that doesn’t fail while rendering is the equivalent of a durable engine in a race car. You can have talent, you can have passion—and yes, those are rare gifts—but true performance comes from quiet, hard work: iterations, mistakes, corrections.
I am still ranked 1st overall. And, just like in a challenging project, my goal is not only to finish, but to stay on top. Through hard work, clarity, and mental resilience. Just as a beautiful house stands on an invisible structure, so too does the career of an architect—or an athlete—build upon those nights when no one is watching, but you choose to show the world who you are and what you’re made of.
Stefan Tihuniuc, 5th-year Architecture Student, G.M. Cantacuzino Faculty of Architecture, Iași
Pilot for Medaru Architects, Debutants Class 1 and Open Class, 2024–2025 National Super Slalom Championship
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