Before Appetizers Are Served, a Quick Diagnosis From the Valet

The driver was greeted for her lunch first by Bruno Cavallini, 32, whose expertise with cars goes far deeper than what is required by his job with the valet parking company at Ink. When Mr. Cavallini asked how she liked the BMW — something he almost always does with customers who drive performance cars — she mentioned the warning light.

Mr. Cavallini dug out a hand-held computer code reader from the trunk of his 2004 BMW M3 and plugged it into the diagnostic port of woman’s car before driving around to the restaurant’s rear lot.

When she returned after lunch, Mr. Cavallini explained the problem: her BMW had a bad coolant sensor, and it should cost about $90, not including labor, to fix.

“And don’t pay more than $100 for labor,” he told her. She tipped him $20.

The service he provides has not gone unnoticed by the restaurant’s owner.

“He is really beyond a valet — he helps people with their cars, programming the radio, the seat memories and all that,” Mr. Voltaggio, himself a serious car enthusiast, said in an interview at the Amelia Island Concours d’Élégance in March.

“We get from 30 to 50 cars a night,” Mr. Cavallini said. Estimating that he has probably solved a couple of problems on each shift over the last two years, the total very likely runs to many hundreds by now.

The streak started when he programmed the settings to make the automatic tilt-down feature of a door mirror work for a customer who had not yet cracked the code.

“The next day, someone came in with a Mercedes and couldn’t figure out how to set the time on the clock, so I showed them,” he said. “Then another guy came in with a Mercedes and didn’t know why the check engine light was on.”

Mr. Cavallini always brings his laptop computer and a reader for codes in cars’ onboard diagnostic system, or OBDII, to his valet job at Ink.

As a teenager, Mr. Cavallini began tinkering with his and friends’ cars for fun, mostly BMWs. (“They’re easier to work on than Audis,” he said.)

“I used to unsolder the Eproms and flash new coding,” he said, referring to the process of reprogramming the memory chip in the car’s computer. “I didn’t find it to be difficult.”

His appetite for shop manuals, which he buys online and reads on his laptop, is nearly insatiable. “I like to go in deep and spend hours learning the cars; I’m on my computer studying diagrams,” Mr. Cavallini said. “A lot of my friends want their BMWs reprogrammed for European specs, like having the side marker lights always on, just to be different. The factory software, at least up to 2009, is in German; I need to learn German.”

Mr. Cavallini also studies technical service bulletins and alerts diners to problems that might require attention.

Sometimes Mr. Cavallini gets tips for his car help. In one case, a customer drove up to the valet drop-off spot at Ink with a flat tire, Mr. Cavallini knew that this particular Audi model had a full-size spare, and he changed the tire in 10 minutes.

“She didn’t have any money,” he said. “She came back the next day with a $50 tip.”

Tire problems are not unusual.

One night, a woman in a Mercedes-Benz pulled up with a flat tire.

“She is crying — she’s late for a screening of a new movie,” Mr. Cavallini recalled. So he retrieved the plug kit and air compressor he carries in his car and fixed the leak on the spot, instructing the woman that she needed to get the tire fixed properly the next day.

Another customer pulled up in a BMW with one halogen low-beam headlight burned, concerned that the problem would lead to being pulled over by the police. So he swapped in a bulb from his own car — no charge.

Before Attempting to Top Opponents, U.S. Open Players Must Beat Traffic

As his driver fought through rush hour traffic, the car broke down, and Smyczek was left stranded on the highway shoulder.

It took about 20 minutes for Smyczek to flag down another driver headed to the Open.

“He pulled over and said, ‘Hey, you guys need a ride or something?’ ” Smyczek recalled the driver asking. Smyczek arrived in time for his match against James Duckworth on Court 17. (Smyczek won in four sets.)

The Open poses many challenges for the tennis elite, from surviving 140-mile-per-hour serves to withstanding New York City’s snark, but perhaps the most fundamental challenge is getting there.

Nearly all of the players stay in Manhattan hotels. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center may sit about 10 miles from Times Square, but it can take an hour or more in crawling traffic. That means that 543 of the world’s best tennis players from 64 countries have to scramble through expressways, tunnels and bridges before they even step on the court.

The commute is coordinated from a room behind Arthur Ashe Stadium. The numbers are dizzying: 175 cars, 75 buses, 1,300 rides a day, 1.1 million miles logged during the tournament.

Dozens of the drivers are former law enforcement officers. “They can deal with the traffic — and player anxiety,” said Roy D. Fugazy, the president of Fugazy Sports & Entertainment, the transportation company that works with the Open.

The traffic slog is part of what makes the Open distinct from the other major tournaments, which are set in more peaceful locations, like Wimbledon, Melbourne and the outskirts of Paris.

Here, as New Yorkers know all too well, the commute does not always go so well.

Dmitry Tursunov, a Russian player ranked 34th, said his car did not show up Tuesday at his hotel to take him to Queens, forcing him to find a car pool.

“We’re talking about the U.S. Open, which spends a ridiculous amount of money,” he said. “A lot of players complain about it, a lot of players have problems with transportation.”

When Open organizers surveyed the players about their experiences after previous tournaments, officials said the top complaint was always the same: transportation. Those complaints make their way to the desk of F. Skip Gilbert, a senior official with the United States Tennis Association. He is responsible for, among other things, making sure all of the players make it through the tunnels and across the bridges in time for their matches.

“It is thankless, and we know that there are going to be times, thanks to a car breaking down, or weather, or incredible traffic or something goes on, you’re going to run a minute late and you’re going to expect to get criticized,” Gilbert said. “And if you do, you smile and say, ‘Yes, we’re very sorry and we’ll try not to do it again.’ ”

He and his team manage the commutes from a small office on the stadium grounds, where nearly a dozen dispatchers pore over color-coded spreadsheets.Multilingual workers field questions and remind players of their pickup times. Radio dispatches fill the air from dawn to dusk.

Fugazy, the contractor who oversees the cars, said that when he began handling the Open transportation in 2006, his team had to travel among about 15 pickup locations. Now, they pick up athletes at more than 200 places.

He said he worked to match players with chauffeurs who will suit their temperament. “You have certain players that have their nuances, their needs, and we’re managing their expectations, so we marry them with certain drivers,” Fugazy said.

This year marked the debut of a software system designed to manage the Open’s fleet of 250 player vehicles and buses.

The software creates a profile for each player that includes hotel addresses and match times. Players typically ride in their own car, but Fugazy sometimes has to resort to car pools, sparking occasional grumbles.

Mornings are the busiest times as cars from the Open swarm around hotels — like the Grand Hyatt, the Waldorf-Astoria and the Le Parker Meridien — in search of athletes toting large racket bags. Players are advised to allow 45 to 60 minutes for the drive. But there can be additional obstacles. Like Labor Day weekend traffic, and special trips to the airport for losing players.

Nevertheless, tennis officials are willing to bend the rules for top players, like Andy Murray, Fugazy said.

“We know if Mr. Murray needs an extra car, we’re probably more likely to provide that because he’s earned the right to have that kind of consideration,” Gilbert said.

Some players are sanguine about the traffic woes.

“I think they’re trying their level best,” said Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi, a 12th-ranked doubles player from Pakistan. “But, unfortunately, just New York City, man.”

Unfortunately, a bad commute can affect a player’s game. Caroline Wozniacki, a Danish player ranked eighth, said her car was late Thursday. She still won her match in two sets, but she said the drive threw off her routine.

“I was a bit stressed after my first round,” she said. “When there’s a little bit of traffic, and then the car is 10 minutes late, then all of a sudden, you’re like, under pressure.”

Ben Rothenberg contributed reporting.

Wheels Blog: Franchitti and Castroneves Pause in New York Before Indianapolis 500

Richard Drew/Associated Press Scotland’s Dario Franchitti, left, and Brazil’s Helio Castroneves were interviewed in New York on Monday.

On Monday, IndyCar sent the drivers for this Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 on a press tour to cities around North America. New York can rest easy in its title as the media capital of the world: it got the only pair of three-time Indy winners in the lineup, Dario Franchitti of Scotland and Helio Castroneves of Brazil.

Franchitti, the defending champion who also won in 2007 and 2010, is stuck in midpack, in the middle of the sixth row, after a weak performance by most of the Honda-powered teams in qualifying. His Ganassi Racing teammate, Scott Dixon of New Zealand, is next to him, in 16th starting position. Castroneves, in a Chevrolet-powered Penske car, starts eighth, in the middle of Row 3.

“I am worried,” Franchitti said of the apparent disparity between the Honda and Chevy engines, although most teams will be switching to fresh engines for the race itself, giving Honda a chance to perform some tweaks.

“Last year, we had an even bigger deficit,” Franchitti said. Obviously, that didn’t hurt him on race day. “The Honda guys brought in a new engine and made a big step forward in fuel consumption and horsepower. Hopefully, they can bring something similar this time.”

Castroneves offered some hope for Franchitti. “It doesn’t matter if you have the fastest car,” said Castroneves, who won the race in 2001, 2002 and 2009. “You need everything going right for you.”

Both drivers said they were impressed by the depth of driving talent and quality of the teams in this 500. “There’s probably 20-something cars that can win that race,” Franchitti said. “There’s a drop-off in some of the cars, but it’s only maybe three, four guys.”

Like the Kentucky Derby in horse racing, the Indy 500 is an event that draws many viewers who do not regularly follow the sport. Asked for viewing tips for newcomers, Franchitti pointed to “the subtleties of what’s going on.”

“You’re not going to see big slides or big steering movements,” he said. Instead, the in-car cameras, Franchitti said, can be telltales: any driver using anything but the smoothest, slightest steering input is having a handling problem.

He also suggested that viewers call up indycar.com to follow the race timing and scoring. “You can see if someone is moving up from the back of the pack,” he said.

“If you see a car really close behind another car, you know that person has a very good car,” Castroneves suggested, referring to the difficulty most teams have in getting a car to handle well once it is in the turbulent air coming off a car ahead.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway has received approval from the State of Indiana for millions of dollars in loans for improvements. One planned project would light the track for night racing. But Franchitti would not want to see the Indy 500 run under lights. “I don’t think you mess with 100 years of tradition,” he said.

Jamie Squire/Getty Images Helio Castroneves, driver of the No. 3 Shell V-Power/Pennzoil Ultra Team Penske Chevrolet, after qualifying for the 2013 Indianapolis 500.

Franchitti can appreciate tradition, being a serious student of racing history. “I read anything I can get,” he said. “I collect memorabilia. I talk to drivers who have gone before. No matter how long these guys have been out of the car, they still get it.”

(A little more from the history department: Castroneves and Franchitti are tied with Bobby Unser, Johnny Rutherford, Mauri Rose, Wilbur Shaw and Louis Meyer for the second-highest number of Indy 500 victories.)

He is the second Scot to win Indy, the other being Jim Clark, in 1965. Franchitti had a dream experience not long ago when he had the chance to drive Clark’s Indy-winning Lotus 38-Ford at the speedway. “It was something I never thought would happen, ” he said. “I saw it at the Henry Ford Museum. They let me walk behind the rope and touch it. I thought that was as close as I’d ever get to it. It was one of the greatest days of my life.”

A fellow Scot, Derrick Walker, will take over as the president of operations and competition for the IndyCar series after Sunday’s race (during which he will be the team manager for the pole-sitter, Ed Carpenter). Franchitti and Castroneves said they were happy to see Walker get the job.

“I think it’s a great hire for the series,” Franchitti said. “I pushed for it years ago. The only facet of experience he doesn’t have is as a driver.”

Walker owned his own team for many years and before that ran the Penske IndyCar team.

“There’s nothing like putting a person in that position who’s had to struggle to balance the books each year,” said Franchitti. Either he or Castroneves would be tied with A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears and Al Unser Sr. for the most Indy 500 victories with a win on Sunday.

And that would mean another trip to New York.