Spotlight on… – Matteo Venuti

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The man behind the wheel: a short interview with Sim Racing System racers. Let’s know a little more of the guys that are always one place ahead.

Would you briefly introduce yourself for the site’s readers?
I’m an Italian boy that loves almost everything with an engine. Motorsport is my biggest passion, I follow F1 and MotoGP (I like to see SuperBike, Formula E, WRC, WEC, etc.). I’m really young (born in 2004), but I don’t think it’s a problem, even if I always race with people much older than me. In real life, I do archery.

What’s your racing wheel?
My steering wheel is a 4-years-old Logitech Driving Force GT.

Which are your favourite simracing games?
My favourite racing game, now, is Assetto Corsa, but I play also rFactor2, or MotoGP games.

Favourite car(s)?
My favourite car is the Ferrari 458 (Italia, Speciale, GT…).

Favourite track(s)?
My favourite track is Spa-Francorchamps.

Since when are you playing simracing games?
I’ve been playing racing games for about 5 years.

Which was your first racing game ever?
Need For Speed World.

How do you prepare for a race and/or a championship?
First of all, I do some laps around the track, then I start to do some hotlaps. Then I try to have a good race pace. It works, I won more than 80 races in this way 🙂

“Even after more than a year and an half, I always love to race on SRS.”

Are you good in setupping cars? 🙂
With some cars sometimes I can find a really good setup, but the main problem are the suspensions.

Do you race in real life too?
I’d like to race, but I never tried (for school, and also because here, in Friuli Venezia-Giulia, motorsport is really “undeveloped”, the closest big racetrack is Grobnik).

What you do like and what you don’t like in SRS races?
Even after more than a year and an half, I always love to race on SRS. The thing that I like the most is the relationships you can have with a lot of drivers. I don’t know how many friendly relationships I got from SRS. Also the races, I had my best races ever here. But I always hated one thing, those backmarkers that won’t let you pass. So many of them LOL.

“I’m pretty fast with most of the cars.”

Which are your strongest and your weakest points in racing?
This is an hard question 🙂 I think that my strongest point is that I’m pretty fast with most of the cars. In fact, at the end of the season 2020.6, I finished on the top 3 of a championship 12 times, 6 times in 2nd place and 6 in 3rd place. I did a 612 (maximum of the points) 2 times, but I had less races than the winner. And yes, I lost a weekly championship by 1 point. Ask Alex Nelson about this 🙂 But my weakest point is, I think, my “all or nothing” way to race sometimes. It happened few times that I tried an overtake and I spun on myself, or maybe I tried to push over the limit to catch the guy in front, and spun/went into the grass.

How would you define your racing style?
To be honest, I don’t know what’s my driving style. It’s different from car to car. I’m almost sure about one thing, in little or modern open-wheels cars I’m not really fast. So, like we say in bisiac (an Italian dialect) my driving style is “buta su che la va ben” (the translation could be “it goes well, in any way”).

Thanks to Matteo Venuti for kindly answering our questions!