…And Then There Were Four!

A new SRS season is started, and this is the first one with Matteo Venuti as a 4Fun pilot! After an intense weekend of livery designing, deep tracks learning and car taming, finally the impatient 4Fun pilots could make their engines roar, and with a packed schedule. Matteo Venuti raced in Mazda 787B Euro, Ginetta GT4, Lotus Evora, Audi TT Cup, Mazda MX5 Cup and maybe other seven or eight series, Dario Bucalo and Gianluca Roncaglia opted for Mazda MX5 and Audi TT, while Emperor Omerius watched some TV – for now.

Anyway, the week started with an unusual occurrence happened to Bucalo. He buyed a wheel stand online, but instead of the purchased product he received a very large package containing a full racing rig with a deluxe seat [this is really happened; Editor’s note]. Puzzled, Bucalo asked himself what to do, since he had no room for such a large racing post, and decided, after many emails and phone calls to the customer services in four different languages, to send back the rig in order to have his chosen wheel stand. He received then an even larger pack, containing a washing machine. To avoid the risk of receive a Boeing 747 on getting further, Bucalo kept the washing machine with a sad smile and now uses the washing machine door as a wheel. Well, he likes clean racing for sure! Anyway, Bucalo also decided to prosecute: he won the cause and was indemnified being nominated the new CEO of Amazon. Congratulations, Mr. Bucalo!

Roncaglia and Bucalo also decided to visit Emperor Omerius in his exile residence in Panama, and they had all together a funny practice session in the Panama online server, making a lot of head to head laps with the Audi TT on the Chang track. “Well, it was challenging, the guys are getting tougher and hard to beat”, said Omerius after wearing off his bandage, since he drove blindfolded. “It was also fun, but trust me, I really don’t miss racing”, continued Omerius before starting to sigh and sob. Hold on, Emperor Omerius, you’ll be back soon!

Anyway, back to racing report with the astounding results of Matteo Venuti, that could get six podiums with a 1st place with the Mazda 787B in Imola (thanks also to a good pit strategy in this 1 hour long race) and at Kyalami in the Lotus Evora series, a 2nd place with Audi TT (Chang) and Mazda MX5 (Brands Hatch) and a 3rd in the Donington’s race of the Ginetta GT4 series too, plus good placements in maybe 34 other races. “Well, this week I was a little busy and couldn’t race a lot”, declared Venuti, “but I’m pretty satisfied with this results. The opponents are tough, so I decided during races to switch sometimes to 2nd gear instead of lapping always on 1st gear as I usually do. Maybe I will also need the 3rd gear in the future”. Really a heck of a racedriver!

A good week also for Dario Bucalo, that holding firmly his washing machine door and despite his many obligations as CEO of Amazon that didn’t allow him to have long practice sessions could get a remarkable 4th place with the Mazda MX5 and a 3rd place with the Audi before centrifuging his laundry. Instead, Gianluca Roncaglia had to face a tough race week start. Fully immersed in tracks and cars learning and struggling with setup issues (he didn’t map correctly the wheel button for P2P in the Audi and repeatedly activated the windscreen wiper in the straights instead of adding power to the car), he almost forgot to race until the end of the week. Panicked, Roncaglia asked Venuti to drive in his place, but Venuti kindly declined the offer since he had to race in Isotta Fraschini, DeLorean and some Corvette XYZ series among others. When the going gets tough the tough gets going, so Roncaglia could only collect a disappointing 4th place in the Mazda series, before confirming himself “King of Sunday Mornings” (according to Bucalo’s definition) getting two wins with the Audi TT. Roncaglia consequently wrote then a petition to SRS administrators in order to ask that SRS races can only take place on Sundays. Will his request be accomodated? Stay tuned to read for more!