Driving in the Race of Love

The new SRS season is started as fast as a flash, and it’s been a busy and intense week for the 4Fun guys, not only hard at work with setups, liveries design and practice with the new cars and tracks, but also with organizing and planning the first edition of the SRS Team Championship with the Seat TCR Cupra by writing down the rules and recruiting the teams. The 4Funners could get everything in shape and at the right place in the end, although Gianluca Roncaglia struggled a lot on managing the points calculation system of the Championship due to his chronic difficulties with maths. “Yes, I always had problems with numbers, and that’s true as it’s true that 2 and 2 is 7… uh, sorry, 3”. In order to help Roncaglia follow the Championship’s progresses, his teammates gifted him an abacus and a “Four Operations for Dummies” book. Numbers don’t lie, right?

And the last one was a week of hard work especially for Dario Bucalo: being busy with designing the new team liveries, planning the Team Championship website pages and sending organization messages to the involved drivers, he was forced to join racing sessions while eating, having a shower (mounting of course wet tires) and once even while sleeping (he got his best placement in such occasion), so you will not be surprised to hear that his current results doesn’t show the past weeks brilliancies. Moreover, after experiencing a disconnection with two laps to go during a race, Bucalo decided to hang a horn-shaped pendant on his wheel to ward off the evil eye, harassing him since a while with server hangups, GPU crashes and so on. He also dressed like Punch, played mandolin, ate pizza – and add your favorite cliché on Italians here. “I saw the pieces of a broken mirror near a garbage can”, said Bucalo after taking a pause from singing ‘O sole mio “I gathered and put them back together with a can of glue, and now I want my seven years of wins!”. Don’t be superstitious, it brings bad luck!

In the past week Matteo Venuti himself had to face unusual hard times on the track, due to bad flickering issues of his brake pedal that made driving almost impossible. Showing his guts, Venuti decided to perform a race without braking, but being unsatisfied with the result – a 2^nd place – he tried also to slow down the car when necessary by vocal commands (“I’m a racer, so the car must obey my orders”, stated Venuti), before finding the definitive solution on installing Assetto Corsa in his father’s car, who consequently had to get to his workplace on foot. “Cars are for racers, I’m a racer, racers come first”, concluded Venuti while adjusting the seat and configuring the force feedback of wheels and pedals in front of his puzzled father.

And for a Venuti in trouble there is a struggling Omer Kinay– by the way, seeing them both facing difficulties in the same week indicates that an asteroid is over our heads and making his way to the Earth, so if we’re not here next week for our usual raceweek report, you already know the reason. Getting back from his touch-and-go exile, Kinay had anyway only one chance to join a race on Sunday, unfortunately ended with an unsatisfactory 9^th place. Since Sunday was Valentine’s Day, in order to join the race Kinay had to postpone his planned Valentine’s breakfast. “Yes, I was a little late for romantics”, said Kinay “but I made amends with a beautiful present for my wife – a full ‘Basics of Car Setup’ Internet course – and a hand-in-hand movie – well, not exactly a movie, a highlights collection of the ‘98-‘99 British Touring Car Championship seasons. What a beauty”. Well, love makes your heart beat faster – and also makes you faster!

And, a troubled week also for Gianluca Roncaglia, whose winning streak came to an end after 16 weeks since he was only able to achieve a 2^nd place as a best result on the Cupra series. “Well, winning is not that important to me, or at least this is what the psychologist I consulted after my nervous breakdown says”, declared an under heavy sedation Roncaglia. “So I decided to subscribe to a competition for the pure joy of it, without winning expectations. I only had to shave very well to deceive the promoters, since it’s an under 12 arm wrestling tournament.” The essential is not winning but taking part, so take part with us for the next week report!

Playlist of the week:

Chet Baker – My Funny Valentine (for Omer Kinay)

Beck – Loser (for Gianluca Roncaglia)

Kylie Minogue – I Should Be So Lucky (for Dario Bucalo)

Cat Stevens – Bad Brakes (for Matteo Venuti)