Interview with Luca Pirri, FIA GT3 Italian driver living in Shanghai

R: Yes, is physically and mentally very tiring and I need to schedule my flights to Europe together with my business meetings in order to maximize my stay in Europe.

My ideal schedule is to fly to Europe on Monday so that Tuesday and Wednesday I can meet clients while I try to overcome my jet lag and Thursday I fly or drive to the race venues, usually It takes more than a few days to recover from the jet lag therefore when we have sessions or races in the late afternoon I tend to be quite sleepy!

R: The Olympic Games have brought a lot of attention to china and have been to now a big showcase for the Chinese to show what they are capable to do in terms of organization and of planning, surely we felt a little under a Big Brother controlling all our moves, mails and calls in the last months prior to the event.

Local Authorities have been very strict and did not want to have unexpected surprises and have made the Olympics better to see than to live. I could not go and see the Olympics as I am now in Bali, surfing and waiting for my child to be born (here in Bali...) today.

R: In my opinion Motorsport is a very democratic and you can take it as a hobby or very professionally and still enjoy it.Personally since I can’t do any testing or racing during the season, I try to overcome the lack of training on track by training as a professional, making long cardiovascular trainings for the stamina alternating them with some circuit training with light weights.

I believe the professional athletes training from the Olympics have the big advantage of having a lot of time to train ahead of one single event while car racing forces you to be fit and ready to compete for most of the year.

R: Chinese with the increased personal wealth are starting to love more and more cars especially fast ones, and the GT are now reaching the top of the list of the desired toys for boys. Despite the raising interest in cars motorsport and specifically GT racing is still far from being renowned even though I managed to get some local exposure on magazines.

It is my belief that China is missing a SRO that can organise quality events with adequate media coverage, but for sure the potential is enormous, and honestly I am tired to take flights to Europe and can’t wait to stay in China to race.

R: This season I wanted to go for a new challenge, I wanted to prove myself that now in GT3 you can win with most of the cars of the lot therefore I decided to go for the Matech Ford GT40, the team went through a huge restructuring of the cars and of the organisation and we were unlucky with our car at the beginning of the season.

The championship is very short and you need to be very regular and score points at every venue in order to win the championship but despite the huge gap with the leaders we are now confident on our car and on the team performance and we are ready to give battle for the second part of the season, last year we won in Brno and Dubai and this year we want nothing less.

-SRO - also photo