Close Up: Greger Huttu

November 27, 2009

As our most successful member as well as the most successful sim-racing driver around, Greger has his fair share of fans. The Finnish maestro took time to answer a few questions.

* What do you do in real life?

I sleep as much as possible. When I'm not sleeping I eat. Oh, and between those activities I do some web programming and stuff.

* What is you favourite form of motorracing?

I like open wheel road course racing the most. CART/Champ Car was my favourite series along with F1. Nowadays I watch F1/GP2 and a few other series too. I usually watch some NASCAR too but I don't think I've ever sat through an entire race, they're too long!

* Who are you real life favorite drivers?

I'm not really a fan of any driver but in F1 I'd say Räikkönen. Vettel seems pretty cool too. In other series I don't really have many favourite drivers, although it was cool to see Franchitti win the IRL championship and I'm hoping guys like Justin Wilson and Will Power will do well in the future.

* How did you get into sim racing?

I wasn't really interested in racing sims or racing in general until I read a review of Crammond's F1GP in a magazine. It got something like 98 points so I had to get it and that got me hooked into racing games and real racing (F1) as well. I guess sim racing started properly for me with GPL when I got my first wheel and started racing online.

* What kind of sim racing car do you like to drive?

I prefer open wheel cars, the more powerful ones. As long as a car is pretty nimble and doesn't weigh more than a tank, I like it. Generally the open wheel cars fall in that category, but I'd like to see GTP cars or even the modern prototype cars in iRacing.

* Whats your favorite track?

Nordschleife. From the more normal tracks, I like tracks like Spa, Suzuka, Road America, VIR, Barber and so on.

* Can you remember your first online race and what happened?

Not really, but I remember a moment from one of the early GPL races I did. It was at Watkins Glen and Wolfgang Wöger was also in that race. He was faster than me but crashed out trying to overtake me!

* You are known as a GPL god, what attracted you to GPL and which is your favourite car?

I think the first time I saw something about GPL was a couple of videos, one with a car tumbling over and over and another where a couple of cars were battling at Monza. The way the cars moved around looked so much better than anything else back then and trying out the demo confirmed my feelings.

Every car in GPL had its own characteristics so it was really nice in that way and I enjoyed driving every one of them (except the Honda/Murasama)! I guess my favourite was the Lotus because it was pretty nimble and fast.

* Can you remember your greatest race, what happened?

There have been a lot of really cool races so I don't have one that would be the greatest. I've had a few races where I've been able to pass for the lead on the last lap, those are always fun.

* Where will sim racing be in 5 years?

For me personally, I don't see any sim replacing iRacing so if I'm still around sim racing I'll probably be there! It'll be interesting to see how it will develop with the World Championships and everything else. There could be more sponsoring etc. involved but we'll see.

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