Geek, rebooted

On a normal Thursday, Greger Huttu sits in the blue glow of a computer screen, in his bedroom in the teeny town of Vaasa on the west coast of Finland. In the afternoons, he joins his fisherman father to land a catch of perch netted from Arctic waters. But not today. Instead, he’s wedged into the cockpit of a single-seater race car, in the boiling heat of Road Atlanta raceway, Georgia. He’s never driven anything like this before - his regular drive is an old Ford Sierra - yet an empty track awaits him, a full race team is at his service and he has full permission to drive as fast as he pleases. Slippery fish suddenly seem a million miles away.

Words: Dan Read
Photography: Daniel Byrne

This article was originally published in the November issue of Top Gear magazine

We’ll soon find out. Under the searing morning sun in Atlanta, Greger squeezes into his car, a Star Mazda racer provided by the Andersen Racing team. The Mazda is a slicks’n’wings single-seater powered by the same rotary engine as the RX-8. It weighs just 607kg, has 260bhp, a six-speed sequential ‘box and adjustable wings. And it’s really, seriously quick - as quick as a GT car around some circuits.

In other words, it’s a proper car that needs to be driven in the sweet spot where the tyres and aero do their thing. If our thinking is right, Greger could be the man to put it there. Because iRacing’s physics programme is so accurate, he already knows the car well - the way it steers, the way it grips, even the way it sounds and every tiny intricacy of its set-up, from wing angles to suspension bump and rebound rates - and he’s lapped this track thousands of times online.

After one installation lap to check everything’s working, he starts his first flyer. All eyes turn to the final corner, a swooping downhill-right with a vicious wall on the outside, ready to collect understeery mishaps. Here comes Greger. The engine revs high and hard and his downshifts sound perfectly matched. Then he comes into sight and, to the sound of many sucked teeth, absolutely bloody nails it through the bend, throttle balanced, car planted. His only hiccup is a late upshift, that has the rotary engine blatting off its limiter. “Time to crank up the revs,” says Alan. “He’s quick.”

The air temperature is 34 degrees; in the cockpit, it’s probably closer to 45. It’s just too extreme for the increasingly sickly looking bloke from the Arctic. Then there’s the g-forces. Road Atlanta is a bucking, weaving, undulating place, where your tummy floats over crests, then smashes into your intestines through compressions. This is another first for Greger. He’s never been on a rollercoaster, or even in a fast road car. In fact, the quickest he’s ever been was on the flight over here, which also happened to be his first plane ride. Which would explain why, as he hurtles down the back straight at 100mph, he throws up, right inside his helmet. When he rolls into the pits, little flecks of sick roll down his visor and his overalls are soggy around the neck.

On lap 15, he has to admit defeat. He’s desperate to drive on, but it’s physically impossible. It’s that hunger for racing that forms a vital part of a driver’s mindset. And Greger’s got it. He’s shown fearlessness, aggression and - most importantly - natural speed. And by not crashing, he’s earned the respect of his team. Not bad for a bloke who’s only ever raced in the digital world. Somehow, virtual racing has unlocked something in his brain that allows him to drive like a demon. It’s something you’re born with, but without a test-bed like iRacing, you might never know you have.

You don’t have to be a masterful sim champ like Greger to have a crack at single-seaters. The chaps at the Skip Barber race school can help you on your way, starting with basics and moving through the Toolbox of Driving Excellence until the car goes where you want it, when you want it, at the correct speed. Not upside down on fire.
 
They have schools at over 20 race tracks in the States, so you’ll need some pocket money for a flight over, but it’ll be worth it. The instructors are world-class, cherry-picked from all sorts of motorsport and with hundreds of years of experience between them. There are lots of courses to choose from, and plenty of cars, including the Lexus IS-F, Lotus Exige, Porsche 911 and Mazda MX-5.