2022 FIA ETCR Recap: Giovanni Venturini

One of two Italian drivers in the Italian Romeo Ferraris squad for the 2022 FIA ETCR eTouring Car World Cup, Giovanni Venturini was to face a steep learning curve in his first season of electric racing.

With a career that had traversed from single-seaters to sportscars, Venturini came into the electric series as a relative touring car novice, yet proved competitive against his esteemed rivals, not least team-mates Maxime Martin, Bruno Spengler and Luca Filippi.

“The level of the drivers is really high,” said Venturini at the top of the season.

“Having such strong team-mates is good as I can learn more from them. But from another side it is quite tricky for me because I have to put in a big effort to stay with them!”

A semi-final victory on his debut in the Infinite Reality RACE FR around the streets of Pau sent out a message, only for Giovanni to be forced out of the Super Final after the Giulia ETCR he shared with Filippi was too badly damaged in a crash.

Venturini bounced back next time out in Hungary, scoring one of his best results of the season with his run to seventh place in the final classification around the twisting Hungaroring marking a step forward for the 31-year old.

“Budapest because it was a good weekend where I showed a strong performance in qualifying and I was also good the final race on pace too,” he said after the event.

Thereafter, Venturini’s fortunes fluctuated as he got to grips with the high-performance, electric touring car formula

“The process is obviously different compared to a normal weekend because you have to learn the track and car so quickly,” he explained.

“There’s just two or three laps then you’re with the engineer trying to make improvements, so it’s very intense. When you don’t have a reference with the car or track from experience, and it’s pretty different in the ETCR cars to other ones, then you have to learn everything in three laps which is a big challenge for any driver!”

Notwithstanding this challenge, Venturini would at least go on to complete the season in style with a run to sixth position at the Sachsenring, representing his first top six of the year.

“The car was really good but the pace of the cars was really similar so it was tricky to gain position,” he after the finale. “It was good points for the fight with Hyundai Motorsport which was important and a good final for me to end the season.”