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Living in the countryside, visiting the zoo and asado: Nico Varrone’s Hometown Tour
Nico Varrone has been racing in Europe for the last few years but his heart will always be at home as he talks about his hometown, Ingeniero Maschwitz.
The Van Amersfoort Racing driver takes us on a tour around the Argentinian town, giving us insight into the people, the food, the places to visit and much more.
“I grew up in Ingeniero Maschwitz, in Argentina. It's 40, 45 kilometres away from the city centre in Buenos Aires, the capital city.
“It's a small town, but it's getting bigger. I went to the same school there, and it's a bit more relaxed, there’s not so much chaos, it’s more like a countryside.
“For me it's my favourite place in the world. I have all my friends there, and all the best memories of my life are there. I love Maschwitz, I love going back there and seeing my friends and hanging out. It's my place.
“It's a small city, but it's grown a lot in the last few years. So we're talking about 20,000 people. It’s quite small but it's relaxed and I love going back.
“Hopefully by the end of the year I can go back because normally I try to go quite often. I really like to go there maybe two, three times a year, sometimes four times. But this year will be a bit different, we'll be a bit busier.
“When I go back, I just hang out with my friends, playing football. There's plenty of fields there, so we do a lot of sports. But we just hang out and do what you would normally do with your friends.
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“You can also go to a friend's house and hang out there, again just doing normal stuff. We also have some nice places where you can just go for a walk, especially after school.
“It's such a small town that we remember when McDonald's opened for the first time. So at least once a week we would just go walking to McDonald's.
“It was the thing you know, it was like ‘Wow, there's McDonald's in the city’. It was really fun.
“Actually, we also have a zoo, a really nice zoo, called the Temaikèn which I think is one of the highlights of the city, it is really nice. It's pretty, it’s always new, so it's cool.
“You can also go out one night in Maschwitz, but again there's not a lot to do.
“It's a really chill town, but for sure we can go to the capital city where there are a lot of things to do. Argentina in general is a great place with so many beautiful places that you cannot go for a week.
“You need to go for two or three weeks to really know the country because we have everything, so you just have to travel the whole country and you will find many beautiful places.
“The food is also the best in the world. We have everything, but the steak is really good, that's our main dish. We call it Asado. So every Sunday, we just put it on the grill and we will do a barbecue.
“It's just a routine, every Sunday at lunch we will hang out with all the family and just have lunch, eating meat. It’s the best.
“I grew up with race cars in the workshop. My family comes from racing, my dad and my mom used to race. My aunt also, my grandfather as well. So it’s a racing family and when I was born, my dad was racing still, and he had a racing team. So that's how it came by.
“When your family is all in there, you are born into it – playing with cars and watching the races, and the F1 races. That's how it really, really started, and the passion has been there since I was really, really young. I just wanted to be always a racing driver.”