By: Fernanda

Fernanda — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:14:14 +0000

As said above, the old saying goes To make a small fortnue in racing, start with a large one. I ran 3 seasons in SCCA Club Racing’s Formula Continental and did some US F2000 races as well, and ran a FABCAR Porsche 911 in some endurance events. I don’t even want to mention what that cost. The lesson I learned was that TV coverage of a series is gold. US F2000 lost their coverage in 2002, and it is nearly impossible to get sponsors interested in a series when they wont see their’ car on TV. Sponsorship is advertising, and if the ad isn’t seen it’s not effective. You will have to start out in karts or an inexpensive car in SCCA (or NASA) paying your own way until you can convince sponsors you can win and get them noticed. Formula Vee (like Steven) is a great class to start out in, as is Spec RX-7, Spec Miata, or Spec Racer Ford. The latter is a sports racer class that is fairly inexpensive (remember, this is an expensive sport/hobby all things are relative when I say inexpensive). Do a season or two in one of these, then try to move up to FC, F1000, or similar, or maybe T1/T2 or similar if you want to go touring car/GT racing later. Build seat time and experience, and build your resume and gain exposure. You will almost never find sponsorship in club racing, unless you have family or friends who throw a little help your way. Once you can consistently place in the top three and have some wins, you can move to trying to rent a seat in a car in one of the pro series. Grand Am and Speed World Challenge offer good programs with TV coverage; these are TC/GT series. If you want to go open wheel then the Formula Mazdas are THE way to go. Great package and great competition. You will be renting a seat (car) for the season (or maybe a few one-off races if the budget requires) from a team who owns and maintains the car, providing track support and a crew for you. This can run from $ 100k a season up to $ 500k and above depending on the series, the car, and which team (read: how competitive they are). To raise this money, you usually will need sponsors. You contract with a sponsor (or sponsors) to pay you $ X dollars in return for the exposure they will receive (in effect, you are selling them advertising to a key demographic). You are at this point a professional driver, and racing is now your job. To get such a highly sought after job, you will need a powerful resume, full of a greater amount of and higher-quality experience than others who are basically applying for the same job. You have to look the part, sound intelligent, and be someone the company trusts with their image, since you will become a spokesman and representative for them. Just like any job, you have to always strive to be the best around, and continually improve, because if you don’t someone else will. It is a lot of hard work and sacrifice, but if you truly want to race at a high level as a career, it will be completely worth it in the end.Oh, and you don’t HAVE to be under 25. It would really, really help, but if you want it bad enough the extra years you have driven street cars and experienced different things in traffic will at least help some, and the additional maturity can help shorten the learning curve. Search Elliott Forbes-Robinson and you’ll see someone who can still get into a competitive car and compete at the pinnacle of sportscar racing, so there’s not necessarily an expiration date. I’m 33 and having recovered from a broken back am now trying to get back into a car. But the younger you start, the more years you can compete, and seat time racing other cars is the only way you can gain experience and improve.

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By: Fernanda