First steps into a race series...

[steveVR6]

Have been doing trackdays for the past 10 years or so, in between starting a family and a couple of career changes, but would like to get more involved in a race series but unsure what to start in. Have been looking into the Trackday Trophy series which looks a great starting ground with alot of different classes and types of cars, but looking into this years prices just the entry fee for all 8 rounds comes in at just over £3000 and thats without taking into consideration fuel, travelling and other expensives along the way. I know motorsport can be expensive but this comes in over my budget.
I would consider sprinting or any sort of timed events, but havn't really looked into this much. Travelling wouldn't really be a problem as the car would be trailered to the events. Would also be interested in any 2 drivers events as my brother in law would also share seat time aswell.

The car is a phase 1 Clio

Spec:
172 sport
de-cat
Upgrade manifold & exhaust
Upgrade ECU
Airfilter
Rear cage
Rensport suspension
Approx 180-200bhp

We have done a couple of trackdays with it and will use this year to hopefully get to grips and have abit of fun with it. I'm getting married later this year so any plans to start racing will be in 2015.


If anyone can point me in the right direction or any pointers to what would be a good starting point would be greatly appreciated

Cheers Steve

[Stuart]

My gut feeling is that sprinting would suit you two, presuming you mean Jamie, very well. It's great value, huge fun, not too hard on the car and really competitive. Door to door stuff is a different league price wise and anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't know how tight you are

[steveVR6]

Cheers Stu, have had a look into sprinting with Borough 19 Car Club. I know a few on here have taken part in this aswell as yourself i think. I'll sit down with Jamie and see if its something we can get into.

[Tk]

sprinting sounds like what you are looking for and is the cheapest form of motorsport really
ok not loads of seat time but you can double drive and the competition in times between the both of you would be good
licence is cheap and easy to get
msa club membership is also peanuts
events are roughly £70 from memory not sure how pricing works on double drives but imagine its just double fees
trophies end of every event (if you are fast enough)

i really need to get back into it myself

[jap.slapper]

I'd also suggest stock piling your tyres and other bits now and buying any future car related goodies beforehand because as soon as you're married generally the other half sees kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, conservatories, curtains and pretty much any other non car related stuff as priority for fund allocation.... in her eyes that latest set of 888's could have/should have been a nice new set of drapes you selfish bastid'!!

Good luck

[pablo]

Doing motorsport with a friend increases the fun factor but also massively increases the stress factor the longer you do it and can easily destroy a good friendship. Me and Alan were friends years before we started down this road and over the years it has really tested our friendship.

One of the main things for us is money and ownership. For example there are things on the car that i've bought, yet don't own and there are things that Alans bought that he doesn't own. I pay the insurance for the car as another example but this is more than offset by the hours of work that Alan puts in on the car.

The hardest thing about doing motorsport with a friend is talking to each other about money, costs, ownership etc.

Not wishing to put you off.

[Tk]

A shared car like yours and barts must be a nightmare I imagine
Something I don't think I could do
It was fine with old piere the pug 205 I shared ownership with as it was worth 20p and neither of us cared about it and was purely to abuse
A car that you care about / have developed and ploughed a lot of money into I'm not so sure

[Pike]

What happened to the MK2 Steve? Production GTI would have been a good shout.

[andycaca]

toyota sprint series, relaxed regulations compared to MSA events and cheap as chips
race licence costs £15 for the year, each round is approx £130

8 runs on the day, plus sighting and pracise laps. good friendly environment and great fun.

http://toyotasprint.com/tss/index.php?o ... &Itemid=54

[pjs65]

I'd second the TSS events as i did one last year and thought it a good event for a starter . Pete