Rather like nightclubbing, the whole trackday experience has a finite lifecycle (in my mind at least). To start with, it’s an exhilarating experience; taking your car to levels of grip and lateral cornering forces you simply cannot replicate on the road. But, like clubbing, after a while, the drinks, the girls and the venues all slowly stop being as appealing. To keep the “buzz” you need to go to a bigger club, better music, prettier birds, and better cocktails.Â
I still adore trackdays. It’s just I want something else. Racing appeals.Â
The additional reason for the appeal of racing is fellow thinkcar blogger Carl and I are in a similar situation: trackdays are exclusive to us, in that they exclude our families. I’ve enough commitments with work to keep me away from my 3 girls but, to come home, prep the car and disappear off to North east lincolnshire for 48 hours once a month really grates. Competing in some form of low-level amateur racing would offer the opportunity to include the family in my hobby. Some would take this as being selfish but I see it as being creative
Anyway, this is blog #1. We are at “conceptual” stage ie: “What series to we want to compete in?” and, “What do we want out of it?”; is the first consideration.
A friend of mine and a couple of acquaintances race in the Lotus Elise Trophy - 2007 is it’s inaugural year and they are racing to packed grids. There’s a real appeal to me to racing in this series as:
a) I have an affiliation with the concept of the car(s)
b) I know a fair few of the drivers from Lotus-On-Track trackdays and…
c) I have experience of driving my own car against them at or near to, or (on rare occasions) “the limit”(ahem).
But, the grids are packed this year. And, it looks like VX’s will be excluded from the series next year, simply because of regulations. I could compete but, it would involve selling the VX, buying a S1 Elise and prepping that. I guess that’s still an option but, it would most probably exclude Carl from the experience as he doesn’t fit into an S1 Elise (his helmet protrudes - arf).
 So, for us both to get involved in a car share - after all I’m not ready or able, to commit to a whole series, I think the main criteria are:
1) Low cost of: car / entry and; running costs
2) Calendar
3) Is it more of a “gentlemen’s club racing” (favourable for dipping the toe in the water as a rookie) or a “dive down the inside and let’s have an accident” series (unfavourable)
The front runners for me so far are:
1) Production BMW Championship: this is now part of the “Classic Touring Car Racing Club” and has a good range of venues. Cost of acquiring a pre-raced car is anything from £5k to 10K and the series for a year will cost under £1,500 entry + tyres. The cars are all Pre-1993 318’s or 320’s; and the regs say you have to run control dampers, tyres and brakes, with no mods allowed to the engine. You can take as much weight out of the car as you like though, up to a point. I’ve made an enquiry to the organisers and there’s a couple of “rent-a-race” drives later in the year which sound interesting. Â
Venues:
Includes Donington, Thruxton (!), Mallory, Castle Combe, Silverstone.
http://www.classictouringcars.com/pages/dates.asp
Drivers Deal Pack:
http://www.e30motorsport.co.uk/e30motorsport/PBMWbulkdeals.pdf
Technical Regs
http://www.classictouringcars.com/pages/tech_regs/BMWSeloc2007RegsVer01.pdf
2) Mazda MX-5 racing - Similar to the BMW championship, this is designed as a low-cost series with a good range of venues, from mallory to Oulton, Snetterton and Brands. Cars are available for about £6K and are a lot of fun, what with semi slicks and rwd antics.
3) 750MC - this is a growing racing series in the UK based on the premise that one-make series are too expensive. So, the cost of entries are the same across the board, and they race different grids (single seaters to hot hatches) at a range of different venues - pretty much the same as above.
A good place to start seems like the ”Hot-Hatch” or a “Stock-hatch“ class. It looks interesting and VERY low cost - the hot hatch series has much more freedom on parts such as dampers and tuning - that’s good but that also means additoinal cost :-/
4) Lotus Elise Trophy - This is still an option but, it’s totally up to Carl as to whether he’s interested.
The advantage of a low-cost other series (such as PBMW) is it would still be ”competable” in whilst enabling me to keep the VX, which would enable me to do a couple of nurburgring trips every year, as well as the odd trackday. Keeping the VX is important for me at this stage, because I’m not sure whether racing is definitely for me yet (which is why the LOTRDC initially appealed - I could sell the car and for the same price, buy an S1 and put a Honda in it - see if I enjoyed the racing and if I didn’t I would still have a highly capable trackday car.
Next stages
Find out more about each series and the cost of competing. The very first thing we’ll both need is to get our ARDS licence as well. It would be interesting to hire a race car in PBMW but I guess we would need experience of it on track ahead of the event - cost may be prohibitive in this respect. Will update as we go along.
It goes without saying that, if anyone has any advice for Carl and I, I will be highly receptive and grateful
**Initial impressions: the Hot-Hatch 750MC series has a tiny grid (less than 10) - is it struggling? - Also the lap times look rather ominous: a 306GTi is lapping in the low 1min 40 sec bracket round Cadwell…..surely not? This is proper fast. Maybe they are doing a different circuit to the one I do.
The Mazda MX-5 racing series looks appealing: there’s x3 cars for sale at or around 6k and the grids look quite big, which is encouraging for next year.