I am planning on starting a Karting championship, in the UK, that will offer amazing prizes to the most talented drivers (
£15,000! for the champion).
In this thread, I will briefly outline the championship and I will try to answer some of the questions you may be thinking of, but if you have an unanswered question, feel free to leave a comment to ask me.
If you are interested, there is more information and contact information on the website at:
www.racingprogressionseries.com
Below are some questions that you may want answering;
Why have you chosen this prize structure?
I made the decision on the prize structure, because I felt that the champion would need to have a substantial prize to help them to kick-start their racing career, hence the
£15,000 top prize.
However, I knew I couldn't get away from the fact that motorsport is unpredictable, so if a driver was capable of being in the title fight, but had a very unfortunate/unlucky season, then they shouldn't walk away empty handed, so I decided that there should also be prizes of
£5,000 for 2nd place,
£2,500 for 3rd place, with the prizes continuing to drop in value right down to 10th place (see the website for full prize structure).
Why do I plan on running the 8 rounds as 4 double-header rounds?
The answer to this one is fairly simple - drivers' expenses. I don't want the drivers to be forced to spend too much money on transport, accomodation etc. in order to take part in the championship, so I felt that running 2 rounds on the same day was the best solution. However, the calander isn't confirmed yet, and therefore the circuits' scheduling etc. may make double-headers difficult to achieve.
Why did you choose rental karts over owner/driver?
There are several reasons for this, and I have listed them below;
- Cost - Owner/driver racing requires you to buy a kart, pay for transport and storage and so on... Then, in order to be competitive, it is likely that you will need to pay for team support - all of these costs aren't necessary for our championship.
- Accessibility - The plan of this championship is to determine the most talented driver, not just the most talented driver who happens to own a 'Senior Rotax' or 'Senior TKM' - rental karts are accessible to all racers.
- Fairness - In an ideal world, all the karts would be equal, but I wont pretend this is true. However, in owner/driver racing, if you have a bad kart, you are stuck with that for the entire season. Whereas with our championship, there will be 8 rounds, each with 3 races and you will likely have a different kart for each race, and therefore it is hoped that any kart inequalities will even themselves out over the season.
- In addition to what was mentioned above with regards to fairness, the championship totals will include a DROPPED ROUND to cover against scenarios such as having a bad kart, and as mentioned above, the prize structure means you won't walk away empty handed even if you have a very unlucky season.