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Back to Basics
I believe there may be two reasons why junior single seater series are so expensive:
a) cars tend to be unnecessarily complex and so spares are expensive
b) most rely on 'teams' to run the cars (who have many mouths to feed)
This is not what most young drivers need, or can afford.
Talk about going back to FF days or perhaps looking at M/C engines?
Well, Ralph Firman and David Baldwin recently came out of retirement to build a space frame chassis that works extremely well.
We fit it with a lightweight, high revving and CHEAP Suzuki GSXR 1000cc engine and restrict it to 150bhp. Chain drive. F3 rubber.
The young driver learns to drive a car with three pedals and a gear lever - no frills. We run all the cars with one team in identical setup - so no excuses or moaning and more importantly, 'wallet based achievement'. The best driver on the day wins.
Its cheap and extremely effective.
We use a top driver coach (Andy Pardoe) to work with all the drivers (looking at output from an AIM logger and a Go-Pro camera in each car). The drivers develop very quickly - as all the 'bull' stops.
The result? Our first 'suck it and see season' with 14 x 20 minute races, including tires for 34,000 pounds all in. As an organizer I can tell you this is about our cost.
Of course we are entitled to make a margin so next season we will charge more but still less than 47,000 pounds. If the winter gets too cold, jump on a flight to Dubai and join us! Its called Formula Gulf 1000.
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