I hesitate to begin this blog post in case tempt fate...but having spent the past couple of years racing virtually in GT Academy, I have decided that in 2014 I am going to venture back out into the real world and go racing for real again.
It won't be the first time I have taken to the track; I entered a few Centurion Challenge endurance races in 2004 in my Sylva having made my track debut at Croft in a Caterham Supersport. I also competed in the UK Street Racer drag racing series in the Sylva, a Camaro Z/28, and a Corvette Z06 between 2000 and 2008.
However, since the advent of GT Academy, I have been immersed in online racing. Apart from being amazingly good practice, it is certainly a lot safer and cheaper than the real thing, and the prizes aren't bad either! As a simulator Gran Turismo is not perfect, but with a steering wheel and pedals it is still an excellent learning tool for people of any experience level and will certainly help improve your driving skills.
Going racing is something that people often find rather bewildering, and I hope that by following this blog that novices looking to start racing will find it helpful; more experienced racers might at least be able to laugh at my mistakes!! What I want to share is how I have gone about choosing the championship to run in, and why, and assuming that I avoid any disasters and actually make it to the track, the blog will become a sort of diary of my racing season too. The reason I am beginning this blog now is because the first step before any racing can happen was taken today, with the delivery of a pile of breeze blocks and some railway sleepers.
Why Go Racing?
I have done quite a few track days in my time but as each event is a one off thing, then unless you go with some friends you there isn't the same sort of camaraderie that you get when travelling around and racing in a championship with and against the same group of people. Also, while track days are great fun they are just as expensive as a race entry fee and sometimes more so. Crash damage and general wear and tear at a track day can cost just as much as racing. Furthermore, on a track day you are not able to time yourself, so you never really know how well you are doing, it is kind of meaningless apart from the fun aspect, and you miss out on the fantastic buzz of a 20 way drag race that you get at the start of each race!! Of course, winning any race is satisfaction in itself, but championship success is recorded in history, and that could mean that you help further your favourite marque, and may even be noticed by a professional team. You won't get that at a track day.
The next thing to do is decide which series to race in, which first of all depends on the car which you will be racing. For me, I had a choice between my Sylva Fury, a Zip-Komet K88 classic kart, and the car I designed myself, the Veeteor LSR. The Veeteor still needs paint, while the Zip kart and the Sylva are both pretty much ready, so it came down to a choice between those two. Although racing a kart is as much fun as any car, I have an urge to race a car so the Sylva it is.
Choosing a Club & Championship
To obtain your racing licence, you need to join an MSA certified club, and so it makes sense to join the club that organises the racing series you wish to enter. After a lot of searching there is only one racing series I can really enter - the 750 Motor Club's Sport Specials championship. As the name suggests, this is a series for sports cars and specials, and is inhabited by an eclectic variety of kit cars and tuned Caterham's. Not for the faint hearted, but as it allows some ingenuity and variety, is club racing at its best.
The series frequents 7 different circuits so you will need to set aside 7 long weekends and convince the other half that this will make a better holiday than any beach!! That done, think about how far it is to get to each circuit and back, how much it will cost in fuel and trailer hire to get to each event, how much fuel and tyres you will use in each race, how much it will cost to stay in a B&B or in a tent, how much food over each weekend will cost. Including the cost of getting a licence, I have figured out that a season should cost in the region of £5,000-£6,000 assuming no major breakages or crash damage. If anyone would like a copy of the spreadsheet I have created to calculate a budget, please email me at [email protected]
The Sport Specials championship is divided into various classes - the 750MC has come up with a maximum power to weight ratio for Class C which my car fits within of 340bhp per ton. This includes the driver and their safety equipment, so with my car's mass being 625kgs and me being about 95kgs, and the car producing 240bhp, it comes in at 338bhp/ton - pretty close to the limit and so the car should be competitive if well prepared and driven.
The Racing Licence
Before any racing can be done, you need to join a club, and get a racing licence. My National B racing licence expired a while ago; if like me you leave it too long, you have to start from the beginning again and apply as if it is your first time. For speed events where you race against the clock (Sprints, Hillclimbs, Drag Racing) you can simply send off some money to the MSA and buy a Go Racing pack (which includes the Blue Rule Book and information on clubs and championships) as well as your licence, but for any kind of circuit racing you need to do an ARDS test first. These days you can do your licence application online which is quicker and easier. I will wait until 2014 to do my ARDS test again as the MSA licence runs for a year from 1st January each year so there is no sense in sending off for it early. You also need a doctors certificate to prove you are in reasonable health. The ARDS test, Doctors Certificate, and Licence fee all cost money; budget on about 65 quid for the Go Racing Pack, 60 for a National B Licence, 50 for a doctors certificate, and 250 for the ARDS test. If you haven't already got a lid and fireproof suit, buy those as well, and pay as much as you value your head & not being burnt to a crisp.
The Race Car
The car I will be running is my Sylva Fury XE, which was originally my only road car and was built in 1996 by Fisher Sportscars, who had bought the rights to build and sell the Fury from Sylva Autokits. The Fury is now marketed by Fury Sportscars. It was great for driving under the barriers in car parks and even ventured to France for the Laon Historique before I started drag racing it. Since then it has been rebuilt and turned into a full race car, having removed it's windscreen and passenger seat and fitted an aeroscreen, fire extinguisher, and full roll cage. My Fury has always run a 2 litre Cosworth XE otherwise known as the Vauxhall "red top", and it's fitted with MBE ignition, a pair of barking Weber 45 DCOEs, SBD airbox, and QED cams for about 240 bhp or 120bhp per litre. Backed up with a Caterham 6 speed gearbox and a English LSD with a ridiculously short 4.4:1 final drive ratio, you need to change gear like Ronnie Sox as it rips through each gear without any drop off in acceleration but tops out at probably about 100mph. That should be fine for most circuits but on circuits with a long straight such as Snetterton it will run into the rev limiter for sure. With a 3.89:1 diff it will do about 140 or so but with slightly less rampant acceleration so maybe I will swap out the crown wheel and pinion at some point. I think the best time on the drag strip it ever recorded was a 12.1 @ about 110mph, which is not too shabby, but it corners even better with the superb Sylva rocker arm suspension and offset engine position that with a driver on board provides excellent corner weight balance.
Now, before any racing can be done, you need to make sure your car works properly, and so I need to give it a good service before I take it on a track. But before I can do that, I need to get it out of my garage, which isn't as easy as it sounds. There is somewhat of a slope in my garage and there is also a ridge on the threshold, which is perfectly placed to catch on the bell housing if I were to try and drive the car out. So before I can get the car out the garage, I need to modify the garage itself!
Hence the railway sleepers and breeze blocks. They will form a ramp so that the car can drive in and out flat which will also allow me to get underneath the car more easily, and given how low it is, will also make it easier to work on the engine bay while standing up. More on the ramp build soon. In the New Year, I will post on the ARDS test, car preparation, and fingers crossed, a season of racing!
Be seeing you.
It won't be the first time I have taken to the track; I entered a few Centurion Challenge endurance races in 2004 in my Sylva having made my track debut at Croft in a Caterham Supersport. I also competed in the UK Street Racer drag racing series in the Sylva, a Camaro Z/28, and a Corvette Z06 between 2000 and 2008.
However, since the advent of GT Academy, I have been immersed in online racing. Apart from being amazingly good practice, it is certainly a lot safer and cheaper than the real thing, and the prizes aren't bad either! As a simulator Gran Turismo is not perfect, but with a steering wheel and pedals it is still an excellent learning tool for people of any experience level and will certainly help improve your driving skills.
Going racing is something that people often find rather bewildering, and I hope that by following this blog that novices looking to start racing will find it helpful; more experienced racers might at least be able to laugh at my mistakes!! What I want to share is how I have gone about choosing the championship to run in, and why, and assuming that I avoid any disasters and actually make it to the track, the blog will become a sort of diary of my racing season too. The reason I am beginning this blog now is because the first step before any racing can happen was taken today, with the delivery of a pile of breeze blocks and some railway sleepers.
Why Go Racing?
I have done quite a few track days in my time but as each event is a one off thing, then unless you go with some friends you there isn't the same sort of camaraderie that you get when travelling around and racing in a championship with and against the same group of people. Also, while track days are great fun they are just as expensive as a race entry fee and sometimes more so. Crash damage and general wear and tear at a track day can cost just as much as racing. Furthermore, on a track day you are not able to time yourself, so you never really know how well you are doing, it is kind of meaningless apart from the fun aspect, and you miss out on the fantastic buzz of a 20 way drag race that you get at the start of each race!! Of course, winning any race is satisfaction in itself, but championship success is recorded in history, and that could mean that you help further your favourite marque, and may even be noticed by a professional team. You won't get that at a track day.
The next thing to do is decide which series to race in, which first of all depends on the car which you will be racing. For me, I had a choice between my Sylva Fury, a Zip-Komet K88 classic kart, and the car I designed myself, the Veeteor LSR. The Veeteor still needs paint, while the Zip kart and the Sylva are both pretty much ready, so it came down to a choice between those two. Although racing a kart is as much fun as any car, I have an urge to race a car so the Sylva it is.
Choosing a Club & Championship
To obtain your racing licence, you need to join an MSA certified club, and so it makes sense to join the club that organises the racing series you wish to enter. After a lot of searching there is only one racing series I can really enter - the 750 Motor Club's Sport Specials championship. As the name suggests, this is a series for sports cars and specials, and is inhabited by an eclectic variety of kit cars and tuned Caterham's. Not for the faint hearted, but as it allows some ingenuity and variety, is club racing at its best.
The series frequents 7 different circuits so you will need to set aside 7 long weekends and convince the other half that this will make a better holiday than any beach!! That done, think about how far it is to get to each circuit and back, how much it will cost in fuel and trailer hire to get to each event, how much fuel and tyres you will use in each race, how much it will cost to stay in a B&B or in a tent, how much food over each weekend will cost. Including the cost of getting a licence, I have figured out that a season should cost in the region of £5,000-£6,000 assuming no major breakages or crash damage. If anyone would like a copy of the spreadsheet I have created to calculate a budget, please email me at [email protected]
The Sport Specials championship is divided into various classes - the 750MC has come up with a maximum power to weight ratio for Class C which my car fits within of 340bhp per ton. This includes the driver and their safety equipment, so with my car's mass being 625kgs and me being about 95kgs, and the car producing 240bhp, it comes in at 338bhp/ton - pretty close to the limit and so the car should be competitive if well prepared and driven.
The Racing Licence
Before any racing can be done, you need to join a club, and get a racing licence. My National B racing licence expired a while ago; if like me you leave it too long, you have to start from the beginning again and apply as if it is your first time. For speed events where you race against the clock (Sprints, Hillclimbs, Drag Racing) you can simply send off some money to the MSA and buy a Go Racing pack (which includes the Blue Rule Book and information on clubs and championships) as well as your licence, but for any kind of circuit racing you need to do an ARDS test first. These days you can do your licence application online which is quicker and easier. I will wait until 2014 to do my ARDS test again as the MSA licence runs for a year from 1st January each year so there is no sense in sending off for it early. You also need a doctors certificate to prove you are in reasonable health. The ARDS test, Doctors Certificate, and Licence fee all cost money; budget on about 65 quid for the Go Racing Pack, 60 for a National B Licence, 50 for a doctors certificate, and 250 for the ARDS test. If you haven't already got a lid and fireproof suit, buy those as well, and pay as much as you value your head & not being burnt to a crisp.
The Race Car
The car I will be running is my Sylva Fury XE, which was originally my only road car and was built in 1996 by Fisher Sportscars, who had bought the rights to build and sell the Fury from Sylva Autokits. The Fury is now marketed by Fury Sportscars. It was great for driving under the barriers in car parks and even ventured to France for the Laon Historique before I started drag racing it. Since then it has been rebuilt and turned into a full race car, having removed it's windscreen and passenger seat and fitted an aeroscreen, fire extinguisher, and full roll cage. My Fury has always run a 2 litre Cosworth XE otherwise known as the Vauxhall "red top", and it's fitted with MBE ignition, a pair of barking Weber 45 DCOEs, SBD airbox, and QED cams for about 240 bhp or 120bhp per litre. Backed up with a Caterham 6 speed gearbox and a English LSD with a ridiculously short 4.4:1 final drive ratio, you need to change gear like Ronnie Sox as it rips through each gear without any drop off in acceleration but tops out at probably about 100mph. That should be fine for most circuits but on circuits with a long straight such as Snetterton it will run into the rev limiter for sure. With a 3.89:1 diff it will do about 140 or so but with slightly less rampant acceleration so maybe I will swap out the crown wheel and pinion at some point. I think the best time on the drag strip it ever recorded was a 12.1 @ about 110mph, which is not too shabby, but it corners even better with the superb Sylva rocker arm suspension and offset engine position that with a driver on board provides excellent corner weight balance.
Now, before any racing can be done, you need to make sure your car works properly, and so I need to give it a good service before I take it on a track. But before I can do that, I need to get it out of my garage, which isn't as easy as it sounds. There is somewhat of a slope in my garage and there is also a ridge on the threshold, which is perfectly placed to catch on the bell housing if I were to try and drive the car out. So before I can get the car out the garage, I need to modify the garage itself!
Hence the railway sleepers and breeze blocks. They will form a ramp so that the car can drive in and out flat which will also allow me to get underneath the car more easily, and given how low it is, will also make it easier to work on the engine bay while standing up. More on the ramp build soon. In the New Year, I will post on the ARDS test, car preparation, and fingers crossed, a season of racing!
Be seeing you.
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