Tips on starting road racing
 

Anybody point out any tips on how to get started on a real road racing carrer and iam not talking about time trials i want to race other cars. I also heard shifter kart racing a also a way to get recognized. Any advice would be a greatly appreciated. Thanks

What experience do you have?

If you have NO experience, getting started in autocross is a great thing to do. You'll learn all the basic car control that you can't easily learn on the track. (the overdriving mistakes that you can freely make at an autocross can often be very expensive on the track) Drivers with an autocross background usually make very good road racers.

Once you've got car control down, do a couple track events with any one of the clubs that do track events. And if "you got it", getting a license to go racing with NASA or SCCA should not be difficult.

Listen closely.

Sell everything you have. Buy a pickup truck and a shifter cart. Track every weekend and any other day you can. Give up partying and live, eat and breath racing. Good luck.

I wish somebody would have given me that advice 30 years ago.

That sounds pretty hardcore. My plan is to autocross for two years and at the end of the second year start with the occasional NASA HPDE event until I make it to HPDE3. But my goal isn't racing for a living, just having fun and becoming a better driver.

Within the last year, either Car and Driver or Grassroots Motorsports did an article on "how to have a career in autoracing." IF there was any accuracy to what they wrote, I'd say it'd be easier to win the Lottery...

doing it for fun is another story - all you need is a car (or cart), time, and money :)

Only if you want to make money at it. If you're willing to take a vow of poverty, it's merely challenging.

From what I gather, you need to be blessed with world-class driving potential and wealthy parents who put you in your first kart at the age of 4 and pay your way through the ranks of racing from there until you reach the top 2-3 tiers of each type of racing (stock car, sports car, endurance, open wheel, etc) that actually pay you something. It also helps if your rich parents were famous racing drivers themselves.

That first step is gonna be the most significant ;)

When it comes to top-tier competetive driving, the stuff you can make a career out of, just make sure to understand there are people BORN AND BRED to be race car drivers from all over the world. In no way do I think I could ever compete with these kinds of folks, and I'm thoroughly happy for anyone who has parents with enough money to give them that opportunity, I'm just going to try and have fun with club racing.

You can get into sports car racing at a young age (teens/20s) and get competetive and even win but even if you have the skill you still need the money to be able to do it all in the first place. I'm not any sort of veteran to any of this by any means, I just have been to the track a few times and know some people who have made a career out of racing and a guy who is trying to do it himself right now.


I will probably buy a spec Miata and trailer, borrow my brother's Ford Expedition on the weekends to go to the track and hand him over the keys to the M3 (I don't think he will turn it down). I would like to be able to get out on the track, get better and run 10/10ths, and then get wheel to wheel for a little competition which will make it more fun.

If you are already quite talented and can come up with the several thousand dollar cost, going to a big time race school like panoz, barber, bondurant, etc can get you into racing and if you are really good, get you noticed.

I would say its not necessarily that hard to get into competitive road race, just hard to be good at it and make money or do it on a high level. There are many lower classes such as the various NASA spec classes like spec e30 or spec miata. Generally, you will spen much mroe than you could possibly make in those classes

The biggest questions would be what is your experience/talant level, do you have money, and how serious and to what level are you going for?

It's never a bad idea to study those who did it before you.

Randy Pobst
RandyPobst.com

-Young guys are probably more relevant nowadays.

(Chip Herr)
ChipHerr.com | resume

(A.J. Allmendinger)
Champ Car > A.J. Allmendinger Bio

(Scott Speed)
Scott Speed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If anyone has more links to successful racecar driver bios, post 'em.