In regards to "why Pro Karts". I've raced club level Pro Karts for a long time, on and off, and I very much enjoy the unique challenges of endurance racing. The main reason I want to do the Nationals though is to compete at the highest level of Pro Karts that are available so that I can make a stab at winning the Le Mans race.
I may never make it as a professional racing driver, but i'll have failed a lifes ambition if I dont at least try to win the Pro Kart Le Mans.
u dont NEED new tyres for practise, engine tuning several grand a year? i thought u said u were doing pro karts not FA?
i know someone who did a season in FA for 9k, and like niki said it was semi works.
My mate races in the world champs and i go along to alot of his test sessions, they use old motors and old tyres, and this is the best FA team in the UK.
I aint being funny but im sure u dont need 20k to do well in pro karts.
Another guy i know did TKM, won the 0 plate, won 3 rounds and came 3rd 3 rounds of S1 and LOADS of clubbies, did kartmasters etc etc and they did it for 9k.
Pro karts is alot cheaper than any sprints. even abroad.
i know some irish guys who race pro karts and they buy their engines from the local plant hire centre. you cant tune pro kart engines... or at least do VERY little with them. so that shouldn't cost "several grand".
like senna said you dont need new tyres for testing.... ever! just get your kart set up so it has a slight lack of grip then when you put new tyres on for the race you'll be grand. Thats what i and most other people do...
For all those saying I am over budget I reiterate please feel free to call the series organisers and ask what a typical entry level team spends. The phone number is 01252 615728.
This isn't club racing and it isn't sprint racing, it's the UK's premier endurance racing so the scale of costs is based upon a team, not individual drivers, where the budget of the top teams (which dictates what the smaller teams have to spend to be on the same track) is limited by works involvement and manufacturer deals.
I'm willing to work with other drivers, and may go down that route in terms of the finances too (although i'd rather be free to chose a team mate) - but I want to win, so i'm aiming high and i'll hit whatever I hit...
As for tyres, if a track is new to me i'll be doing several days of testing. An old set will only go so far. Why so much testing? Because I want to win.
I could go and do sprints for a lot less money, little TKM racing which i've done before or even up to Formula A as suggested (I did Formula C once). However these are dead ends for me, great for club racing and great for learning the ropes to go onto bigger formulas - but i'm far too old to be wanting to turn into a professional race driver. I have a clear goal, and that's Le Mans, and that means Pro Kart racing and that's expensive at the high levels.
Some teams will happily blow £20k for a single 24 hour race. It staggers me too because I dont know what they spend it all on, but that is the facts. Even I would be looking to spend over £5k for a 24 hour race in the UK when you factor all the testing, parts and entrance fees, when I do Le Mans theres all these extra expenses, a camper van, a French speaking security guard or two for the days leading up to the race (last time the engines where sabotaged in the pit garage over night), pitch fees for the tents during the Le Mans race weekend period which aren't cheap, the list goes on.
With regards engines I lack the technical knowledge to enter into a debate on it, but I do know that "tuned engines" are worth around .25 second a lap at my old local track Rye. I dont know if they reseal the engines, or whatever, I just know teams spend a lot of money on it and I know who to go to get it done and I know to say what series I am in so he knows what he can change.
Some teams even dismantle the exhaust systems and take the baffles out, returning just a few pieces to make it "look" original - when I did Le Mans in '99 they sent the engines away to Honda for the baffle pieces to be analysed and see if they broke naturally or with a hammer! lol... Personally i'd rather buy a few old engines off ebay and put those exhausts onto a newer block, but they still need a few hundred hours on them to loosen them up and then be sent off to tuning between each race.
Why spend the money on those extremes for such a small advantage? Because I want to win.
EDIT: Re budget: think 4 drivers it's a budget of £5k. From experience I can say 2 drivers is faster for <8hrs of racing, for lots of little reasons that I can go into if you want.
20k for one SINGLE 24 hour race?
no way, NEVER EVER
a guy did a race in europe in FA and spent 13k, that was with the BEST driver trainers, BEST mechs, BEST everything.
And if u are a good enough, WELL ORGANISED enough driver you can win without all of the 'rich mans trick bits'!
OK i'm annoyed now. I've backed up the reasons behind my intended budget and what it costs to race at the top levels of endurance karting. You just keep saying I dont believe you, but i've given you everything you need to find out for yourself.
If you dont believe me that's fine, but if you want to openly call me a liar then please check the facts first - call the organisers and ask if a budget of £20k is reasonable and then ask if it is comparable to a top team, or a "clubman". The entrance fees alone are over £2k... ! (for the UK 24hr race the entrance fee is £1,100).
That explains it then I hadn't even seen the page on your site with the picture of it until now. You need to make it very clear from the start that:
A - You want to win the Le Mans race
B - What a Pro Kart is, I'm still baffled as to what they are exactly and a likely sponsor will no less than me.
As for budget, do you really have to win first time out? I'd start off doing the odd endurance race in your first season, even on a self-paid budget, then later when you've got some experience in endurance racing you could start looking for serious sponsorship.
The lengths you described going to are tbh rather daft. You can spend as much money as you like on the tiny things but in the end of the day over 24 hours that much finesse is not needed and lightened components are more likely to break. Whatever you do don't get bogged down with data logging unless you can actually usefully interpret it (that requires a lot of time and money spent testing to get useful benchmarks). Testing on new tires and engines seems a waste of money to me, your not going to spend much of the 24 hours in a kart on fresh tires and engine so what is the point in it?
In the single seater championship my Dad races in there's a professional team who enter and spend god knows how much stripping down the uprights they by from Van Diemen (same as everyone else) then machining them and adding a layer of some special material to reduce the resistance slightly. If you are expecting to get down to this level of detail then you may as well forget about it unless you've got a professional team with a big budget to spend behind you.
I had a tough job myself trying to get sponsorship of any sort. Even asked at a place called `Auto Parts` where my Dad buys a lot of bits for the cars like bearings etc and they wouldn't even do anything. I even said I'd be happy enough to put logos on the kart if they supplied me with stuff like 2 stroke oil. Out of three years I only got one sponsor who bought me a set of slicks and wets which I was over the moon to get considering the state all my sets of tyres were getting in
Your best bet is to try local smallish companies but even then you'll probably struggle to raise that sort of money because companies just don't see how it will advertise there brand. The good thing with local companies is if you do well and you get your local newspaper on the case they'll hopefully see a picture of your kart with their brand on it.
I think you are right I need to put a more general front page on with a synopsis of what the site is really about. I'll add this to some of the very genuinely useful suggestions from earlier in the thread, thank you .
Also a fair comment, in fact it gives me an idea - thank you
I've been racing Pro Karts on and off for around 15 years, i'm already a double champion (one of which I won first time out btw )...
The mention in this thread of startup costs is because i've been sidelined for 2 years through injury and am now returning - in the meentime my brother, whome I used to race endurance with, has decided to concentrate on sprint racing, so i'm starting over.
The winner of Le Mans is the team that is both reasonably quick [or faster] with the least problems. The team with the least problems is the best prepared team. The best prepared team is the one that leaves nothing to chance. Every performance advantage you have awards you more leeway with failures, just .1 second a lap adds up too 2.5 laps over a 1,500 laps race. 2.5 laps is enough time to get a stricken kart back to the pits and repair a puncture. There's more than .1 of a second to be found too - the performance differance between all the 40 kart field is quite large.
Sometimes testing on new tyres is necessary, if I goto a race at a new track i'll spend as many of the preceeding weekends at the track as I can testing, usually 2-3. Up to 6 days of testing, plus a day before the race itself, a kart doesn't run for 7 days on 1 set of tyres used in the last race. When I mentioned as an example of budgetary requirements earlier this is why I factored in the cost of a "few" sets of slicks for testing. As for engines I preffer them old and loose.
I have a tyre strategy and wear model for the Circuit de Alain Prost, Le Mans, over a 24 hour period. I've done the race as crew before . this site is not about wishful thinking, it's the latest step in a genuinely concerted effort to make a real go of achieving a near impossible dream.
Just as i'll be collecting GX160 engines and giving them to a tuner to match cranks and other techie bits I dont understand, because dyno testing shows not only that matching components from the same CNC machine where the engines are made is faster, but particular CNC milling machines that make the bits produce better results during certain time periods. I'm not talking about finding an advantage here either, just neutralising an advantage that every national team and over half of club teams already have. It's all very well saying "I can win on inferior equipment", i've done that too - but i'd rather win twice as often any day.
You aren't by chance referring to the fact that I have a friend who owns a Go Kart factory are you? The fact that i'm trying to put the budget together to build such a team? And the fact that i'm determined to win.
Well I have to say I'd be tempted to link this forum thread as proof of your tenacity. Frankly I'm not sure that all the negative comments are well founded. I've no idea how much you 'could' run an entrant in the 24hr race but I don't see why shooting high should be seen as silly. If I was given the option of racing and putting a package together I'd aim for what would make my life 'comfortable' in terms of budget. Then if I don't get what I'm looking for I'm sorted and if I get less then it'll just be a little tougher. That sounds what you are aiming for so just keep at. I have never heard of anyone achiving anything worthwhile without at least a little bit of a fight for it.
And as for the dissenters claiming you are expecting too much, can you imagine a driver out there who is looking to come second? Really? No.
This thread is annoying me. Why do all these people insist they know the costs better than Becky? Becky has researched the costs thoroughly by the sound of it.
And people can't be bothered to read the thread properly either. Numpties! If you can't be bothered to read a thread don't bother posting that's what I say.
my point is that you donthaveto that spend money to win....
you can really save alot by not using news tyres for testing,
1 day of testing should be enough for any driver to learn a track, maybe 2 at a REAL push if you've never been to the track before and it's completely different than anything you've been to.
dont buy a new kart, its a waste of money. second hand is fine.
same goes for engines. theres not much development in prokarts so and old kart will not be any slower, it's not F1.
the big engine tuners charge a fortune for doing scratch all (and i know this from 1st hand experience), so find someone else or do it yourself.
karts a pretty robust, parts never (rarely) break... even in crashes your usually ok. so you wont need to spend thousands on spare parts. maybe a spare axel (second hand if you can), stub axels (1 for each side) and some track rods. none of that stuff is expensive.
a full set of brand new bodywork will cost no more than £50.
the only expensive stuff is the entries. camp at the track, it will save alot. cook your own food, another way to save.
as for the argument that the organisers say it will cost 25k to run at the front... they may well say that, but if you take Super 1 for example and asked the organisers how much for a season they'd say somethign similar but as i work for a team running both JICA and FA i know it can be done for less than half that. And we run at the front.
you probably could spend 25k and run at the front, but you could cut your costs a WHOLE lot without compromising any speed.
anyway goodluck with the sponsorship, and the racing
As i've detailed previously I dont learn tracks quickly, but it doesnt matter who you are - there is always more data to collect. 1 day has 1 set of weather, it might not match the track conditions on the day of the race. Full preperation is the key to winning, more testing actually saves you money because it meens you aren't wasting it. Preperation, preperation, preperation. Besides, track time is what polishes off a drivers skill - without it you may aswell pick a rental driver for your team.
Unknown history = unknown time loss. I like to replace the chasis as often as possible, 1 big crash = flog it on ebay for somebody like you to buy, but having factory backing does save me a lot of money here.
You run sprint races so you may not have picked up on this, the more time you spend on track the more breakages you get and there's no point turning up to a race that's cost several hundred pounds to enter and prepare for if you havn't got a spare of everything, and you dont run a part that's part-worn - because you dont throw a 6hr race away for the sake of some small part like a track rod. You replace it before it breaks, when the clock is counting. You then flog the old parts on ebay for somebody like you to buy .
I camp on ocassion, but after a days testing you dont want to then go into a race already dirty and worn out - B&B makes sense, for the shower alone! There's nothing worse than starting a race when you are already cold and wet. if the driver is to perform at their peak they ought to be fresh - for the sake of £20-40 what are you loosing?
I say again, the organisers quote that as a typical budget of a team AT THE BACK. I will outperform my budget, i'm confident of this because i've always done that and i've raced a few of the teams before.
after 17 years karting (or whatever it is) you should be able to adapt and learn quick enough. especially if u think ur good enough to win the LeMans race...
thats rubbish... it's a pro kart, it does about 40MPH very rarely do u crash flat out... anyway thats OT
i have done a couple of 24h pro kart races, and 4h races. i know whats involved. out of the 2 24h races all we had to change was 3 track rods and a wheel.
all those 20 + 40's add up.
anyway, i'm just saying you dont have to buy ur way to the top. you can do it alot cheaper. if you want to spend a fortune its your choice.but IT CAN be dont a whole lot cheaper.
After god knows how many years of karting what i've learned is that practice and preperation is everything
A Pro Kart will clip 85mph at the end of the straight at Rye, most tracks they'll do over 70mph, but as any motorbike rider will tell you it's not how fast you hit, it's what you hit that breaks things.
Not at 40mph you didn't ... Unless your talking an indoor rental track.
When I did the 24 hour race at Le Mans most teams had one kind of problem or another and some teams spent several hours off track. Most of the better teams minimised their pit time very efficiently, and this is the key. If you bent that many track rods (which does actually sound like indoor rental racing, no offense intended but that's what breaks most in indoor racing) you had an issue you needed to address - in any case your pit crew should have been drilled in doing a track rod change, know what tools where required and have the kart recovery procedure efficiently organised.
However, those teams which where fastest where able to swallow small problems. So outright speed is still important, therefor everything I do in pursuit of extra speed (including lots of testing) I consider to be important. Whether you think so or not.
This is why I have a paltry budget of £20k, which for National level Pro Kart Endurance Championship racing is a small budget. I'd rather not do it on a tiny budget - but if that's all I can raise (yet still raise enough to actually race) then that is what I will do. However I will still aim to achieve a respectable budget comparable to the other small teams so that I do not have to skimp and dont have to fight on the back foot all the time.
Heck, even in club Pro Kart racing the top teams spend up to £20k a year. There's teams like me and my bro who where also doing it for £1-2k a year aswell and some of us where competetive, so your point is valid, however stepping up to nationals I will be competing against budgets much larger than £20k. Most of the top racers are full time professionals, and there's at least 2 in each team ... I dont know what you bring home a year, but that means the driver budget alone is ... rather large.
EDIT: The point being if a works team is going to spend that much money on drivers, they're not going to be skimping elsewhere.
85MPH! thats funny, but some how i doubt it.
Anyway it wasn't indoor i competed in.
We drove a Deavinson something or other (cant remember the model) and being a local at Rye House you should be familiar with these.
Deavisons... Not my favorite make (stiffer than a decade old corpse) but it should still be over 60mph for the Deavison twin though I would have thought, on the rentals they long gear them which impacts their straightline speed significantly, especially on a long fast straight like Rye's. Of course in owner driver you also corner faster too, a lot faster, because the chasis' is straight and flexes better than the over welded rentals and the setup is good rather than "it works" and the tyres much softer.
They do the gearing so high to make the engines last longer and if I recall use plastic track rods which explains why you broke three. In owner driver karts in all these years my brother and I have broken one between us, which occured when my brother was driving and the brakes failed (broke a few other things too). Anyway i'm glad to see that Rye are now allowed to run karts out of hours, being in a town usually restricts their running time.
I have to agree and say that the only way I think a prokart would hit 85mph is with a tow from a half decent car
Snr Rotax Max, 2 stroke engine, 125cc and 28.5 hp will only hit 70-80mph tops. That's lighter than a prokart as well! Realistically a prokart probably goes 60-65mph, a Honda Cadet hits 50mph with just one engine but weighs a heck of a lot less
My Jnr Max which was about 20.5 hp would probably hit 70mph tops.
Prokarts have around 3.5/4hp per engine if I remember correctly ?
I dont really know, there's no speed traps in karting and the onboard computers dont show speed - so I just go by what people estimate and I guess a lot of estimates are skewed by being so closed to the ground. What is for sure though, it's a lot faster than 40mph!
I think horsepower is 5.5 but i'm not 100% on that.
Interestingly as I read through that you get a lot of TKM and sprint racers saying they dont believe it, and some endurance people saying they can believe it but dont spend that much - and somebody who does spend that much.
One guy about sums it up right when he made this post:
As I said earlier, i'm aiming to raise £20k and although i'll be lucky to raise £50, i'll take what I can get and work with that.
I did have bad news tonight though, I spoke to my brother about the chasis and it looks like Dave Toynton has stopped making the Revolution karts, so i'll probably have to go to somebody like 7 kart as a customer. It was only ever a small operation, he carried on making the Swift chasis after the original owner died of cancer - but after a burglary, Dave being hurt in a major crash whilst racing, and now the jig to make the chasis getting damaged I hear he's shut up shop .
(for the UK 24hr race the entrance fee is £1,100).
)...
.
It was only ever a small operation, he carried on making the Swift chasis after the original owner died of cancer - but after a burglary, Dave being hurt in a major crash whilst racing, and now the jig to make the chasis getting damaged I hear he's shut up shop