obvious one is the name is very similar to grand prix masters and a second thought is what exactly are the drivers supposed to be / have been masters at ?
Seems like a fairly typical 'low cost' up and coming single seater formula. Completely pointless use of a carbon fibre tub in a single make (and inevitably high contact) formulae where no one would be disadvantaged from using a steel spaceframe which can be easily repaired. Also continues on the typical stupidity 'budget' route with a sequential gearbox that just takes away the skill and a rather crap name. Same goes for putting it on magnesium rims, they are hugely expensive and completely pointless if it is the same for everyone.
No real info as to what the block is based on I assume it's production based.
It's not supposed to be for hobby racers, it's for drivers that want to make a career in racing. So why not use modern technology? Drivers on a shoestring budget won't be able to move on to F3 anyway.
They make cutting costs a big thing, and that is sensible because atm it's almost impossible for someone without substantial backing to work their way up the ladder, if costs could be lowered young drivers could be able to use conventional non-long term restrictive sponsorship and the drivers who make it all the way would be chosen on their abilities in the lower formulae not just given a ridiculous amount of financial backing from when they're in their karting days, it's such a big investment atm that someone who put money into Button/Hamilton is going to mindlessly keep investing in them to make it seem worthwhile rather than picking the creme of the highest feeder formulae. There were a few drivers who seemed to be very good fast and consistent drivers who were always front running in F3000 and then rather comically all the mid-field people who never really shone or were immature at best ended with the F1 drives.
Especially seeing as they have plans to do wingless Formula Ford style 'Formula School' cars why are they using carbon tubs? Seemingly because they can, they aren't even that light, at 550kg inc. driver, 45kg heavier than the Zetec/CVH cars in F4.
I agree that cost cutting in general isn't a bad thing but you can't tailor a whole series towards the financial desires of the drivers. That's what club racing is for. Professional Motorsports should always try to have a right to exist from a technological point of view as well as from a sporting and spectator's point of view. This means you don't go from carbon tubs to steel frames as nobody would take the series seriously.
I'm also a bit more cynical about drivers and financial backing. Motorracing always has been and always will be a very expensive sport. To make it through the ranks you will always need substatial backing and there has never been a professional racing driver who came from a family of average or lower than average wealth or income. Outside of F1 and NASCAR hardly any drivers have real sponsors as in companies that are paying purely for the marketing exposure rather than because of close family ties between the company and the driver. That's why IMO cost cutting shouldn't be overrated as racing can never get cheap enough to truley let pure talent be the deciding factor.
Formula Master has come up with a series that is comparable to F3 in terms of technology and laptimes at much lower costs so I think you're barking up the wrong tree in terms of cost cutting.
@JB - in the past drivers needed less backing to get somewhere in motorsport and could use a bit of elbow grease to prepare their cars with maybe one mechanic. Running a Formula Ford and even an F2 car is perfectly possible for a driver and a mechanic with pretty everyday facilities. Running one of those cars just isn't possible without a proper team and either very specialist equipment or the acceptance that you will just buy new parts whenever something needs fixing.
I still see no need to be using a carbon tub TBH it makes a very small difference to laptimes and if you're aiming for F3 type laptimes the easiest way to achieve it is just find a more powerful, but still lowly stressed engine or lighten the thing (assuming it must already be balasted up).
Technology evolves. If you are racing with one mechanic and no engineer then you won't be learning anything about data and setup so you wouldn't be preparing for modern motorsport. And I really can't see anyone coming through the ranks without decent baking, unless we go back as far as the 60's.
Eddie Irvine, Adam Carroll and they are just 2 i know of from Ireland
Eddie Irvine's family were very much of average wealth. They re-mortgaged their house so he could do a season of Formula Ford in the UK. As much as i can't stand the man i have to say fair play to him for making it all that way with no money.
Adam Carroll is another driver who has ABSOLUTELY no family financial backing. His whole career has been dependant on sponsorship from 3rd parties.
It is possible to make it as a professional driver without being from a wealthy family, but it is pretty rare.
Relative terms. IIRC Irvine did his first race at 17 years of age in an FF that his father owned. Certainly nobody I would see as an average earner would be able to do that. Don't know any details on Caroll though.
To sacrifice you need to have something to sacrifice in the first place. Google indicates that average income in Europe is something like 30 000$ per year. How are you going to buy and race a FF with that? Or how are you going to buy a house that you can remorgage to go racing?
Finance the car, just hope you don't write it off. Also you could work an extra job or two.
You cant race on an average income so you have to sacrifice things (mainly time) to work other jobs to make money to support your racing.
In Irvines case they would have owned the house for many years and would have had most of their mortgage paid off, so for them to remortgage it would have been "relatively" easy.
Still doesn't sound realistic to me, the amount of money involved is just too much. The typical young driver today is paying several 100 000€ for FBMW by age 16 or 17, after years of karting. I can't see how an average person can compete with that by sacrificing time and getting a job. Club racing and maybe karting, yes, but club racers don't become professionals. And when you are at the karting age it would be illigal for you to get a proper job anyway so it is the wealth of the parents that decides.
15 grand is more than enough to buy and run a Formula Ford for a season, you just have to rely on driver skill to make up for your inferior machinery. Of course some people easily spend more than 10 times that.
I've never ever heard of anyone running competitivley for anything close to that kind of money.
The only way I can see to do it, is to go karting at a young age financed by parents, and be lucky enough to get picked up by someone like Ron Dennis or Martin Hines or Gerhard Noack although I would still argue that your parents would have to be relatively well off to be able to get you into a position where you would be able attract these kind of people.
So hang on, when you said originally that there would be no rags to riches stories in motorsport you meant the driver on an average income paying to get themselves to F1?
Of course that would never happen, not much point in stating that.
You can however hope to get picked up by a financial backer while your in the lower formulae. Like Irvine, Carroll and Hamilton (and plenty of other before them).
Your original comment was: "there has never been a professional racing driver who came from a family of average or lower than average wealth or income." The 3 I listed above all come from average income families.
I was just adding pretty much the same point to my above post while you were writing. So I guess the question we want to answer is "how much money did certain drivers spend before they got picked up by big money and where did that money come from?".
I think that whatever the answer is, it would be a value that is high enough to be able to say that an avarage family can't do it. I can't see a way to get any hard facts on this but think of it this way. If average families could do this wouldn't there be a lot more people that would actually give it a try? I don't know of anyone in my whole former school (1000 pupils) who have done any real karting. And I would estimate the average income of the families to be slightly above average.
The costs involved in karting are currently ridiculous and I still see no point in letting costs spiral. Why karting is so expensive is beyond me, there's no reason why one couldn't run a kart series using a step up from hire karts, maybe like ProKarts still reliable 4 strokes but completely unlike ProKarts not make it ridiculously expensive. A kart is a very simple bit of kit basically consisting of a few bits of tube with an engine a chain linked solid rear axle and some method of steering and stopping. It needn't cost more than a couple of grand to produce a reliable kart sealed, especially with economies of scale, force it onto hard tires and about the largest cost left would be getting it to tracks and ultimately it wouldn't be a fundamentally different test of skill than the current karting just a much more even playing field.
