Coming to Europe would be even harder with no experience. I think the Bahrain cup sounds great for his circumstances. And I wouldn't say UK is the place to be anymore. F3 Euro and German BMW have a much higher status nowadays.

And BTW the German and UK BMW championships are merging next year and are appearing with F1 instead of DTM and whatever it was in the UK. Wonder what that will do for costs...

Quote from J.B. :

And BTW the German and UK BMW championships are merging next year and are appearing with F1 instead of DTM and whatever it was in the UK. Wonder what that will do for costs...

That sounds pretty stupid surely that's going to push the costs towards Formula Renault level and there's no doubt that Formula BMW is not a substitute for it. I'd of still thought the UK or Germany would probably be the best places in the world given the fact that the vast majority of the motorsport industry is based in the UK, IIRC it's something like 80% of the world motorsport industry is based within a 40 mile radius of Oxford.

Not sure if it's silly. You can't deny that running in front of the F1 teams is great exposure for the young drivers. But it does show that nobody in racing really cares about costs and accessibility.

And of course you're right that a very large part of the racing industry is based in England. But in terms of competitiveness of the series, Hamilton, Rosberg, Kubica, Vettel, Sutil etc. all came through the Euro Series while the last British F3 champions that made it to F1 were Sato and Pizzonia.

Quote from J.B. :

And BTW the German and UK BMW championships are merging next year and are appearing with F1 instead of DTM and whatever it was in the UK. Wonder what that will do for costs...

Merging, eh? . If I can find some way then to get in this trainer series this year and hopefully, hopefully, hopefully (for the third time ) kind of get promoted to something like that. Man! that would be just perfect! the drivers in that will be watched by the right people

coughyeahrightcough

To expand on my coughing fit, why don't you get a race. Any race. FBMW or otherwise. Find out if you have even the slightest big of talent before thinking about a second FBMW year, let along a lone F1 appearance ten years from now as a Friday tester.

It's in danger of turning into the storey of the greatest F1 champion to never actually race.

Time to stop talking and start racing I think.

Well I guess there are cheaper ways to get a reality check.

Quote from garph :

It's in danger of turning into the storey of the greatest F1 champion to never actually race.

Time to stop talking and start racing I think.

Well, perhaps if you made the effort to read my posts, you'd understand why its difficult for me to start.

I've read them. I don't see the difficulty - you just haven't bothered trying yet, yet still think you'll get paid millions to bump up the numbers in a practice race by multi-national companies.

Well tristan, my personal financial situation prevents me from even doing the course. It costs 1,980 Bahrani Dinars which is 3,671 Euros which I don't have and before you suggest that I should get a job, they pay peanuts here in Egypt, it would take me 4-5 years to maybe get close to that money and family, not gonna happen because my dad reckons I should just get sponsorship so tell me Tristan, am I sitting on my f*cking arse doing nothing!?

Motorsport = 30% talent + 70% budget

If i were you and i have been in your situation before i'd pick the karting. Rotax Max is great. Have you thought about how you will afford to fix the FBMW when you crash it? It costs about as much as a kart to fix just one corner when you rip it off. Your going to have crashes, if you dont then your not trying hard enough.

I don't mean to sound harsh (maybe i do, i dunno) but from reading your post Lep you seem to have your head in the clouds a bit. Fair play to you for trying but you really have to be realistic. If it was as easy as you think it is to get sponsorship (3 out of 10 say yes!?! :really we'd all be racing F3, FBMW, FF or whatever.

If your really that determined, get a loan from the bank and do the 1st year yourself. €8k wont take you a lifetime to pay back, and it may give you the chance to make some sort of a racing CV.

Regarding your helmet, design and visor. Go with white, it all looks the same when your looking from the inside -> out.

FYI i paid a professional marketing team to compile a list of people to approach. They also made a proposal pack offering staff days out to companies who'd sponsor me, trips away to races etc aswell as the other stuff your offering. It was a flash presentation and all extremely professional and very eye catching, i paid for that myself and we sent them to well over 100 companies. 0 replies. And i had a pretty good racing CV. I was only looking for them to sponsor about €5k. I was hoping to get 10 companies, then make up the other 20k myself between various family friends, relatives and my own money.

Quote from Leprekaun :

Well tristan, my personal financial situation prevents me from even doing the course. It costs 1,980 Bahrani Dinars which is 3,671 Euros which I don't have and before you suggest that I should get a job, they pay peanuts here in Egypt, it would take me 4-5 years to maybe get close to that money and family, not gonna happen because my dad reckons I should just get sponsorship so tell me Tristan, am I sitting on my f*cking arse doing nothing!?

3671 Euros is nothing, if you really wanted it you would be able to get it. With a slight reality check though if you can't muster up that kind of cash somehow there's no chance of you getting anywhere. If you want to have a seasons racing at Formula BMW level I'd budget in an absolute minimum of £60000, everything is more expensive new, your not going to want (and probably wouldn't be capable) to run the cars yourself so you'll be paying professional mechanics and you will crash it lots, all new wanna be racing drivers do and despite the fact the Formula BMW is slower than a lot of older small single seaters it still uses a carbon tub, which means big money for everytime you damage it and unless you can afford to buy another tub missing races whilst it gets repaired. A suspension corner is about £2000 on the club racing Van Diemens we run, and that excludes the cost of damage to tires, rims and brakes. A professional team is more likely to want to replace said items for the sake of it anyway. The better magnesium alloy rims these days are no longer split rim, they are extremely light and do there job brilliantly but your looking at £2000 a wheel, that's about the amount you reckon you need to get you started. A locked tire will set you back £150 and if you really want to be an F1 driver you'll be wanting a set of tires at least every meeting, maybe more you'll find any seemingly good value season package will have a reasonable use tire policy (maybe a set every 3 races) and no accident repair, the actual extras bill will be far bigger than the original price. That 6 speed sequential 'box will set you back £6000 and should any part of it fail (which includes the clutch and it holds the suspension so it can suffer easy accident damage) a professional team will just replace it, that's three times your current budget.

Whilst if you own and run your own car and don't drive it like you think your Senna (or in a series full of wanna be Sennas) and can accept that you won't have the fastest car money can buy you can run a single seater for less than £6000 a year that all gets blown away the minute you start crashing them or blowing them up.

£60000 is a lot of money but what you've got to remember is that running a single seater is a job, a team at that level will probably be running about 3 cars with 3 mechanics. That means that you're employing a highly skilled person, who'll probably be on a fairly high salary, added to that a team has to fund the costs of its workshop and the cost of transporting, your budget wouldn't cover the artics fuel bill.

Buy a cheap, old F3 car like me, and race it for peanuts (figuratively speaking).

Quote from Leprekaun :

Well, perhaps if you made the effort to read my posts, you'd understand why its difficult for me to start.

I've read them. I think you need to re-read it.

People told you all about how much cash it costs but you seemed to skip over that with the, I'll get a sponsor easy thing, even tho you've never raced, now you're having a go at people and saying you haven't got the cash to race, which is what people told you in the first place.

Maybe it's starting to sink in that it's not as easy as you first thought, this is not LFS you're talking about, I think you got it mixed up with reality.

No one is trying to crush your dreams, they are just trying to bring them back down to earth a little/a lot.

Quote from Leprekaun :

Well tristan, my personal financial situation prevents me from even doing the course. It costs 1,980 Bahrani Dinars which is 3,671 Euros which I don't have and before you suggest that I should get a job, they pay peanuts here in Egypt, it would take me 4-5 years to maybe get close to that money and family, not gonna happen because my dad reckons I should just get sponsorship so tell me Tristan, am I sitting on my f*cking arse doing nothing!?

I can't see how your situation is any different to any of us?

My job pays peanuts so I end up working 10 hour shifts and taking any extra hours I can during the week but in reality can only get about 25-30 hours a week. At £4.45 an hour that would take me a hell of a long time to make the sort of money needed to compete in FBMW or even club level karting considering all my other outgoings.

You'll never get anyone with any business sense to put money behind you without some results to show them. Out of this thread (as far as I know) Niki is probably the only one ever to get anywhere in his racing career so I'd take on what he has to say.

I remember when I was probably 8-10 years old always saying I wanted to be an F1 driver when asked what I want to be when I'm older. Getting my first kart and thinking this was the start of something and then getting a reality check when I realised the sort of money the other kids parent's were throwing at their kids. From then I just relished the opportunity of being able to race until the point came where my parents couldn't afford it anymore.

Now I'm relishing the chance to compete in a Locust kit car at hill climbs and sprints next year, nothing will come of it in a professional way but I don't care anymore.

You should take racing for what it is rather than get caught up in going `professional.` It's just going to put extra pressure on you if you go into it with that mentality.

Quote from keiran :

You should take racing for what it is rather than get caught up in going `professional.` It's just going to put extra pressure on you if you go into it with that mentality.

I think that's probably just summed up this entire thread for me. The only way Leprekaun could get into racing for the kind of budget he is think of would be to win a competition, there are a few, Autosport often has them in the classified section but they normally require a lot of money to enter and even if you win it'll only be a season with very tight budget in something like Formula Ford. I've never heard of anyone getting anywhere from one, in fact I've never heard of a contemporary driver who got anywhere without karting experience from an early age or a ridiculously rich (and we're talking tens of millions) benefactor who bought them an F1 drive, none of those drivers have ever got anywhere either.

Leprekaun you need to accept facts that regardless of your talent, which there has been no evidence of, you have left it too late
to get into F1 even if you did suddenly get someone to pay for a full season of Formula BMW with no experience (which you won't) you are highly unlikely to get selected even if you dominate every race because the simple fact is those who've been selected by F1 teams are going to pass through the junior formulae pretty quickly. Have you ever noticed how most of the front running F3 and F3000 never got picked to go into F1 despite the fact they were clearly much better than a lot of their rivals who were given F1 drives? For the F1 teams your just their to train the chosen ones how to race before they go off to F1 and you then realise three years down the line you've got no life, aren't able to do a skilled job, have huge amounts of debt and chose to chase a dream rather than go into further education or begin a career.

You seem to have Irish connections. Ireland has strong club motorsport maybe you could save up and arrange to stay with people you know and run a Formula Vee or similar for a few months in a gap year. You wouldn't have to give up your life, could soon find out if you liked it and I can guarantee you you'd have far more fun than trying to being a professional racing driver.

massive rally scene over here too (i think it's because of all the joyriders).

Yeah, I know in the top half of Ireland, they're maaad about the rallying and the bottom half, circuit racing. I understand where you're coming from ajp but just because most F1 drivers have done karting, that doesn't mean someone who hasn't can't get there. Look at Hill and Irvine, they never done professional karting, just like the position I'm in now, they decided to jump into car racing straight away without any previous serious karting experience. True, Hill had the benefit of having the name of his father, Graham but that doesn't necessarily mean it was a walk in the park for Hill and I'm sure it was quite tough for Irvine as well so just because theres a ton of people who did it one way, it doesn't mean that another way can't work. At the end of the day, what I want to know is and while there may be chance that I won't get there, I want to be in the comfort of knowing that I tried and that I REALLY tried my hardest to get there but just fate didn't have it in for me.

I've pretty much decided that it won't be possible for me start this year so while aiming to compete next year, I will focus on getting my brother in FBMW, school and personally focusing on how I can make a stellar proposal for next year. Theres a karting event thats going to be held in a couple weeks time where first prize is a Rotax RM1 kart, 2nd Rotax Max Senior Kart (CRG Road Rebel Chassis + ROTAX FR125 Engine) and 3rd is just the ROTAX FR125 Engine. Unfortunately, due to exams, I wasn't able to compete in the last few rounds and the final is in a couple weeks but I'll be contacting the head of the track at Ghibli and ask him if I could possibly be put down as a reserve if a driver doesn't show up and if I can win the RM1, I'll sell it to put it towards getting money for FBMW.

I've already mentioned that if you 'make it' (even just as far as being paid to drive almost ANYTHING) then I will be jealous. I'm not pretending otherwise. And I'm not rating your driving ability, because there is nothing to rate that on.

But.

I am willing to put a three figure number (£xxx) on you NEVER getting a paid drive in anything I would consider decent - FBMW, FRenault, F3, F1 etc... Sorry, but you have the wrong attitude, a complete lack of experience (Irvine was racing at quite a young age, and Hill was a decent bike racer whilst still young), no money, no realisation that no company will give you ANY money until you are winning...

But if you prove me wrong you have my envy.

Quote from tristancliffe :

I am willing to put a three figure number (£xxx) on you NEVER getting a paid drive in anything I would consider decent - FBMW, FRenault, F3, F1 etc... Sorry, but you have the wrong attitude, a complete lack of experience (Irvine was racing at quite a young age, and Hill was a decent bike racer whilst still young), no money, no realisation that no company will give you ANY money until you are winning...

But if you prove me wrong you have my envy.

Oh, jeez! Cheers Tristan! way to go for encouragement

he's really just trying to help you out you know

What I'd say about Hill and Irvine is Irvine was starting racing 25 years ago when there was still more serious starter formulae and less serious karting when you could get to being a world champion just from circuit racing, I think Lauda was the last person to win the title who hadn't started in karting excluding Hill. Hill was a very good driver/rider, obviously he was good enough to win the WDC, and should have done twice, but there's little doubt he would never have got into an F1 car without his father's name.

Quote from Leprekaun :

Oh, jeez! Cheers Tristan! way to go for encouragement

I'm not trying to discourage you or encourage you. If you want to be in F1 you will need to be ABSOLUTELY immune to other peoples opinions, except your personal trainer, your dietitian and your driving instructor. You do already have those don't you?

I'm trying to make you see motor racing in the real world. Doing well in one kart race that nobody saw doesn't make you a driving god, and certainly gives no indication of F1 ability.

You do what you want, but I hope that these words ^^ are a comfort to you in a few years time when they come true and reality bounces back (via huge loan repayments).

Quote from tristancliffe :

I've already mentioned that if you 'make it' (even just as far as being paid to drive almost ANYTHING) then I will be jealous. I'm not pretending otherwise. And I'm not rating your driving ability, because there is nothing to rate that on.

But.

I am willing to put a three figure number (£xxx) on you NEVER getting a paid drive in anything I would consider decent - FBMW, FRenault, F3, F1 etc... Sorry, but you have the wrong attitude, a complete lack of experience (Irvine was racing at quite a young age, and Hill was a decent bike racer whilst still young), no money, no realisation that no company will give you ANY money until you are winning...

But if you prove me wrong you have my envy.

Well put.

Whilst I think that you maybe need a change in attitude towards how to build your career, I will point out that Takuma Sato only started karting at around 19 years old so it's not an impossible dream. Good luck chasing your dream, I know I'd be jealous of you if you managed even 1% of what you want to!