wannabee questions

A

abica

New Member
Hello all, got a few questions for you guys.

Ive been wanting to try my hand at racing since before I started driving cars, and well now Im finally getting near the point I can think about actually doing it. Well not now, but in a couple seasons. Im flat broke now ;) I just want to figure out if it would be a mistake to get involved at this point.

I was poking around recently, and it looks like the hornet class is the place to start out without the money and experience to run with the big dogs. Also definately a way to tinker with a car and learn. As of now, well Im not exactly an expert mechanic. Took some auto shop back in high school, and thats as far as I went. But Ive done things like put together machines, rebuild hydrolic pumps, and other wrench-turning so Im pretty mechanically inclined and learning and tinkering is kinda half the reason I want to race. I guess you could describe my skill level like this: I know how an engine works, but I wouldnt want to build one at the moment. That could get ugly. I could do all the work stripping a car down (so much easier taking things apart ya know) and I feel like when something needs to be done, I could spend some time and learn how to do it right. But Ive only pulled a motor once in my life...so its kinda imposing. Not scary, just a real big job for me.

SO, I guess I would be biting off more than I can chew, but do ya think Id have a chance of 'chewing' eventually or would it be a total waste of my time and money to pick up a car and a trailer, and start doing surgery and making a mess of things? What kind of a budget should I have to get set up and be able to make it through a few races? *gulp* And generally, what car models do people run? What are some decent types to start out with? Like do I just go find a beat up sunbird, rip out all the heavy crap the rules let me remove, paint it up to make it faster, and go run? Im pretty clueless, so any advice would be appreciated, including "you are nuts"

Well, naah you dont need to tell me that I already kinda know it.

anyway, thanks for letting me barge in and fire off some questions.

-Joe
 
Heres what I think. Before you go racing, hang out with people who already do. Go to the track you would most likely want to race at, and go into the pits after the races for a couple months. Since your broke, and arent going to be jumping in any time soon, you have a couple seasons to look it over. Talk to drivers at different levels, eventually you will get to know them well enough to say "Hey, you mind if I come over and help out on the car this week?" The response will almost inevitably be yes, especially if the driver is pretty much already working on their own or with just one or two people. You are probably going to be amazed at how much hard work goes into keeping a car going. A rule of thumb is 15 hours work for every 15 minutes on the track. And thats if your driver doesnt crash that week.

If you can prove your worthy as a crew member, and put in the time and effort to learn how to do all the different jobs on the car, you will get an insight and education into what it takes to go racing week in and week out. Be prepared to do a lot of boring grunt work first, cause nobody is going to hand you the wrench and say "pull the carb and the intake, we're putting a new one on" until they know you well enough to trust you to do it. I think that trust is important, because its the drivers butt on the line and their dollars at stake, and you have to show a lot of commitment for anyone to bother spending time teaching you. Time spent explaining stuff to somebody is time that could be spent getting some work done for the next race, so you will need to prove your going to be in it for the long haul for anyone to invest their time in you. And the longer your around and prove trustworthy, the more questions you can ask, almost always starting with "why do you..........."

Ok, so after say 6-8 months of spending your free time in the shop and weekends at the race track covered in dirt up to your eyeballs, you will pretty much know whether or not you are going to want to chew what your biting off. And, since racing is done on the same principles at every level, i.e. big cubes, low weight, car setup for different tracks, you will be in a much better educated position to decide what kind of car you want to build, how much its gonna cost, and how to do about doing it. The time you invest working your butt off will pay you back ten fold then. When I got into this, I just went and bought a race ready car and then spent 6 months on my own, nearly missing one whole season, cause I couldnt figure out what turned out to be a minor problem preventing the car from firing when I went to race it. I finally hooked up with some people who got me going, and that led to other associations which continue now. I have been fortunate to gain an entire education in what it takes to build a bomber, repair a bomber, and pit a bomber week in and out. And everything I have learned can be applied to hornet racing now, and whenever I can make the jump, to bomber racing in the future and whatever else beyond.

Are you nuts? Of course you are. We all are. Say goodbye to the normal life of movies, baseball games, shopping at the mall on a Sunday afternoon. All the time you spend doing stuff like that will now be consumed with rearend gear ratios, valve lash, tire pressures, spring rates, shocks, and how am I gonna pay for it all. Is it worth it? It is to me. For now, anyway. But after my last crash, which destroyed the whole front end of my car for the third time in about 7 events (and has kept me out of the seat for the last 5 weeks while we finished the bomber), I drove home and the only thought that kept going through my head was, "you know, I like fishing, too. And its a whole lot easier than this." Cya at the track.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.




Back
Top