Stilo for every day, this for 12 weekends a year.

Its essentially a space frame around a 1300cc beetle engine, gearbox and axles.

Ooooh how cool. Which tracks do you race on ?

27 & 28 March will be snetterton,

april Brands hatch
may donnington
June mondello (ireland)
july pembrey
august mallory
august silverstone
sept brands hatch
sept cadwell park
october snetterton

Spectators are welcome in the paddock, if you have kids they can site in a racing car, or even better if anyone would like to volunteer to marshal you can be on the right side of the fence and help me out of the gravel trap.

Thats gotta be some fun

What are the specs on it?

375kgs without driver.
0-60 estimated 4.5s
top speed estimated 140 (police have gunned one on snetterton back straight at 135)
Dunlop control tyres
90-100bhp

Because we use a lot of vw beetle bits its fairly simple and fairly cheap, although the engines need to be built by a specialist (100bhp doesn't come out of a 30 bhp engine easily) they should last a season or 2 and a rebuild on your engine is about 500-800.

You can buy a champioship winnincar for around 4k, cheap as racing goes. you dont need to be a spanner guru, if you can hold a spanner you can learn as you go, lots of folk help.

thats impressive

Anyone use hayabusa engines in your class?

not in my class, formula vee, means you have to use the 1300 beetle engine (65-70) but at the same meetings there are F4 races and I belive some of those use bike engine, they sound awesome. Example are the Speads cars below.

Sounds like hard work, why not start with a hundred brake engine in the first place?

Is it the air cooled engine then?

Liam

They look like mini F1 cars in that pic

What are the dates for Donny in May ??? What other races are on at the
same time ??

Might try and pop down and have a look !

How much would you spend in a season? I discovered 2CV racing not long ago! Just wish I had the money! One day...............

Theres nothing i'd rather do than race professionally, there just seems to be no easy way in> this looks like loads fun though! is there a website or anything with info of how to start??

Nah it seems that you need a fair bit of money to start, especially if you want to do rallying/circuit racing. Autotesting is meant to be cheap, as is production car trials. Could always do karting - they have senior championships. There's run what ya brung drags (but I'm the wrong end of the UK! ). I came across 2CV racing. Engines aren't that tuned (35-40 bhp), they follow a similar calendar to Braden's. Capable of 100mph. Prep'd cars are about a grand to buy, there's an annual 24hr race, as well as a national championship. Engine rebuilds every couple of seasons. Should be well cheap. Time to start saving !

Of you could try autograss. You can pick up a Class 1 car plus trailer for about £300 if you search well enough. £40 ish for the year for your licence which includes personal insurance etc and costs you £7 per race meeting.

Great fun

Now that is cheap. Could do banger racing, but I'd be worried about my ankles.

Let me try and answer a few questions...

If we started with a 100bhp engine we'd only spend the same amount of effrot learning how to get it up to 150/200nhp and at least 60 cars would have to find new engines.

Donnington 14/15 may

If its allowed to post urls you can find out about Formula Vee at www.veecentre.com.

There is no such thing as cheap circuit racing. 2CV is probably the cheapest circuit racing. Formula Vee is by far the cheapest single seater racing(the only tupe i want to do), stock hatch and locost are the cheaper end of cars. 750 motor club specializes in the cheaper end of motorsport.

I bought the above car for £2000, trailer £180, camper van/tow car £1700. budget £600 startup costs for helmet overalls medical and test for your licenxe. Test is easy, you need to show you're safe not fast.

If you did all 14 races with a few tests your costs need not be more the 7k to win the championship.

A race entry is £150 to £200 this will get you a practise/qualifing session and 2 - 4 races.

I set of tyres per season £400, £500 engine maintenance per season, £40 fuel per weekend. Add more if you dont fancy sleeping in a tent/car/van.

We are a friendly bunch and free help is readily available for the novice and we are even running "getting started classes" for people on how to care for and prepare your car. We also have an "uncle" thing, where an experienced driver will be your uncle for the day of your first race, holding your hand all the way.

I do 50% of the races and it costs less than 3k per annum.

If there's enough interest I'll bring the car along to the next FF meet, you can all jump in and poke around it.

Starting is easy but you do need an amount of disposable income, I reckon 3k per year is fairly cheap to go racing. I, like most of you thought it was out of my reach before I discovered how little it can cost.

You may also find your employer/local garage/wealthy mate may be kind enough to sponsor you for tyres/race entry fee/ engine.

ooh and for the fiat die hards theres, 750 formula, originally built on austin seven engines, when they got rare they allowed 850cc reliant engines, now they are rare they are allowed to run the panda "fire" engine.

Ireland has a great couple of formulas for unos and one for punto abarths. Those guys (like most saloons) have higher damage costs and tend to beat the 5h1t out of each other on track.