F2 costs millions. Doesnt matter who you are. no one makes money in F2.
Race for fun. Involve yourself in racing.
Karting is freaking amazing, youll enjoy it.
$2 to 3M per year out of you or your sponsors pockets. And that doesnt include the racing you need to do to get there.
side by side, will you pass or will I pass…etc. f2 is priceless for me
" The drivers who take part in Formula 2 and Formula 3 are considered junior drivers, who can make somewhere in between $225 to $500 a day . But, mostly they have to pay the teams for a seat in the junior driver’s championship. Except for the drivers, just about everyone gets money. "
OMG
Sometimes, these drivers need to get their own funding through personal sponsorships to make more money.
The remaining money remains on the pilot after payments are made. And this budget is not high.
The best is just to watch or see the end of Cem.
Thats the key bit. Some drivers, and only those in a jnr schemes, may have living expenses funded, may be paid to do sim work.
If you wanna make a small fortune in racing, start with a large one
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Unless you’re able to fund yourself, I’d say F2 is out of the question. Those guys currently in F2 are your age now and have been racing since they could walk. You can’t just jump straight into F2 either - there’s a progression F4-F3 first, possibly can jump F4-F2 with exceptional talent or money but it’s rare, normally preceded by karting but these days not 100%. By the time you reach F2 you’ll be as old as the F1 guys when they retire.
Look towards touring cars, LMPs etc. - Oli Webb does exceptionally well here. He’s essentially a freelance driver, very talented and he does very very well
But first, you gotta see if there’s sufficient talent in there by getting yourself a CIK kart license and get into the mix. Or go the @supergt route and develop a you tube esports channel - you have to work constantly at it to make a living from it as he has done. Again you need charisma and wit in spadefuls.
Also you mentioned sponsorship, bear in mind bagging a sponsor has little to do with talent and lots to do with media presence. A 3 post instagram account with ‘I want to be a racing driver’ is never going to attract sponsorship - a sponsor is all about return on investment by increasing product market awareness. You need tens of thousands of followers and daily engaging posts on social media, you tube etc. with a TON of charisma and wit.
Easy for CEM to say yes you can do it but there’s maybe an element of telling you what you want to hear in there - he was karting at national level from 9 years old, and look how late he is getting to F2.
I’m not Turkish no, I am European though. I figured you for being in Turkey from what I assumed to be your instagram page 
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I watched Alonso’s Le Mans race last night and I was wondering to myself? I asked. It could be LMP. I want. But LMP3 competed in CEM and Turkish football player sponsored the CEM before the competition. LMP also needs money.
Lol when it comes to racing, everything needs money
What I mean is, decide what you want to do that’s achievable then figure out how to make it happen.
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If you are implying that this discussion has made you feel depressed, I get it. But, life stretches out before you and it can be good, if you are fortunate enough to have a family and friends, your health and food in your stomach. Racing is an aspiration, and one worth pursuing, but not at the cost of everything else.
Then don’t live an ordinary life. Find passion. Life may require us to get up before dawn and go to work every day, but other than that, life is choose your own adventure (if you have weekends off from work). But, don’t just dream about it, do things, whatever things are available and doable by you in your current circumstance.
Become a kart racer or try mountain bike racing or competitive snooker. Whatever it is, where ever your interests go, explore them and enjoy the process of discovering where your talents lie. It may be racing but it also may be something else entirely, (and it will change as you change).
There’s more reason to be hopeful and excited about life than there is to be depressed by doors appearing closed. Fine, maybe you are a bit old and not rich enough to have a realistic shot at f2, but if you were to become a racer and absolutely need/want it, you’ll race anything and be happy. But, you don’t really know yet, from what I can tell. At this point, any racing/driving opportunity is a good opportunity to find out if it’s what you crave and helps you find meaning and purpose.
Don’t overthink this. Do what you need to do (school, work, whatever) and try to get going in whatever way YOU can afford/have time for. Maybe you make some friends along the way and maybe you end up in motorsports in some other way.
We have racers here that work on Nascar teams in marketing and PR. We have racers here that work on IMSA teams as wrenches/engineers, etc. They probably got those jobs because they are racers who love racing (all kinds) and found a way to make their racing desires a part of their professional lives, and I bet it took persistence.
I don’t know Cem’s story but it appears he’s managed to make a name for himself and gone further along the euro path to the big show than the vast majority of racers. He’s gonna be a tough act for a newbie to follow. And, as Tanguy pointed out, he started racing at 9.
At 18, you will have to forge a different path, find your own way. That doesn’t mean don’t try, but it does mean that your resources and age suggest that you keep the idea of being a pro driver as a long-shot aspiration. In the meantime race what you can wether that’s sim, rental karts, bikes, little red wagons, whatever.
Racing should be a joyful thing. I feel sadness for the pros, sometimes, because it seems to me that when it becomes a “job” and you have to put food on the table, it changes things. They have a tough decision to make, going pro. It must be harder than we think. Life is hard to build and throwing everything at a racing career closes other doors. That’s a huge amount of pressure and you have to know 100% that it’s what you not only want, but need.
Anyways, good luck. In the absence of a large wallet, modify your dreams and be realistic. There are no merit based seats, really. Access is bought. Talent is not enough.
But, who cares, the racing is the thing, and that is what you should be chasing, as opposed to the career in racing. Race whatever you can afford that is least complicated and most accessible.
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Agree with this fully, I asked Oli once how does a team set up the car up for endurance races - do they hire drivers with similar preferences? He said no, they set it up to the liking of the AM driver (those things are usually pro-am affairs) and the pro learns to drive it that way or else. So you’ve got the aspect of having to perform well with a machine that might not be tuned to your liking, failure to do so reflects on you not the car.
That said. It’s still a life I wouldn’t say no to 
Oli has been driving since he was kid too. I remember him in jnrs at Three Sisters (our local circuit in Wigan).
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Yeap, since he was 9.
18 years old, so much ahead of you as long as you have a plan and you stick to it.
Try to have an open mind about all that you can do with your life, I promise you that happiness starts with being flexible and if one door doesn’t open, there are many others that will, it’s up to us to accept reality and move on to better things.
Best of luck!
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I wonder if anyone has written Tom Kutscher or similar looking for internship. That would be a heck of a way for a teen to spend a summer, wrangling whatever they need him/her to wrangle, while learning how the biz is run.
Also, @XanderClements… the story of kart chaser and how that became what it is is a good example of motorsports related career that is inspirational. The story of how you came up with the idea and made it into the success that it is today would be interesting to read.
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Working on a video on it this week. Been meaning to make a ‘why’ story really soon, just never got the time. Now I’m hyped.
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LMK if you end up posting said video. I get notifications but there are so many subs I kind of ignore them. Thx!
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