I see these pop up for sale on facebook marketplace occasionally, and they’re always at decent prices too so I’m always tempted to buy one haha
They are actually quite fun to drive (very tail happy), but it just wasn’t the right overall experience for me.
My friends and I run a 1972 Opel GT that’s been heavily modified (including a K24 swap we just did) in ChampCar, and are actually going down to Sebring in a week to compete in the last ChampCar race of the season on new years weekend. I am the crew chief of the car. I can’t justify spending all that money to drive in endurance races when karting is so much more fun for me.
5 Likes
Now that’s a pizza delivery vehicle.
Lmao a k24 swapped Opel GT?!? I bet that thing is a blast to drive!
Best Ferrari Breadvan replica ever! Love the Tony’s Pizza livery!
Thanks for the love guys! I love that other people think this is cool.
For anyone that’s interested, a brief story behind the car is that it came out of Wisconsin and was a Lemons competitor that some dudes who were instructors drove. Super fast and competitive car. My friend got it for fairly cheap with a boat load of spares. It ran a carbureted Ford Ranger motor until we blew that up at Watkins Glen. That was 2020.
Since then we have been doing the K swap and just got it done at the end of summer. So this will be the first race on the swap. We are about as nervous as we are excited to make the hike to Sebring (from Metro Detroit LMAO).
5 Likes
It really depends on what the sponsor wants. Sometimes they want something simple like more brand recognition. Which makes a sponsorship deal in a larger series viable. As USF runs alongside indycar and GB3 runs alongside British GT and other things. Some want access to a certain audience or demographic which is why these series survey their audiences. It varies a lot for what each individual company wants so there’s not really a specific thing they want other than a tangible ROI. Smaller series have a really hard time getting sponsorships for exactly that reason.
1 Like
Cool FF vid popped up in feed
1 Like
I didn’t take the time to read the whole thread but plan on having a new set of tires for every event if you want to win. Make that two, and an extra set of wheels in case of unexpected problems, just like karting, or rain/slicks ect. Must have a tow rig and trailer, and it has to be able to tow to your destination without problems (ie up and down mountain roads in the summer). Factor in fuel cost for a weekend of racing (many gallons).
There’s some small differences but kart race craft absolutely translates to cars.
I had enough of autocross when I realized I was competing against cars with $100k+ in them, standing in the sun all day for maybe 5 minutes of seat time, and buying new Hoosiers for every club event. Track days weren’t for me having already raced karts as a kid. I wish kart qualifying was always only 2 flying laps because I would say that’s where my autocrossing experience helped the most. I did enjoy seeing all the crazy autocross specific builds though, they look awesome.
That being said if I had the budget and time I’d absolutely race both cars and karts.
Edit: I always thought SCCA’s “Pro Solo” was a really cool, unique idea, but again, not enough seat time.
2 Likes
One of these days we’ll go halfsies on a car and do some endurance or “king of the heap” racin’ Lol.
1 Like
You know I’d be down!
There are some series that race on street tires where you can get a few races out of a set of tires but not sure what racing you’re wanting to do. Obviously you can race anything cheaper if you don’t mind being mid pack, but we want to win right lol. But if you can afford it then you should race.
Also on the sponsorship question, it depends on what level of sponsorship. For example, Gridlife drivers get tons of free parts and discounts from sponsorships and all you might have to do is race, put their name on your car, and tag them in so many social media posts each year.
Do they though? I would have thought the drivers that accomplish this are the outliers. So many businesses get hit for freebies/discounts, very few are interested unless the driver\media presence is big enough to make sense.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I personally know about 10 that do. A couple of them don’t even make every race.
Editing to add, I see this the most in Gridlife gltc, and the pro touring scene such as UMI’s “king of the mountain” and Good Guys type stuff. I guess you could consider them outliers.
Edit 2: I was mainly speaking about Gridlife GTLC because it is W2w racing. I threw in the other series because I do see them getting more deals as well. But that is off subject.
1 Like
My experience, that ended about 5 years ago was that my budget for 3-4 weekends was $10k. I was doing it on a pretty low end budget. I think very few are getting sponsorship parts that come anywhere near that
That sounds about right. My friend does the Sundae Cup (Time Attack) with GridLife and he said he averages about 2k each race weekend. I choked when he told me that haha. Mainly because we have the same job at the same company, so i know what his salary looks like.
Side note, I tried getting him into karts. He bought a daniel ricciardo am29 and did a few races with me, but ultimately sold his setup to try and buy a b-spec car. I dont think he was a fan of the violence in karting Lol.
Thats a very tight car budget, I was lucky to get out of race weekend for less then 3k and that was 10 years ago in cars, gas and parts that cost way less then they do now. I suspect my budget would be 6k a weekend now.
I average around $500-$1200 an away weekend in karting (Regional Area) and $160-$170 locally and our club is very reasonable and close. I suspect, I will spend significantly more this season. As I am already expecting to more then quadruple my budget this season.
1 Like
A good way to dip your toe is an SCCA race school. (The New England Region has an annual school in April: New England Region Competition Drivers School)
Other schools I’ve done aren’t much different than an HPDE day, even if they’re marketed as such. (“Get your racing license!”) The SCCA school is shorter but also way more in-depth. My assumption is that when the instructors know they might be racing against you, they are way more concerned about what you learn.
For example, the only difference in other schools from HPDE days was a mock start or two. In the SCCA school, we also did a mock fire exit drill and plenty of holy-crap, door-to-door sessions where the instructors are purposely hiding in blind spots.
I highly recommend it.
A big difference is you need to bring your own car, but the school-plus-rental cost is about the same per day as an over-marketed school, but the SCCA school is only one day.
I rented from an instructor, but if you’re in the northeast, Mark at Rosmar is great to deal with, and I’ve heard good things about MBM.
On this topic, I did try cars again at an autocross last year. It’s was kinda on a whim because my kart business was a sponsor and I didn’t realize it came with a couple of free entries. Only car suitable that I had was an E60 M5. So I figured I’d play rod bearing roulette.
Comfortable and lots of time to think. Really the best part was straight piped V10 noises and to be fair, a 4200lb car is not a great autoX candidate 
The understeer was was unreal, I ended up trying to tiptoe into the turns, try to cut the turn a little and power out.
I botched basically every run unfortunately, I struggle with the sea of cones. On the final run I got it together and the SMG gearbox shutdown halfway through the run 
/edit just realized I already posted about the AutoX 