Sports Car Racing - How to Get Started

So you want to race your car? That's great, but you need some information before jumping in. There are many things to consider from what type of car, what type of tracks, what your budget etc is. The most important things to start with are what your budget is. Both the up-front budget to acquire/build a car, and secondly your ongoing annual budget. Once you have your budget defined, you will need to determine what kind of racing you want to do. There are several large racing organizations around the US, with SCCA and NASA being two of the largest. There are also racing groups around particular marquees, like BMW CCA Club Racing, Porsche Club Racing etc. Lastly there are many regional groups like Midwest Council Sport Car Club. old dominion

In each of these organizations, they all have a GCR ( General Competition Rules ), which is what you need to read cover to cover before doing anything. This is where most folks go down the wrong path. They decide they want to race, go buy a car of their liking, buy a bunch of go fast goodies, bolt them on, and they contact the racing organizations. They show up, are ready to race, and then find out that they can't do much as their car is full of non-allowed modifications. In the GCR, you must first find that class that you wish to drive in. They all typically have various classes from a Stock (or Stock like), to full out Mod (highly modified) cars. This typically will also increase the spend.

Once you have your class defined, the next step is finding the right car. Depending on your motivations, there are different ways to look at this. If you want to win, do some research to find out what cars are dominating the classes and go for one of those. If you want a particular model, then find where that model fits, and build/buy to that. Note that not all cars are guaranteed to be competitive in all classes...usually just the opposite.

I would highly recommend finding the online forums for whatever group you wish to run with, and get active. Read what other active racers are saying, ask questions, learn about the group. One big mistake that we see a lot of folks do is everyone thinks they can build a car cheaply for racing. This just cannot be done. I would highly recommend looking to buy a pre-built proven car over building one nearly every time. Building a car is typically 2-3 times more expensive than buying a built sorted car. old dominion speedway

This was just a very small primer on racing. Hard to go into all the important areas but the biggest items are to define clearly what you want to get from racing, what you want to spend, and where you want to do it. Armed with this info, you can more easily pick your organization, class, and car that you wish to race.