Thanks for the car comments, we liked yours too (I kept pointing out to my teammates: “I PMed that team on Chiefdelphi when we were just starting out on this”). Lots of people came by our pits asking “how is that thing so fast?!”, I think it may be because the 92-95 CX hatchback was only sold in the US as a 70hp econobox, while the stock canadian model was 105hp, and we think ours was 115hp because of the engine swap. You can’t underestimate a car that was only 2100lbs brand new.
We were having big problems with brake cooling, so 12-3am was actually made of 3 different drivers, and the 3rd guy was the one that was involved in our accident that took us out around 2:40am. The guy that probably had the skill and aggression to do a pass like that was probably our Formula SAE driver, who was on from 12:50 to 2:00.
We LOVED our car. It was a junked shell of a civic mated to a junked CRX Si engine, built by highschool students many years back, then sold through many owners in the local autocross club. It had a few suspension goodies, a bulletproof engine, and only cost us $100. We’ll be very lucky to find another car like it for under $500, or even a car for more than $500 with enough sellable interior and trim bits.
However, as my brother back home investigates the front-end damage, he is finding more and more stuff that got damaged in the collision. For example, our timing belt is MIA, and there were chunks of metal that somehow found their way into the timing belt compartment. Jay gave us a residual value of $275 (I guess he didn’t fully believe our $100 story), so we gotta figure out how to replace as much as we can for only $225. We’ve got a spare running D16A6 engine that we picked up for $300, so hopefully we can replace a bunch of parts on the car without doing a full swap.
Do understand though that to ave a decent entry you will send about $2500 ($500-car, $250-cage, $900-1100 entry fee depending on drivers, gas, tires…
As a team that started from NOTHING, I disagree with this bit. It is probably possible to do that if you’ve done a race before, but the capital investment to get a team going was pretty severe.
Here’s an approximate budget for our team. Note that since we wouldn’t have a team if we asked everyone to buy their own suits and helmets, we shared 2 sets of safety gear. It turned out to be not that gross.
One-time costs that shouldn’t occur in the next year
$0-500 - Car
2x$230 - Helmets
2x$300 - Firesuits
2x$60 - Fire shoes
2x$30 - Fire gloves
1x$40 - Neckbrace
$300 - Initial rollcage investment (we were lucky enough to have a welder and guy who knew how to weld, saving us untold hundreds in labour)
$200 - Additional steel for rollcage because pre-built kit didn’t fit our tiny car
$150 - 5-point harness
Recurring Costs
$1450 - Entry for car & 6 drivers without race licenses + transponder rental
$200 - 4 brand new crappy tires (expect more if your car doesn’t have the shopping cart-sized tires that ours did)
$45 - 6 previously-enjoyed backup tires
$200 - 4-day U-haul car hauler rental
$200 - Gas at the track (more if you’re not driving an econobox like us. The Plymouth fury team said they used 3x as much gas as us)
$200+ - Gas to tow your car there
$100 - Gas to carpool your team there
$160 - 4-person hotel room for 2 nights (yes we crammed 6 people into our room, we’re cheap)
