Finally Grass Roots Racing That’s Actually Grass Roots

Scott — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:26:13 +0000

It’s the age old problem right? Motorsports is your passion, you love watching it on television, reading about it in magazines (and online of course), and attending events in person whenever you can. But in the end you don’t want to watch you want to race damn it! I know this feeling as well as anybody. So this is the land of opportunity, if you want like to watch Football, Baseball, Poker, Bowling, what have you its pretty easy to find a league or a tournament somewhere if you of reasonably good health and have a few bucks to pony up. Not so much when it comes to motorsports. I speak mostly of road racing but it holds true for local circle tracks for the most part as well.

SCCA, NASA, and local car clubs offer numerous different avenues to get into road racing. I’ve explored them all and to date have come up pretty much dry. With annual dues, physicals, driving schools, car rental fees, safety equipment, etc. the costs for just getting out on the track a few times a year can easily push the $10,000 mark and without much trouble will exceed it. You’ll notice if you google club racing budget software you want find anything, that’s because those involved don’t want to know!

For some time the 24 Hours of LeMons offered an alternative for those who wanted to get involved in road racing but didn’t want to take out a 2nd mortgage to do so. LeMons has enjoyed a good deal of success in their 3 years of existence and now a spin-off series ChumpCar is taking LeMons success nationwide (and to Canada too). The brainchild of John Condren, one of the original players in LeMons, The ChumpCar World Series is LeMons with a twist. (That pun was totally intended! )

The Andy Warhol Miata is an excellent example of the "themes" Chump car is getting from their teams.

The intent of ChumpCar is not to compete with LeMons but to take it’s success to new markets. The formula is simple and straight forward, offer a safe, affordable, and competitive environment for “crap can” endurance racing. As Condren states, “similar to the way many of us “Old Timers” started racing back in the 1950’s, 1960’s and early 1970’s. Back then, you drove your car to the track, slapped some numbers on the side, raced it, drove it home, and then used it for work or school on Monday morning.”

The rules a pretty simple and promote safety an enginuity over the size of the team owner’s pocket books. The base car cannot cost more the $500. You can pay more than $500 but you have to be able to sell enough parts off of it on ebay, craigslist or where ever so that your out of pocket is whittled down to $500 (and yes, receipts will be required). There are no limits on the cost of safety equipment and scrimping in this area is not recommended by the series. There is a claim rule where the series has the right to claim your car and pay you $1500 for it. The car will then be auctioned off at a starting bid of $1750 and all proceeds will go to charity. The car owner may absolutely buy the car back in the auction. The complete rules for the series can be found here.

In addition to forcing the cost of the cars competing to be very low Chump Car also does a good job of keeping the costs to compete down. First and foremost this is a no experience necessary type of racing. This is incredibly rare in todays amateur racing scene. You will need to attend a 2 hour school if you’ve never raced before but the fee is only $25. That’s a hell of a lot cheaper than Skip Barber or even an SCCA weekend Driver’s school. Licensing is a flat $50 per year which is actually pretty standard. Entry fees for the events are $500 per car and $100 per driver (minimum 4 drivers per team). This is very reasonable considering the length of the event and the quality of the facilities that the series visits. So for a team of 4 it would be a total cost of $900 compare that to the 25 Hours of Thunderhill whose entry is $1395 for a car and 4 drivers.

So lets run these numbers:

Entry Fees: $900

Car: $500

Safety Equipment: $2000 (very rough estimate, could be a lot less or a lot more)

Licensing: $50 per driver

School: $25 per driver

If you split this all up amongst 4 drivers in the end you come up with $925 each to enter one event, obviously the cost per event would come down the more you enter. If you run one a year it would cost you $925 the first year and assuming the car is reused the 2nd year it would only be $275. Consumables like fuel, tires, Twinkies, and Red Bull aren’t included in this but tank gas and DOT tires for a $500 buggy shouldn’t bankrupt anybody, probably would spend more on the Red Bull.

This weekend Oct 30 – Nov 1 Chump Car is running their inaugeral event at PIR in Portland. With 40 cars representing 241 drivers and 72 crew members the event already appears to be shaping up to be a success. According to Condren each event is set up to be able to accomodate up to 100 teams. In order to whittle down the participant lists if necessary Chump Car reviews themes and / or engineering concepts submitted by the teams. The most interesting of these will be assured a spot on the grid.

With 22 events on their schedule for 2010 and entries on the books for each and every event in 2010 already it appears that Chump Car’s bet that there was a bigger market for low buck endurance racing was right on. For those of you that have been looking for a way to actively participate in motorsports but haven’t quite reached gentlemen racer status yet Chump Car might be the series for you.

Check out more about The Chump Car World Series at http://www.chumpcar.com

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Finally Grass Roots Racing That’s Actually Grass Roots