Sweeper

Ding ding ding we have a winner.. It is amazing how fast **it can happen.

Sweeper

BTW- i have a slightly used Club Ford for sale in New England. Gratuitous plug

PM me

ace37

I looked into this question a while back. Besides the issue of having a hard time learning the basic skills in a machine like that, there are a few things that make an indy car just not work for club racing despite the relatively bargain purchase prices:
1. Engine and transmission teardowns are required in intervals measured in tens of hours with the cost of those refreshes commensurate with how exotic and rare your machinery is, and what do you do about accident repair from a minor or major off track excursion
2. Ignoring the powertrain, they were designed to be maintained by a well funded professional staff, so you'll require trackside support and probably need to pay for maintenance too assuming you don't want to spend a ton of time under the car for every hour you drive
3. Think about the speed delta. If you're in a group of 20 cars on a light day doing 2:00 average laps and you're 20+ seconds a lap faster in your indy car than the average guy in a corvette, how much time per 20 minute session do you spend NOT right on someone's rear bumper? Is it still fun, for you or for the other guy who shares the track with you? You nearly have to rent solo track time to really open it up.

For most club class open wheel cars (anything under FA/PFM) and SRs/prototypes as well, things can make a lot more sense depending on what region you live in and what you want out of it. A few issues are still present, but in many areas items 2-4 are not a big issue as there is a local SCCA group that runs cars like that regularly:
1. Higher maintenance as they are built to be lighter and things that don't weigh as much are typically both more fragile in accidents and more fragile in general (= more maintenance hours and dollars)
2. Safety - one of the elephants in the room there is who wins if you get into an accident with a camaro? It's like a motorcycle - it doesn't matter if you screwed up or if the other guy did, you still lose. Over a long period of time this will be an issue.
3. To fix that big safety issue, a lot of organizations simply won't allow you to participate in their sedan-oriented track days and/or races - this means less opportunities to use your toy
4. With your open wheel or prototype race car, who will you race with or against? For DE the fastest sexiest car is arguably the best car so who cares, but if you get into racing you'll want someone to play with so you can challenge one another and have a good time getting better

If this still sounds like a great idea, you might lurk on apexspeed for a while to get more details.


I only have one track nearby, and I can't race open wheel with NASA or PCA there and hardly anyone runs prototypes. So I can either go with a more-fun-now prototype and enjoy the heck out of it until I get bored running fast in essentially a class of one or I can go with a slower sedan, probably improve my driving more rapidly, and compete and race with a lot more people. Honestly there's appeal to both options, but the sedan seems to make more sense here and now.

There are also quite a few vehicles that are kind of part way between a street car and a dedicated race car. Cars like the Loti, Caterham/7s, and Atoms. IMHO about the time you start talking about Radicals you're on the slippery slope of just getting a full-on protoype or open wheel race car, and you may as well look into the DSRs/FFs/FCs/ex-CN prototypes and all the other cheap sexy toys on the apexspeed classifieds at that point.

ProCoach

Great post. Clearly, you did your homework. A Ligier JS49, JS53 or a Norma M20 is my next deal...

ApexSpeed is a great forum, although it is primarily for open wheel folks. They tend to look down at their closed-wheel brethren.

ace37

Thanks! You're going to have another fun toy soon with those as the primary competitors! I also love the Honda motors.
I noticed that about ApexSpeed. But it seems there just aren't that many folks in the US running prototypes or DSRs. The apexspeed sections and the yuku based forum are both pretty quiet and serene forums.


My biggest interest in formula cars is their simplicity and low weight. I'm an aircraft engineer by trade and I think I would really enjoy designing and building a very simple formula car from the ground up. The pre-aero mid-engine F1 and Indy cars of the late 60's - Gurney's Eagle Mk1 for instance - strike an emotional chord with me. But if we're talking safety and sensibility....

Matt Romanowski

If someone is interested in a CF, this is one of the best around. Top level motor, very well prepped, great bodywork, and a proven history of winning. Plus Rob is a great guy.

dizzy8085

What do you guys think about formula continental versus formula enterprise? Good cars look to be about the same price.

Differences in speed and driving? Running cost?

Everything I've read about formula enterprise makes it look like a spec-ish sort of series. I like that. Sealed motors and such.

P.S. those norma's with the honda K20 motors look like so much fun!

ProCoach

I think the FE cars are less maintenance, stronger, heavier and parts are available through a single vendor (since it is a spec series). http://www.scca-e.com/formula-enterprises

The Formula Continental cars vary widely due to age, generation of chassis and engine, prep and support.

Lap times are very similar with the same driver, FC might be a tick quicker. More places to race the FC car, but for a track day/race dual purpose car, the FE is my choice over FM or FC. They're both wings and slicks cars, so the driving experience is similar.

Circuit Motorsports

FC will be quicker than FE at pretty much every track. Ability to setup car to track and gearing are really going to be what separates the two.

FE is a smoking deal right now. Although an FC with a Zetec motor was just listed for 20K.

As for safety compared to a production car. Open wheel also has some serious benefits. The drivers compartment can be setup to be safer than production because of the tight confines. With the light weight you can have a major off and it dissipates speed very quickly.

As to the question about a car to run now so you can be fast when you move to bigger more powerful cars?

Spec Racer Ford, Spec Miata, Spec E30. Slow classes with lots of entires. Learn to do that fast and you'll be fast in anything and your race craft will likely be better than most people out there.

Matt Romanowski

I like FC much better than FE. The FE cars have more power and straight away speed, but the FC is ultimately faster as Joe pointed out. FC can be developed into a great car, but can take some work.

skl

My son raced FE for a couple years in the midwest- we had our CSR very active with promoting so we always had a decent grid size. He'd done shifter karts for several years and a few PCA DE's over the years, and then Spec Miata before that so he wasn't exactly a novice, but open wheel is a completely different ball game. He had a blast and did pretty well (getting a podium at the June Sprints) .
I would NOT jump into it with a formula car right from the beginning- as mentioned, do a couple racing schools with formula cars and see what you think...

(BTW, crewing for him was a blast!!! Proud dad...)

the_vetman

For clarity: PCA does allow cars such as Spec Racer Ford, Radical, and Ariel Atom. At least some regions do. I know because I've been on the track with them multiple times with different regions. Chin allows full open wheelers.

Just didn't want some people getting confused between Spec Racer Ford vs. Formula Ford, etc.

dizzy8085

Thanks for the info about the different formula cars.

I think running a car by my self, I would rather the beefier formula enterprise. Looks like they have pretty good participation in SCCA races as well. I'll have to plan to scoop one of those things up in the next couple years.

I did see that they make sports racer body work for them as well. If you wanted to run track days in one.

ProCoach

Awesome story, and podium at the Sprints is very strong! Congrats.

A good SCCA Enterprises CSR (customer service representative, geographically defined regional dealers for FE, SRE and SRF spec series cars) can make all the difference!

924RACR

Yeah, not many people run DSRs these days - 'cause they're not DSR any more. Classes have been changed and restructured in SCCA; CSR (C Sport Racer, not service rep), DSR, and S2000 were consolidated into P1 and P2 - I run the latter, cheaper and slower. So if you're looking for that crowd, you won't find 'em by searching for DSR. There is a modest-sized online community on Yuku forums, if interested:
http://dsrforum.yuku.com/

But a lot of the crowd isn't online, it seems... or at least not active...

As for cost, another perspective is cost for speed... and I will point out that some parts are far cheaper than heavier, more powerful but slower cars... for example, my tires (little 13"ers) cost half that of a typical A Sedan Camaro or ITE Corvette, and I get twice the mileage to boot, while going many seconds faster around a typical track...