Mr.S

Hey there guys....my name is Charlie Schendzielos, and I'm looking at pursuing a career in racing, whether it be driving (I currently race karts at a national level right now), or wrenching, fabricating, etc. I was wondering if i could pick your brains about what type of technical schools you recommend, and what kind of knowledge a lot of the top race teams are looking for.

The reason i ask is that I'm signed up to go to Wyotech (www.wyotech.com) in July. My buddy is big-time into those pretty, but crappy handling, crappy braking, overall crappy muscle cars. Don't get me wrong, they're nice and all, but I like REAL race cars, from old 904/6's to 935's.....current 996 cup cars, Ferrari, Lotus Elises, etc. It seems Wyotech is very heavily geared towards old technology, i.e., body on frame losers, lol. However, they will teach me about MIG and TIG welding, english wheel, etc.

What should i do or pursue if i want to get into doing real road-racing, or starting my own shop for customizing German musclecars? Do you think Wyotech is the best in the nation? They charge over $30,000 for a year of education...so i guess it'd better be good.

Thanks for taking the time out to read this. I appreciate any insight you may give me. Ciao!

Mr.S

No one has any advise at all?

Cory M

You can get a job wrenching on openwheel cars at some of the driving schools and lesser series like Barber Dodge and Star Mazda, I know a couple of guys who did this at Skip Barber and then moved on to Atlantics, and CART. I know another guy who did it over the summer at a school in Canada and worked at Swift assembling Atlantics the next summer. In my opinion this is a more direct route into racing that Wyotech. The hours can get rough on race weekends and the pay is low but you get much needed experience and you can meet a lot of important people, which is what it's really all about - meeting people and making contacts. Maybe you'll find that the novely wears off and you don't really want a job in racing, who knows.

IrocMan

Hello,
I did a stage at a famous french tuner working for european constructors and even had an 'advanced mechanics' diploma but if you want to be in the race, I think you have to jump in it as soon as possible !
I have finally more than 10 year experience in car racing -my God i didn't see them- and I had to make choices that do I am alone now because I have a precise goal. I just work on it as a hobby with few friends who have the complementary skills.
So I decided to drive only for the pleasure (club track and amateur/regional short races) and try to develop solutions for our experience.

All that story just to tell you that my recommendation would be : take a car, tune it yourself, race, make our one experience for at least one or two years. Then try to integrate a serious team.

But there are probably greater specialists than me here who will recommend something different