Motorsport

What are some of the motorsports you can get into on a budget? Anything. Dirt,pavement,cars or other

>pic somewhat unrelated

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dirtbiking

If you're on a budget, you'll be looking at autocross, low level bracket racing (drag), and maybe some sort of 1/4 mi circle track racing.

Of course autocross comes to mind & karting. But can you really be competitive in either on a budget?

It seems like the SCCA classing wouldn't let a slower/cheaper car (when stock) be competitive even if upgraded to have something a higher model had because it isn't original for that model and would bump it into a higher class.

But especially karting i hear new tires after 3 races is the normal thing and some change tires every race?

Rallying. Literally buy a car, reinforce it, put some off-road tires on, then rag it until it breaks.
Fix, repeat.
Fix, repeat.
Then buy a new car when some important weld goes twang.

It sounds fucking autistic, but lawn mower racing is actually fucking awesome, and cheap to boot. You can pick up a transaxle-driven rider at scrap price (Ideally under $100), ramp the HP with bolt-ons, mod the pulley ratios, chop the deck off, and go to town.

I've had friends go over 45 mph on them, but I'm not that ballsy.

Dont listen to this idiot.

The cheapest way is to buy a rally car second hand, usually on ebay.

I live in the UK and do stage rallying in the BTRDA series (malcolm wilson stages most recently).

With a small car (ie a ford ka in the uk), you can spend about 4 thousand quid. With that I got the car, MSA compliant roll cage, permitted tyres, uprated engine, enough spares to build two new ka's, and three spare engines.

You need to learn a lot of car repair too, which is a steep learning curve.

Tyres last longer than a couple of events. On gravel with a small car they'll last a season depending on how you drive, tarmac is what wears them out. You'll want to take the anti roll bar out for gravel, put in extinguisher systems etc.

On 4 wheels endurance road rally is probs the cheapest. No crashing but still a competative element. Off road, autocross or single venue stage rally, sleep in a truck that can also tow the car on a rented trailer, but thats rare in the uk and you can't just show up with a bodge job, you'll never get through scrutineering.

Not sure about bikes, but theyll be cheaper to start with. You need a car thats MSA logbooked (or w/e the USA equivalent). Literally just scour ebay, people put them up there all the time. Other motorsport auction places are much more expensive.

And no, you cant just buy a car, weld it a bit, take it to a field and ram it around, because the FIA wouldn't recognise it as a motorsport.

Bump, Interested to hear any other options/opinions dont think there is much rally within 200 miles of me, same with lawnmower racing but I'm going to look into them a bit farther as well as the circle track and the other things I have yet to look into very far. My original plan was to build a autocross car but it seems like it would cost just as much as some other sports to be near competitive?

Pick yourself up a cheapo fwd coupe, make it as light as possible, add a hillbilly roll cage and do as many handling upgrades as you can. Congrats you can now into budget rally racing and depending on what you bought, 2K cup. Dont be temped to go for a awd or rwd as a first rally car though, they take alot of experience to drive on a rally stage. Fwd is always easiest to drive and can do many things others cannot
Pic related get something like that

There's also banger racing. Buy a large, older car, strip it down and convert the engine to a simple mechanical system.
Then you just drive it in circles until the wheels jam against the bodywork, pry it off again, and repeat.

youtube.com/watch?v=SkHXicD3o5g

easily mini motard / mini bike racing but you'll need to be a bikefag and you'll be at disadvantage if you're too big and thicc

If you're a tallfag just get a full sized bike and race those.

I race non competitive with this group called Speed Ventures. Its primarily based on tracks in the west coast US. Minimum requirements are basically having a drivable car with a seat belt and good tread on your tires. Pretty good fun.

In central Europe autoslalom or clubslalom is a good choice. Basically like American autocross, but slightly higher speed. Sometimes in large parking lots, sometimes on actual closed off roads in industrial estates or the countryside, spiffed up with extra cone obstacles.

Get an old shitbox, gut it, install race suspension and the smallest widest tires possible, race around cones. Doesn't even matter if it's FWD as long as the wheelbase is short and the weight is low.

>have a pit bike sitting in the garage from when I was a kid
C-Could I convert it?

of coursh, all that shit is all modular.

>racing on a budget

Rally.
Buy a cheap car
Weld on some metal safety bars
Buy tires
Go race

This. The next best thing is some low level oval racing, I'm not sure of the classes in the US but they are generally pretty relaxed about the whole "safety" thing. You're going to get wrecked at some point if you do that though.

>noncompetitive
>race

Uhh, I think you just did a track day.

Old boss used to compete in Sprint cars actually. He had a team of about a dozen guys, you need a company that makes millions annually, to back you up even with sponsors. Plain and simple.

Know some guys that did motocross and supercross. Not cheap at all.

When i think budget, I think what can some 25 year old that makes $20/hr comfortably afford while NOT living with his parents. That narrows down to go karts and driving MX-5's in a parking lot. Assuming you have a truck to tow your rig, causing if your autocross car is used to drive there, and get you to/from work, lol you're a mess.

>Racing
>On a budget

Pick one and only one.

that gets expensive fast

250 class, lightweight twins (SV650/Ninja 650), and hare scrambles are relatively cheap. but you do need a bike hauler.

Every dirt track in America has a Bomber Class. The rules are generally 4 cylinder, stock motor and trans, dot tires, all glass removed, roll cage, safety seat with 5 point harness, fuel cell.

That's about as cheap as you're going to get.

tires are expensive

I paid $100 for this Grand Am and it will be going on it's 3rd enduro come June.

Interesting. How much total do you think you have in it/have spent racing it?

I bought the car for $100, gutted the whole car, added a door bar and seat bar (metal I had laying around), relocated the battery inside (had battery box and cables laying around), tubed the tires ($40 in tubes), and that's it. Destroyed the LF control arm and inner tierod first race, bought cheapos off RA for $30, straightened it back out and raced it again on a dirt track (should have pulled the windshield for that mudfest), she's not so pretty anymore, but it's still got a race left in it.
As far as I'm concerned nothing beats bone stock shitbox racing. I'm an amateur at beast, but still loads of fun for very little money.

youtu.be/wl3gxdmvb-4
youtu.be/TnNLnmsksSA

Also should add I only run a few races a year, which is fine by me. I normally get a few enduro's out of each car, and when they get too shitty I demo them at the end of the night, scrap them, and get my money back.

II had no idea it was that cheap, good to know. I used to have a circle track 20 minutes from me up until this year so I'm going to have to look into tracks that are 1hr+ away but other than that that sounds like a ton of fun.

I'm lucky to have 3 circle tracks within 45mins of me. I hope you find one near you that runs enduro's; they can't be beat fun per dollar. 113 cars in the last one I raced.

Kek how did you see in that shit? Head out the window?

Pretty much, the caddy I raced in the v8 class was even worse.

There is a guy in /ovg/ that did shitbox oval racing last year. Said it was $2000 complete for the year.

I was expecting to find kart racing posted ITT

only worthwhile option

>enduro
this looks amazingly fun. I wish there was something like this in the midwest.

ice track racing.
>full dagumi
>doesn't rek car like track days, rally etc unless you crash into an icewall somehow
>no mods needed
>stock cars welcome
>doable with a daily
Seriously its the best way to get into racing and its more fun than cone dodging

budget rally racing isn't.
Fucking going on trackdays is heaps and bounds cheaper than rally

Ice track.
>20 euro entrance fee
>not even tire wear
>only need to repair if you fuck up yourself

There is no racing series where you can put $5k into a car and be regionally competitive. If you want to compete beyond a local level, it's going to cost you. There's no way around that. Even in something like Spec Miata, where all the cars are ostensibly equal, the national champions' cars cost tens of thousands of dollars more than the rest of the pack's, and all of those people came from regional championships where their cars cost tens of thousands more than everyone else's.

The thing about heavily regulated series is that they limit the number of places you can find an edge, and it becomes ever more difficult and expensive to make your car that little bit better. The thing about relatively unregulated races like PPIHC and WTAC is that it's a venue for the big boys to show off their stuff, and it attracts a lot of money. The thing about cost-regulated series like Lemons, ChumpCar, and GRM Challenge, is that it's impossible to enforce and so they've stopped trying.

Demolition derby?

>Buy old shit box that hardly runs
>Take out all glass
>Weld/bolt a steel beam across the driver's door
There you go. Take it to your local county Fair. The one near me even has a compact car crazy 8 race. It was mostly 90s coupes. I've never participated but I think once I graduate I'll start working on one.