What do you want to know more about?

[G.Irish]

The idea struck me to write some fan/newbie guides to some of the races I follow and I was wondering which series everyone wants to learn more about. For ex:

-Formula 1
-Moto GP
-WRC
-World Superbike
-Super GT
-Touring Car (SWC-Touring, Grand Am Cup, ETCC, BTCC)
-ALMS
-Grand Am
-AMA Superbike
-Supermoto

Of course there are a bunch that I left off but those are the ones I'm most familiar with.

[Feersty]

What all the acronyms above mean....

[G.Irish]

WRC = World Rally Championship
SWC-Touring = Speed World Challenge Touring
ETCC = European Touring Car Championship (now its World Touring Car Championship)
BTCC = British Touring Car Championship
ALMS = American Le Mans

[ScottyB]

frankly i'd like to hear all of it. WRC and BTCC would be the ones i'm most interested in, though!

[Feersty]

I like would like to learn about all the race series that involve cars that are production models. I don't care much for Formula 1 or any open wheel racing or NASCAR since people would place it with these as well. Don't like watching cars you can't buy and drive them on the street. Pretty much those where the car is as close to stock as possible, with modifications to the same extent as Spec Miata or class like that.

With the motorcycle series, everything except supermoto, MotoGP in particular I would like to get to know. But when it conflicts with football or basketball(NBA and college) on TV it gets the boot, sorry :roll:

[G.Irish]

Football and basketball are merely games. Racing is a sport.

I think I'll do this in order of interest. So right now it sounds like Touring Car type stuff has the most interest...

[JohnC]

Frankly at the moment, the bike stuff interests me much more. In order, MotoGP (enjoyed everything you've given us so far), WSBK, AMA, Supermoto.

[PDenbigh]

+1 vote for touring car (Grand-am) and how to eventually race in it

[D_Eclipse9916]

WRC and SWC touring I already mostly follow, but would love to always hear more about..

[white_2kgt]

+1 vote for touring car (Grand-am) and how to eventually race in it

bingo, and to expand on there, where to start, the general progresson through a drivers career, I know once you hit NASCAR/F1 that's pretty much it, but how do many of the drivers _get_ there. Maybe starting with 3/4 midgets or carts and work your way up through club racing/grandamerican/dp/etc...

[G.Irish]

Ok so it sounds like Touring car, specifically World Challenge and Grand Am Cup, are the front runners. That's fortuitous since we know Bimmerworld and RJ and I were considering doing some events with a TSX team next year.

I'll have to do some more research on WTCC and BTCC for next season. Supposedly Prodrive is going to be in WTCC and I think there are some new cars coming up.

Then with bikes, Moto GP, WSBK, and AMA. It might be a bit but I'll try to put up my fan guides bit by bit rather than waiting till they're all done and perfect (which may be never).

Keep the ideas/desires coming.

[G.Irish]

+1 vote for touring car (Grand-am) and how to eventually race in it

bingo, and to expand on there, where to start, the general progresson through a drivers career, I know once you hit NASCAR/F1 that's pretty much it, but how do many of the drivers _get_ there. Maybe starting with 3/4 midgets or carts and work your way up through club racing/grandamerican/dp/etc...

I don't know how the NASCAR ladder works exactly but I can tell you how most of the ladders in the US work, and prepare to be dissapointed.

To rise through the ranks in pro racing in the US it takes money, and lots of it. Whether its your own money or money from sponsors you are able to line up, you are pretty much not going to have very many options open for rides in any of the pro series if you don't have money.

This is very prevalent in the production-based series here. A lot of the Grand Am Cup and World Challenge guys are just rich guys paying out of pocket or guys who run a car/motorsport-related business. The rich guys often will buy a seat in one of the cars on a given team to do a race, a few races, or a season.

With the rented seats a lot of times the better a driver you are the less money you have to pay. When you are really, really good people will pay you to drive their cars. But that is a small handful of drivers. In World Challenge Touring only maybe 3 to 5 guys are in this situation. I'm not sure what the number is Grand Am Cup, but I know its not big.

In the GT series such as American Le Mans GT, Grand Am GT, and Speed World Challenge GT, there are more drivers that are paid to drive. Most of the guys who are paid have a long racing resume but there are some younger guns here and there. Porsche has a young factory driver's program and one American (Patrick Long) was able to get on it through the Red Bull Driver Search program. Unfortunately, having met its goals, Red Bull won't be doing the Driver Search anymore.

So, do you still wanna do some pro racing? Well, if you have strong results in either high level club racing or pro level karting, you could probably get a decent deal to pay for a ride in something like Grand Am Cup Touring or World Challenge Touring. One race in those series cost from about $3k to maybe $8k to run with one of the front runner teams.

For the GT series just multiply those numbers.

So yeah if you can get together some sponsors and you have the results, its perfectly attainable. But it has as much or more to do with money as it does with raw talent.

The pro bike racing picture is a little bit better over here, with about 15 riders getting paid to ride full time in the AMA road racing series and afew more in Motocross and Supermoto. The contingency money is a lot better in bike racing and of course bikes are cheaper. But then there's that whole bodily injury thing...

[Feersty]

Gerald how do you know so much about racing? For me it is just hard to come across a lot of information that keeps my interest. Sure I like to watch the occasional race on Speedchannel but it gets boring after a while. If you look at the sports section in the papers we get it is usually only 2 small columns a day, it is just hard because Americans aren't exposed to it as much as other parts of the world and it isn't right in our faces like the rest of the other sports are.

Even speedvision the only true "motorsport" channel is NASCAR through and through. I guess what I am trying to get is what is a good way to start to learn about this stuff and keep interest? Do you browse the net for articles?

Another series---> JGTC

[G.Irish]

JGTC = Super GT (they changed the name for this season)

You've gotta read all of the racing publications for that stuff. Then a lot of stuff I've learned through talking to people in the sport when I've crewed and hanging around some of the better message boards.

Some good mags are Racer and Autosport for cars. For bikes Road Racer X and Road Racing World are the two big ones I read, but there's a third Britsh mag called Motorcycle Racer that is also very good (I don't always buy it because its expensivo).

For websites, Crash.net has the most news. Theracesite.com has the best news for the US series but I don't read it much anymore. If you really look there are quite a few euro sites out there that are good too.

[mrbaggio]

I want to see some WRC and moto GP stuff.

-Justin

[Fyrfytr]

Football and basketball are merely games. Racing is a sport.

:roll:

gimme a break!