wstar's Journal

wstar

The Situation (not as in Jersey Shore!)

So I've been returning to pondering the long-term fate of my growing road-racing hobby, and I think I'm slowly coming around to some decisions here. I like getting lots of track time, and I think this is a hobby that will stick with me a while. I also think I'm going to want to do something competitive (not pro-racing-career competitive, I mean hobby-level competitive) because it makes it even more fun.

I love driving this 370 because it's what I started learning to drive (well, really drive) on, and I've put a lot of blood, sweat, and dollars into this car. However, if I want to do something competitive with it, I'm not sure I'm up for that.

It would mean some NASA/SCCA sports-car class that it fits in (e.g. NASA TT3/ST3 in roughly its current condition + a few extra safety mods to pass inspection). The thing is, if I look hard at the costs on that, they're pretty high over the long term, and they start getting even higher the further you get up the ranks in being really competitive for the top, as there's a lot of custom engineering and fabrication and exotic parts and constant refreshes of slightly-worn parts, etc involved if you want to really compete. And even at these relatively mild hp:weight ratios, the car takes a fair amount of abuse even without incidents. Any incident (contacts, flying into walls, blowing an engine/trans, etc) will be a huge surprise chunk of change that I'd have to be ready to absorb quickly to stay in the game, or could just put me out for a good long while.

So I've been digging on the net and looking at various other class options. Mostly I've been looking at the various lower-cost spec-based series, because the idea of having a relatively fixed spec is appealing (far less engineering and dollars and rules-bending involved in placing well - focus is on driving). While my income-level is pretty good, I do have a full time job to contend with and my hobby resources are far less than infinite

SM vs SRF

Really, the top contenders from everything I've looked at boil down to Spec Miata and Spec Racer Ford. I briefly entertained some of the really-low end open-wheel formulas like Formula 500 as well, but for all practical purposes those amount to running an oversized go-kart with bigger wheels and a snowmobile engine on a road-course, and I decided that wasn't appealing.

SM and SRF both have a few key basic things I really like: they're Spec series, they're relatively-low cost, the cars are probably fun to drive, they *can* be driven in mixed-car-type groups at random events/DEs/etc. Both have a really active community of friendly people, and have race groups with lots of cars in the field all around the country, etc.

At this point in the process, I'm leaning heavily towards SRF as my option. The key points in SRF's favor (vs SM and vs all other options in general):

1. Fairly low entry cost. $12-18K will buy you a used SRF machine that's ready-to-race with a few spares on hand if you shop around a while. SM is even cheaper of course, so this is really a point in SM's favor between the two. Still, it's not a bad entry cost.
2. Really really spec. Unlike SM where at competitive levels there's all sorts of rules-bending and ways to spend gobs of money to get an edge in some grey area and a wild variety of suppliers of parts of various repute... the SRF spec is very tightly controlled. Single source for major parts, and they're sealed at the factory and can't be modded (e.g. engine, trans, shocks, etc). There's no room for deviations in anything really, except tuning your own suspension settings. The sealed engines are tuned to +/- 3HP at the factory and never get touched again. This is both nice for fairness of competition, and it's nice because it completely takes the option off the table for me wasting a ton of time and money modding/upgrading those parts.
3. The maintenance costs are pretty damn cheap, although it's debatable whether it's cheaper than SM. E.g. 1-3 sets of tires last a season at $600/set. Brake rotors + pads last a whole season. Really all that's left after that is fluids and such for a very small engine/car.
4. Damage is *way* cheaper than even Spec Miata. Being a custom-designed, extremely simple tube-frame car with fiberglass body panels (just 3 of them: front, mid, rear), and absolutely no excess mechanical/electrical stuff anywhere, repairs are easy. A serious wreck in a production-based Miata may take thousands to fix and the same incident in an SRF might take only hundreds.
5. Value - a relatively minor point, but SRF cars seem to retain value and re-sell well. The series has been around for 20 years now and had a handful of rare updates to the spec, but even the oldest cars (that have been updated) are still running competitively and selling between SRF racers at good values.
6. There's an SRF shop at one of my local tracks (MSR Houston), so I'd have some local support for repairs and parts and whatnot.

The road from here

I think the first thing I need to do is take a couple test drives sometime in the next few months on various options, especially SM and SRF cars, so that I'll know whether the class feels good to drive (to me) and how they compare from a driver perspective. If I pull the trigger on this, it will probably be at least a year out from now, so I'm just planning well in advance.

All in all I'm still likely to keep my 370Z around as well. It's nice to have 2x options to bring out to a random DE-type event, especially if one might be out of service at any given time. The Z is fun and has two seats so I can give rides and get on-board advice. The major directional change in plans that starts taking effect now, though, is that I don't really ever intend to race the Z competitively in a real class. It's just going to be a fun track car and nothing else.

Since SRF is more of an SCCA thing than a NASA thing, that also means as I look to pick up a comp license I'm more likely to look at SCCA than NASA now so that things are simpler when I pick up the SRF, and I may not bother trying to hump my Z out to far-flung NASA events in the near future like I was intending. Actually, the NOLA trip that was coming up soon is almost certainly off the table. I'm still a NASA member though and will likely hit their upcoming event at TWS with the Z for HPDE4 and talk about maybe doing TT3 not-very-competitively with it just for the fun times.

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