Expert: Dan Liddy - 4/23/2009

Question
hi Dan, my name is jay chavez and i am very very serious about getting a career in rally racing or formula racing. i am 22 years old and i work at a well known dealership in urbana illinois called obrien auto park. i work as a heavy line technician for hyundai, i am also nissan certified. i worked about 2 years for an nissan dealer. my question is how would i go about getting started into rally racing? it has always been my passion to race.what do i need to learn and do to get into racing.location wise where can i go to stick my foot in the door? i have thought about asking my boss if he would sponsor me, but i dont know what is next. i dont want to just race at a track, i want to make it big. just dont know how or where to start. can you help?

thanks jay,

Answer
Hi Jay:

Lets start with the facts of life .  Regarding any professional career in motor racing you first have to have an amazing talent, and second you have to have access to a LOT of money. Thirdly, you have to have started racing , probably go karts of quarter midgets wehn you were about 6 or 7 years old.

To TRY for a Formula One career you need access to about $5 MILLION dollars of private funding (sponsorship) ,  that may do it, and it may not.

Now to try and make this a happier answer, you CAN start with rally racing as an amateur in the Sports Car Club of America. It's more popular up there in the north than it is here. I don't know of any rally events here at all. So, go to < www.SCCA.org > and look around for your area Region, then your local district. There will be names of people you can contact, and soon you can join the crowd.  Local members will be able to guide you to rally events locally, and if you wish to actually drive race cars on a racing circuit, they'll show you how to pursue that as well.

In SCCA you can race nearly anything , but be sure to know the rules and so forth before starting out. You'll learn that there are several types of formula cars you can buy and race, from dirt cheap to a sky's-the-limit price range.

As far as making it big, frankly very few of us are able, and it takes a great deal of money. As a contrast to that though, Randy Pobst(from here in Florida) started out Solo racing in SCCA, moved to road racing, won a couple of national championships and has been a factory driver for Porsche, Honda,  and now drives for Mazda. It took him over 10 years to get there though, and he did have some major sponsorship.

So you can feed your need to race in SCCA, and it's a good place to start, but a pro career is only out there for those who really work HARD at it.  Feel free to write again in you have further questions.

Good luck

Dan Liddy
Sarasota, Florida