QuestionQUESTION: Hi, I'm 15 and I live in Surrey, BC, Canada. What I want to know is what do I need to do to go to F1 and how much money I need per year. I heard many say that go-kart racing is the first step, but I don't know where do join it. And is there another way instead of go-kart racing?
ANSWER: Time for a lesson in reality.
If you want to be a driver in F-1 you mucst start in karts around age 8 and once you start your racing progression program you need access to several million dollars (US) Probably $2 million per year at the start.
Usually this money comes from family and friends , and later on , company sponsorships. Becoming a Formula One driver is cartain to make a person quite wealthy, but they must surely come from considerable wealth to start with.
Best for you to stay in school for now, and think about racing sports cars in Canada and the USA.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are probably already to old to consider Formula One.
Write me again about getting into sports car racing if you like, I can give you better information.
Sincerely
Dan Liddy
Sarasota, Florida
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QUESTION: how about Indy car or Champ car? And what kind of sports car racing?
ANSWER: OK It still takes a tremendous amount of effort, skill and usually a LOT of money. The most important thing at your age is to STAY IN SCHOOL, then think about getting a degree in some sort of Mechanical Engineering (and making VERY good grades). Stay with the karting, try to move up to the 'shifter karts' join the WKA and learn all you can.
Sports Car Racing includes American LeMans, and the Grand Am Series of Daytona Prototypes. You arrive in these series by going through development programs such as Formula Atlantic, Formula Mazda , and various series in Sports car Club of America. I believe you have SCCA regions in Canada, or that there is a Cnadian club that does the same kind of racing.
In short, becoming a professional race driver is NOT an easy thing to accomplish, and there are years and years of hard work ahead of you if that's the path you choose. There will also be some significant requirements for money, so you had best get started on that as soon as you can.
I would suggest you do some Gopogle searches for sports car racing in Canada, racing schools and their costs, and things of that sort. Also subscribe to some good magazines, My favorite general purpose mag is Circle Track. It's mostly about stock car racing in America, but it is about racing, and racing technology, and has some great articles about building and maintaining race cars. nTry "www.circletrack.com" for more info.
Again, I wish you good luck
Dan Liddy
Sarasota, Florida
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QUESTION: I get good grades anyway so that is not a problem. I checked and there aren't any SCCA regions in Canada. I forgot to ask before, but what about rally racing? And my last question is that if I make allot of money doing the job I'll have will it be easier, harder, or impossible to get into professional racing in 5-10 years from now?
AnswerOK stay with the kart racing, that's the bare bones experience you'll need, and most of today's pros started there. That list includes names like Jaques Villeneuve, Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Al Unser Jr. , Michael Andretti and on and on. When finances permit, move to amateur sports car racing. I know there's a national group that sanctions it but for some reason it's not coming to me tonight on the web.
Here's a complete list of racing related schools around the countries. You'll find most of them to be in the $3000 for a week range, plus or minus. Certainly most of them will have web sites you can explore. http://ca.dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/Sports/Auto_R
If your goas is to become a professional race driver, focus on that along with your school goals. Do all the racing you can, karts, small cars what ever you can afford. Talk to some older folks about promoting yourself to professional teams. Look into spnosorships even at your age. If you can become a company spokesman, the sky is the limit. Keep googling, there's library full of information out there if you do the searches.
Keep trying
Dan
