Please discuss here all your remarks and pose your questions about all racing series, except Formula One. Both technical and other questions about GP2, Touring cars, IRL, LMS, ...
Worked on a F-BMW team(Team Autotecnica) on and off last 4 years as a mechanic and most are like yourself. The drivers need to raise enough money to run a full season(I believe in > $120k/year). A multi-car team might cost less per driver. And if you have done well enough in karting you might be able to get scholarship drive which the series gives you a good deal of money to the team of your choosing to help you run a year....
Good luck on your endeavour, and get out there and raise some money....racing is not cheap at all....
yes and no. Some just have rich parents with money to spare, others may be backed by some business interest. In 2004 one of the driver is from the Red Bull program. 2005's driver is a scholarship driver and also backed by his parents. 2006's driver is backed by his parent's business.....
What open wheel racing have you done? Formula BMW is a top notch driver development series that is up several rungs on the driver development ladder.
Most aspiring American drivers start in karts and progress through the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) in Formula 500 or Formula V (as in Volkswagen) before going on to Formula BMW.
Graham Rahal started in karts, SCCA open wheel, Formual BMW, Formula Atlantic, Grand Am Daytona Prototypes and Champ Car before graduating high school.
Graham was not your average aspiring American driver. He has the blood lines, driver skill set and financial resources.
Formula BMW has an excellent website as does SCCA. Both have information about how to start with their series. I know less about US karting groups.
Beaver Run in Pennsylvania and Road America at Elkhart Lake Wisconsin both have world class karting tracks. Juan Paublo Montoya's brother raced at Beaver Run and Graham Rahal raced at Elkhart Lake, both in karts.
I don't think much of the SCCA ladder is necessary, helpful yes, as you have more stuff on your CV to impress a sponsor, but skillset or driver development wise not really. Most drivers that I've seen from FBMW are in the 15-17 years old range. More closer to 15 than 17. Most have not raced in a car before and FBMW being the first step they took. Depends on the team you run with and how good the engineers are, most can get up to speed quick enough. Whats also important about getting into something like BMW early is that it is actually usable as an yardstick to compare with others as they do race the F1 and Champ car races, and the world final puts you up against the rest of the FBMW rank. Something that can't be said for SCCA series or Formula Mazda. However in terms of cost and the "bang for your bucks" ratio Mazda certainly looks more tempting, it's hard for someone IMO to progress out of it if your aspiration is in Europe.
