Weekend Warrior

I am in the market to possibly change my car class and may want to start racing a corvette in SCCA Club and National Racing, what class should I consider? I think that if I raced T1 competitively, I would need a C5 or C6. Is there anything that a C4 would be competitive at?

Thanks in Advance

AU N EGL

Welcome to Corvette forum.

Where do you live ?

that would help some of us help you out.

Weekend Warrior

Hey I know you!

I am in No. VA.

AU N EGL

spazegun2213

What do you race now? The regional t1 series is ummm, very unimpressive. All the nice cars run the national races and are $$$$. There are a few of us around here that race NASA with ST-2 prepared corvettes, and there is a LOT of competition with nasa.

wtknght1

If you run T1, you'll have to use a C5 or C6. If you just want to run regionals (ITE), TCC, or NASA, then you can run whatever.

If you want a shot at going to the Runoffs (SCCA National Championship) go grab a good C5 or C6 and come run with us. In fact, my old C5 is back up for sale on this forums somewhere. It was a top 10 car at the runoffs every year!

eogel

If you are racing at the National level, a C5 or C6 is appropriate. If you are racing at the local/regional level, a C4 can be prepared and driven very competitively, but the preparation and driving are critical.
What kind of responses you will get to your question(s) depends on your objectives, experience, budget, and what you are trying to accomplish, which are not stated.
As Ross (spazegun2213) said, there are several of us racing in NASA ST2, ST1, and SCCA ITE. There are more Corvette participants in NASA. Touring Challenge for Corvettes (TCC) is also an option, but you have to travel more than you might want to as a regular participant with them. Also as Ross pointed out, there are not many T1 cars running at the regional level.
The specific classes available to you for all Corvette years include, but are not limited to, those below. Consult the specific organization for their applicable rules: TCC Traditional (C4 only), TCC Prepared, NASA ST2 and ST1, SCCA ITE. There are higher levels of prep, but based on your initial post, I would not interpret they are what you are looking for.
Ed

Weekend Warrior

Thanks for the responses.

I have raced in SM, both NASA and SCCA for 3 years now. I want to race something else now. I have won many races in SM on many different tracks (Sebring, VIR, FIR (Phoenix) and Summit Point). I don't want to spend more than 50K on the car. I love traveling and maybe TCC would work for me. I am begining my investigation of different classes, hence my questions.

Weekend Warrior

I looked through 5 pages of your posts and did not find anything. Did I not go far enough?

wtknght1

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show....php?t=2140014

This was my old car. The guy that originally bought it was from out west somewhere, then he sold the car to its current owner. I finished 6th at last year's Runoffs in that car. There's also another C5 T1 car on this site for sale. Either way, you can pick up a good, competitive used C5 for about 30K with plenty of wheels and spares.

Come on in, the water's fine!

spazegun2213

a vette is a perfect car for you then. Honestly with a well prepared Ex t-1 corvette you can race in a few classes with minor changes. Its nice, affordable and a ton of fun.

jamie furman

Sorry to hijack thread but it seemed like a good one to get some info. I just got my SCCA license but I haven't raced or even gotten to a track yet, how do I go about getting started making laps somewhere, hpde or something? The closest track to me is Summit point about an 1.5 hours away but I would be willing to drive further to get the experience. I did a couple of fatt at summit a few years back and I am a long time drag racer but I haven't road raced and I need to get my feet in the water any suggestions? Its easy to drag race you just show up and tech and run and dragstrips are everywhere, how do I get started on the road courses?
thanks for any info?

parkerracing

A TCC C4 is about 15k with some spares and you could race for a year or more with the other 35k. You may run through that 50k pretty quick in T1. /:\

wtknght1

www.scca.org has a "how to get started" section that will help. But in short, I'd definitely recommend you do some DE events with a normal street car before you jump in a fully prepared race car and get your competition license. That would be overwhelming for you.

Take your Vette (or whatever car you want) to a HPDE school somewhere. Check out www.trackschedule.com and go take a few schools at a close track and see if you like it. If you do and want to go further, then look around at some decent race cars. DO NOT TRY TO BUILD YOUR OWN!!!! Spec Miata is a great starter class and reasonably cheap. Corvettes run in a class called T1 in SCCA and there are also ST2 and ST1 in NASA, and Touring Challenge for Corvettes (TCC).

You'll need to take an SCCA accredited racing school or two before you can get your novice permit. Once you do, then you can go full W2W racing at the regional level. If you do well and keep your nose clean, you "graduate" to the National level and can qualify to go the National Championship Race (otherwise known as the Runoffs)...which is in 2 weeks by the way.

Since you have so little experience, I'd advise getting plenty of seat time at DE events and then regionals before trying to tackle the National level. Bring anything but a fully prepared racing machine and great car control to a National event and you will get smoked.

If you're really serious, give a shout anytime.
678.378.3259

wtknght1

A good T1 car at 30K and you'd have 20K left over...which would last you quite a while running on used tires. If you want to run new tires, add in an additional $1300 per weekend. At the National level, I budget about $3K every time I go to the track...which includes tires, brakes, gas, hotels, etc.

rfn026

Jami,

Spend a year running DE events before you jump into the deep end. SCCA National racing can destroy your food budget. It gets very expensive very fast. I know guys that are well over $10,000 a weekend.

Remember racing is cheap, it wining that gets expensive. I find that I get a whole lot more track time with Chin Motorsports than I ever did with SCCA. Then again we don't race against each other.

You make you choice and write your checks.

Richard Newton
My Blog

BuckeyeZ06

Your response makes sense, but I have to tell you that was not the path I took. I did one DE with NASA at Mid Ohio in April 2003. I knew then I wanted to race. So I sold my street C5Z and went racing. April 2004 was my first SCCA T1 National race at Summit Point.

Was it a steep learning curve? I guess so. But I wouldn't change what I did or how I did it.

BTW: I did buy an already established race car...I did not start with a new build.

wtknght1

There's no doubt about that. Unless you do a test day beforehand, the actual race weekend is very slim on seat time. If you go to a track like Sebring, VIR, Road America, etc where it's a long circuit, you could end up doing less than 20 laps for the weekend...easily.

Regional weekends normally have a bit more track time, but the Nationals are scarce. I still have to do a DE event or two during the year to keep in practice...and I usually do the test days too.

0Vector Vette

I aggree with Chris. You will get more track time doing HPDE. However, there is nothing quite like wheel to wheel racing.

If you are looking for a good C4 to race, we have two for sale. One is a TCC traditional class, the other is prepared class. PM me if you want more information.

jamie furman

Well I am serious, I flew out to Arizona a couple of months back and took the 4 day advanced road racing course with Bob Bondurant and I did pretty good and I was able to get my SCCA license.
Even though I haven't done any formal road racing I am educated in race cars and I definately know not to try and build one, and I really don't want to try the racing yet until I am familiar with all the processes involved. The answers you guys gave me are exactly what I was hoping they would be as I want to do some HPDE's and get the seat time suggested before I jump into racing and like I said I really was not sure how to go about it. I guess I just take my Z06 or ACR to the next HPDE that is available with an approved helmut and they will lead me through the whole gambit and from there the progression will just follow? Is that how it works?
Thanks again for all the help