How to become a professional driver?

How can I become a professional race car driver?

• Would it be wise to buy a car like and RSX or 370Z or G37x or Mustang to get practice driving stick since I am kind of an amateur at driving stick? How do I get sponsorships for racing? One of my friends works at a racing chip company thats fairly new how much would be reasonable to ask for in exchange for advertising? How do you get started on the tracks? I only want to track race since bad things seem to happen when people street race. The situation: I'm 21 and I decided sick of college and find my business internship boring and its something like a 10 year old could probably do just as good. I just think I would enjoy a career as a race car driver more than a business executive since I've always liked fast cars and can drive pretty good when I have the car for it. The only problem is I don't know anyone who races (legally for a living). I only have a slow car worth like $9,000 and $20,000 in the bank I could invest. Also I live in Wisconsin near Milwaukee just incase any one knows of events in that area or the Elkhart are since thats a pretty big raceway I see its like $4,000 to enter this one race I looked at there, which seems kinda of steep especially since people are already paying like $10-15 to come watch the race.

• Answer:

  I don't mean to be a downer, but there is a lot of bad news to convey here. At 21 years old, you are starting about 10-12 years late in terms of developing yourself as a potential professional racer. Motorsports are like other sports, and consider a 21 year old asking "I've never played baseball, but want to know how to become a professional baseball player." Assuming you have good or great natural talent, it still takes many years to develop the skills you will use with that talent. You say you drive pretty good, but how are you judging this? Driving on the street has very little in common with driving on the track, and unless you've raced, then you really have no basis on how to judge if you are good (and again, even with great natural talent and top notch coaching, it takes years of practice to be at the point where you could be competitive). The next bad news is the money aspect. Even for "cheap" racing, $4k is a drop in the bucket. Most amateur racing events will cost much less than this, but your annual costs will still run $10k+ just to field an entry and run in the middle to the back of the pack... if you are planning to become a pro, you will need to be running at the front of high level amateur series where annual budgets will be $300k - a couple million. So where does that leave you? Leaving aside the uphill battle (and to be clear, even if you were an incredibly talented 10 year old with a huge trust fund, it would still be an uphill battle that would require luck), the first thing to do is to start getting some seat time. You will need hundred, if not thousands of hours actually driving competitively. The cheapest places to get some experience would be either in go karts or with local clubs at autocross events. Find events in your area and do every single one you can! HPDE and Open Track events offer additional driving opportunities - again, if your goal is to be professional, do every single one of these that you can. From there you will need to attend a licensing school... you can attend the basic SCCA/NASA variety where you bring your own car and equipment (and that would be a racecar that meets class and safety rules and equipment like a multi layer nomex suit, current rated SA helmet, HANS, nomex gloves and shoes and undies, etc); or pay more and do something like Skip Barber. When you have your competition license, you can register for your first amateur race. Spec classes, some touring classes, and the slowest of the formula classes are generally the most affordable (you can like obtain a car, do basic prep, and run a season for as little as $20-30k). But if your goal is to be a pro, you will need to spend no more than a year here before moving on to higher (and more expensive) competition. You will also need to employ professional coaching around this time if not sooner. With the goal of being pro though, you would probably be best served specializing in some kind of GT car... since you will not actually be able to be pro until your late 20s to early 30s, the window of opportunity will have long since closed on the higher levels. Most people that manage to turn pro at such later ages are largely specialists that are able to take opportunities that come up in the longer endurance races (and being pro doesn't mean you won't need another job... very very few professional racers do only that). Lastly, as to your sponsorship question: this is a business proposition. If you win, then the space on your car is more valuable. While it never hurts to ask and to ask for as much as possible, understand that a novice driver, even talented and funded, will be running at the back. If you want to gather sponsors you will need to look for ways to maximize their value (ie - a beautiful looking car that will also be displayed at car shows) and be willing to take things other than cash for your sponsorship (creatively trading among sponsors can net you much greater returns in the long run).