After talking to friends in the pub (where all great ideas are born) the challenge became clear: Actually to go racing on a tight budget and see what can be done by an average chap with little spare cash, no special facilities, no time and only a typical enthusiast’s tool box; one of those old cantilever ones that won’t shut properly and contains a selection of hammers, blown fuses, rusty bolts and the antique spanners that great uncle George owned.

Planning is important, so they tell me, and this was my attempt.

• Goal – Racing on a budget that would not ruin my life-Realistic but rewarding.
• Budget – £5000, be depressingly realistic! Allow for contingencies.
• Research – I looked through mags, Internet etc. to find a race series that suited me.
• More research – I attended some races, talked to people who were actually doing it.
• Draw up a timetable – I had date to aim at, my first race was going to be at Silverstone on April 1 st 2006.
• Buy a good starting point – pre prepped cars are cheaper than building your own research prices.
• Prep work – prepare a plan of work to do on the car don’t get side tracked.
• Go testing – get in as much practice as I can, try different car set-ups and record the results carefully.
• Organise logistics in advance – book b&b, trailer etc. Organise spares and help.
• Race day – turn up early, get lots of practice. Make sure I get as many people as I can to take pictures!
• Go home and enjoy the feeling of achievement.

My only advantage is that I am an automotive engineer; I have worked in product development for over sixteen years, mostly on engines. I know theory; it will be interesting to see how much relates to reality.

Decision

So where do I go from here? I feel the need to race a classic but apparently don’t have a spare couple of million to spend. In this country we are very fortunate to have a great racing community, there are lots of race series catering for all tastes, from minis to monsters.

I am 6’1” so I had to evaluate what I could fit in, its no good buying a fully sorted competitive Healey Sprite if you can’t get enough pressure on the brake pedal because the steering wheel is stopping your enormously long legs working. However the internal space a car provides is in no way linked to its external dimensions, for instance, MGBs are, unexpectedly, very good in the leg room department but can be lacking in headroom if you have a long body and some old Fiats reqire the driver to adopt the physique of an orang-utan. From a safety point of view it is obviously good to have a couple of inches between the top of my helmetand the roof /cage. It was also worth looking at a workshop manual (which library’s stock) for the chosen steed to see how complicated it is. In the case of my eventual choice, I looked at the engine section and thought ‘you must be bloody joking’ but decided to buy one any way.

When I looked at circuit racing, my first stop was the Locost championship in which a freind Ed (aka the ginger prince) races and indeed crashes. The series is named after the car designed by Ron Champion and stars in the book 'Build your own sports car ' The series is designed to be cheap and easy to take part in, a basic car costs £2000 and a mid field one about £4000. It is based on the 1.3 MKI/II Escort, is quite light and loads of fun. However, after a little research I was surprised to discover that some cunning chaps had designed a race series for XJ-Ss, which costs about the same! Amazingly I can go out in a two grand car and actually race a ruddy great V12! Where do I sign?

The XJ-S V12 is a fairly good starting point for a race car, the double wishbone suspension gives it excellent handling (the rear even has passive steering), the engine has 300BHP as standard and the shell is very stiff. It has good aerodynamics and copes well with its 150+mph top speed.

Of course there are down sides as well. Its a 20 year old car, it will have rust and the rubber bits will have perished. Its also quite heavy at an official 1733kg kerb weight.

Run by the Jaguar Enthusiasts Club (JEC) the mission statement for the series is to allow enthusiasts to race their own cars for a sensible budget and above all ‘To have fun’.

I like that.

There are classes for standard cars (both V12 and for 6 cylinder), that keeps costs down, and classes for modified cars, which doesn’t.

Thus, the minimum spec for race preparation involves painting the tow bracket yellow and putting a sticker on the door announcing 'ignition on steering column'! Oh, and putting a fire extinguisher in. A car prepared in this way will get me on the grid but won’t survive a race if driven competitively… But at least I will have been out there and can mention casually "ah yes, well of course when I raced a V12 at Silverstone...” At which everyone will yawn and wander off!

So, its time to buy a car..