New racing and exotic based car club

[FastDriver]

all good points, but on one point, it being a private track i am not required to have insurance or medical coverage. It is going to be a private track on private property. Also I will higher an outside contractor to do the paving of it properly, not much to do once the track is made. It should be well constructed an not break too incredibly often. The track will be about as wide as a 4 lane road with a 1/4 mile strait. lots of nice corners and the entire length according to my pre production work comes out to be little more than 1.5 miles.

Second thing, yes of course I will be putting my son into racing leagues if that is what he wants, but it will be fun to drive on a home track also. Its all in the sport of having fun and driving fast cars around fun corners! This is gonna be great fun! But its not for everyone, so i can understand if it doesn't interest you.

[henk4]

all good points, but on one point, it being a private track i am not required to have insurance or medical coverage. It is going to be a private track on private property. Also I will higher an outside contractor to do the paving of it properly, not much to do once the track is made. It should be well constructed an not break too incredibly often. The track will be about as wide as a 4 lane road with a 1/4 mile strait. lots of nice corners and the entire length according to my pre production work comes out to be little more than 1.5 miles.

Second thing, yes of course I will be putting my son into racing leagues if that is what he wants, but it will be fun to drive on a home track also. Its all in the sport of having fun and driving fast cars around fun corners! This is gonna be great fun! But its not for everyone, so i can understand if it doesn't interest you.

so in case of a private track on private property, you can invite people to race, and they will not be able to hold you liable in case something goes wrong?

[FastDriver]

so in case of a private track on private property, you can invite people to race, and they will not be able to hold you liable in case something goes wrong?

that is correct. Here in America you can get a legal document called a liability waiver. It pretty much is like a piece of paper that says "drive at your own risk" meaning, if you crash and wreck your car and get hurt, it is your fault. People in America really love a good law suit and that is why we have these documents

[Matra et Alpine]

NOBODY will come with a 200K car and NOT expect to have some form of third party liabaility protection against your staff doing somethind stupid or another driver doing somethign stupid.

I think you should canvas typical potential customers. Certainly in the UK guys with beat up ford "trackday" cars dont care about things like that. Over here with decent cars we expect the track provider to ensure there are sufficient marshals, fire safety and medical safety cover.

Also "liability waivers" dont work if negligence is shown. Certainly not in the UK/Europe.

So I wish you the best, but do your research on those topics before creating an expensive white elephant. ( Rough estimate from maintaining tracks over here. If you are going to build a decent length track of "competition quality" then you are looking at minimum of $1.5-2M !! )

Another question to ask is how many potential members are within driving distance ?
IN A high performance sports car ?? Maybe, if you have the land you should copy the idea I've seen over here where you provide garage/storage facilities for the cars too. Then a "member" just turns up and drives. PLUS is the service/maintenance of the vehicles provides an income stream to pay for the facility.

[FastDriver]

oh yes, that is already an idea implimented in the construction of the track. I would like to have at least 20 garages available (like a storage garage) where someone could put their own lock on it and there would be electrical power provided through solar panels on the roof of the garage. I am only 29 years old, so I figure I have 30 years to get it all figured out. Id like to have something fun to do when I retire. I am currently working as a turbine engine maintainer and am working on getting my commercial Pilots liscence with a company that will place me into an airline position of first officer after working for them for 6 months as an instructor. If there are any pilots on here, you know it is a good job to retire from. So yes, this is a long term project and if nothing else I will still have the car club, and if no one wants to drive on my track, I will use it for driving my own cars for fun. Something to do when I hit 60 and I don't have to go to work every day

[Matra et Alpine]

hmmm, by the time 30 years has passed this likely wont be required by the vast majority.
Sounds like its the classic/historic owners you'd be getting by then and their needs become even more different

Also, 30 years time is way too late for your kid. If you are buidling a track you need to have it down in the next 6-7 years if you hope to offer him the chance to practice enough to build a skill early enough to give him a chance at the top. ( Unless he likes Nascar )

Not intending to pour cold water on your dreams, but trying to splash some cold water realism in your face

I do think you should decide quickly if this is for your son to try to build a racing skill or a retirement toy for you in 30 years time. As quickly as possible do the research to decide and then get all your effort behind the choice. Remember a poorly executed track will cost and attract nobody. A poorly constructed business plan will stall quickly. First step I'd say is to get along to as many trackdays run by specific marques and clubs and hav a structured interview to run against as many owners/potential "investors" as you can to see if it's go/no-go.

For your kid you'd be better creating a financial plan so that when he's old enough you can afford a winnebago with tools and competitive kart and time/cash for you to go to as many events as possible.

[FastDriver]

That is good advice Alpine, I would definately get him into karting in a league at the youngest age possible, the track would just be nice to have but if it doesn't work out, no big deal, there are plenty of racing leagues for him to join. I found this info on another forum. paving costs of a flat road course.

quoted from 2ndY2Kse on Good-Win Racing forum

"Typical roadway 12inch cut, grade, and compact $ 28.00 sqyd
Stone road base 6 to 8 inch $ 28.00 sqyd
Asphalt per each inch of thickness (4to6 req) $ 8.00 sqyd
Then add price of land close to city $40K ac
Land not convient to anything $5K ac"

[Matra et Alpine]

12" grade ? Not for a race track
Depends on your ground but, that wouldn't work here where we get rain, snow and the occasional warm dry day and run Porsche, Ferrari, Lambo and single seaters
Most important that a track never forms tramlines or develops ripples in the braking areas or it isnt' predictable and folks wont want to drive fast on it.
I'm assuming you are still wanting your "prestige cars" to want to come to it regularly ?

Even on your prices, 1 yard of length of track is about $300 per linear yard.
SO a decent (short) 1mile is $510,000 just for the track.
Then you need run offs dug and filled with safe "Kitty litter" --- and screeded daily.
Then you need armco safety barrier and - because you are going "prestige" an air barrier or as minimum tyre barrier on outside protecting cars from the armco.
Armco (based on NUrburgring costs) is another $150/yd. Presume a nice twisty track then 1/3 of it needs armco minimum, so now we're up to $3/4M and haven't even built marshal posts, paddock, pitlane, pits, service bays in the pits etc etc et
Assume you can get away with tyres (liability issues ) then possibly "free" from recycling centres Air barrier is uber expensive .... but the plus it will attract bikers
Just trying to use back of an envelope budgetary pricing and THAT is for a short track.
If you want a decent track with undulations, challenging curves and decent straight so a performance car can actually stretch it's legs you need to double that.
One and a half a million dollars invested on that then

A top kart with blueprinted engine and new rubber for every event you could run 5-6 seasons for that If you want to guarantee to win you will need to do that After that you'd hope he has attracted interest and sponsorship ( presuming he builds the skills ) to then become self-funding.

[FastDriver]

well before i say anything i would not mix cars and bikes on a track, i know a lot of tracks do that, but im not going for that. I was under the assumption that the Nurburgring had basic hard walls. that is what it looks like to me.

So basically what you are saying is "build a rally course" instead? i guess i didn't expect a paved road to cost as much. how can it cost that much to build a simple tarmac strip of track? it doesn't seem like the materials to do that would be so expensive. There must be a better way...

So maybe it would just be better for the car club to pay for track days once a month. something like that would be 1000 times cheaper. Then I would just make it free to join and everyone would pay their own track fee, which if based on the cost to drive the nurburgring would be about $10 per lap, calculate 20 - 25 laps in a good day might make it $250. So That might work, but i am still gonna build a track. Even if it ends up being dirt, we could race some old junkers around it for fun

[clutch-monkey]

if i recall correctly, cyco did some local investigation here and after CAMS certification and all that jazz it ends up costing close to a 700k-1mill per kilometre of track.. not including support facilities. it's just insane.

[FastDriver]

OK, so ill have to make some contacts with the wonderful people from CAMS and work out some free airline tickets for free tarmac haha

[Ferrer]

It's not a diesel econobox, that's what.

Indeed, it is not as a good as a Fabia 1.6 TDi, but it still is quite good.

[FastDriver]

ok so 2M for the Asphalt 1.5 mile road course.
dirt track of the same length - $1,200/wk for buldozer

who is up for racing some 1980s Bmws through the dirt!?

see we can still build a track and have fun, just not with the expensive cars!

[clutch-monkey]

i'd actually love to have a crack at those sportbike engined offroad buggy's.. that would be a hoot on a dirt track.

[Matra et Alpine]

No, FD, I wasn't suggesting you do a rally "track" as then you wont get ANY expensive car owner to come near it.
IF you still want the club idea then you have to invest.
Cheap tarmac wont last, cheap tarmac wont give grip in wet ( guess this one depends on weather where you plan to build ) amd cheap tarmac wont survive hot/cold cycles.
The underlying base has to be stable or you face having to tear up sections every 4-5 years and relay them to remove tramlining and ripples
Again, I presume you are wanting the prestige car owner who wants a near perfect track

Now, point made by others ... IF what you want is a fun place to hoon around in and for a couple of years let your kid learn the limits of handling skills early then a dirt track and bike engined buggies is WAY cheaper and possibility of offering rental ? ( Though the US will have to have changed from a few years back when customers comng over here woudl be amazed at what we legally could do on tracks without fear of litigation )

BUT .... cant you do that in public places anyway without the hassle of "building" something ??