Track daying - Annual cost?

[fwaggie]

Hi all,

I'm looking at buying a car with the intention of using it as a track day tool.

Car is an Evo 5, light tweeking (340bhp). It needs to be road legal as I don't have anything suitable for towing it.

I'm guessing at a track day a month and have guessed the costs:-

Car ~£6600
Insurance £1400
12 x track day fees 12 x £150 £1800
4 sets of tyres £2000
1 x mot £150
1 x tax £235
2 x service £1000

total £13100

value of car in a year £5500

cost for 12 trackdays £7600

That sound about right? £600 a month to go and play?

The cost hasn't put me off but does sound a bit high, I suppose if I don't go mad I can get away with 2 sets of tyres or do a day every other month.

What do others find the annual track day costs to be or haven't you ever thought about it?

[Jubal]

Those are cheap track days. What about brakes, wheel bearings and other bits that will wear out on track? Fuel will be 120/day easy if you go at it. If you want cheaper go light.

[MGRacer]

Choose another car would probably be a good start.

Seriously, you want to run an Evo as a trackday car? Think about this, £600 for a "banger" i.e. no one wanted it followed by the correct application of money on important stuff, springs, throwing surplus bits away, and sorting the brakes and you have a Honda Prelude that may have cost £2000 tops in total. This car around Cadwell Park I know has never been passed by anything other than an R8. Evo's and Impreza's do not make great track cars - probably get slaughtered for saying that. Just today I walked past an FQ 3 whatever they are as if he was standing still.

I would think about Caterham, Honda Civic, Prelude, Lotus Elise - If you wanna have trackday fun.

[swtmerce]

I budget £450-£500 per day for running a BMW 328i. That figure, on top of your calculations, includes fuel for the day and a pot of money for unforeseen issues.

[Birdthom]

If you're bothered about running costs then start with a different car. Seriously. You will munch consumables in a car like that. You would be wasting a fortune on insurance, tyres, pads, discs, bearings, fuel and god knows what else.

Start with something 2wd, light and non-turbo and you will save yourself a fortune, and probably have more fun along the way.

[sfaulds]

Try again with a set of tyres every other event (optimistic tbh if you still want to be driving home on them), a set of brake pads at the same time, something breaking *every* day, another £50 at least for each trackday fee, and a small fortune for fuel.

[teabagger]

Trackday fun can be had for much less cash than the OP calculations. I agree with the other comments - try a different car to start with.

[PetrolTed]

The heavy cars really do hammer the wallet. You're pretty spot on with your estimates IMO.

[AMD87]

A friend of mine has 2 evos(had 3 at one point) and does almost a trackday a week(couple of times we have did 4!! in a week).
They do cost alot to keep running if you do alot of trackdays but again it depends on how hard you drive them. The 5's he uses were fairly reliable the current 5 has been had nothing major done to it in the last year bar a gearbox and a couple of wheel bearings and a couple of discs and a fair amount of pads.

Can't really give you exact figures as he doesn't like talking about how much they cost to keep running(and he has a successful company) but it must be worth it considering he still has them

[jleroux]

fairly obvious i was going to wade in here but at £600/track day you could just arrive & drive in a caterham superlight 12 times a year. more fun than the evo on track with non of the mechanical or cosmetic worries of using your own car - not to mention the hassle and expense if the thing gets properly damaged.

/2p

Jonny
BaT

[Alex]

A Mistubishi Evo is not a good trackday car. Too heavy and 4WD is pointless.

[fwaggie]

Thanks for everyone's replies.

I'm just trying to get an idea of the overall cost, see if I've got it right or not. I'm not trying to do it as cheap as possible.

MGRacer said:

Seriously, you want to run an Evo as a trackday car? Think about this, £600 for a "banger" i.e. no one wanted it followed by the correct application of money on important stuff, springs, throwing surplus bits away, and sorting the brakes and you have a Honda Prelude that may have cost £2000 tops in total. This car around Cadwell Park I know has never been passed by anything other than an R8.

Unfortunately I haven't got the time to get something cheap, strip it out and upgrade everything. I like Preludes though, I've had 7 of them from the Mk 2 onwards, last one a cracking 2.2 VTEC and 4WS

I can't see the problem using an Evo on a track, plenty of power and torque, 4WD, pick the right one with fairly standard engine and it doesn't need anything doing to it, should be bags of fun. Ok, not the cheapest way to do it but not a problem.

sfaulds said:

Try again with a set of tyres every other event (optimistic tbh if you still want to be driving home on them), a set of brake pads at the same time, something breaking *every* day, another £50 at least for each trackday fee, and a small fortune for fuel.

Works out at about £850 a day, ignoring the original price of the car.

I realise a lighter and less powerful car will use less tyres / brakes / a bit less fuel but does it really make that much difference?

I suppose another thing is a turbo car won't be ideal for short bendy circuits like Cadwell, but sod it, so long as I have fun I'm not bothered!

[GreenV8S]

fwaggie said:

That sound about right? £600 a month to go and play?

It sounds like a lot, but the costs do soon add up (especially fuel and consumables). That's assuming no mechanical failures and no 'off's.

For about the same money you could go out every month in one of the Topcats racers (all day shared with three other drivers) and spend the day in a proper racer, with professional instruction, with somebody else covering the wear and tear and carrying all the risk.

[geoffp]

i'm running an evo 5 335 bhp as a track toy at the moment, have gone halves with a guy from work which eases the pain financially.

600 a day seems about right price, depending on your driving etc, tires, pads, discs will wear quicker than others. but be prepared for something to go pop, we stick 100 a track day in a pot between us.

the last track day we got through 2 tanks of fuel.

Geoff

[fwaggie]

jleroux said:

fairly obvious i was going to wade in here but at £600/track day you could just arrive & drive in a caterham superlight 12 times a year. more fun than the evo on track with non of the mechanical or cosmetic worries of using your own car - not to mention the hassle and expense if the thing gets properly damaged.

/2p

Jonny
BaT

Heh, thought about something like that. I'm 6'5" so I'd have problems with quite a few of them but I know there are some that have extended footwells, etc to suit the larger figured gentlemen out there

Now the question is, do places that hire these things out have accommodating cars?

[boxsey]

Would a moderator please, please close this topic! It is breaking the rules! We should not be talking about the annual cost of doing trackdays. We already know it is damaging our wallets. Totting up the costs mearly confirms this and makes us feel guilty. Worst still SWMBO may accidentally read this topic will find out that 'it only costs £200 to go on a trackday' is far from the truth we have been telling her and we will be banned from ever doing it again!

[jleroux]

fwaggie said:

Now the question is, do places that hire these things out have accommodating cars?

We (BaT) have a couple of Caterham 'SV' Superlights for the larger gentlemen. Track club have a westfield and a few lotuses (loti?) which are fine for big lads, too.

www.bookatrack.com or www.track-club.com to be impartial :-)

Jonny
BaT

[sfaulds]

MGRacer said:

Think about this, £600 for a "banger" i.e. no one wanted it followed by the correct application of money on important stuff, springs, throwing surplus bits away, and sorting the brakes and you have a Honda Prelude that may have cost £2000 tops in total. This car around Cadwell Park I know has never been passed by anything other than an R8.

You mean you regarded the mirrors as 'surplus bits'?

[MGRacer]

sfaulds said:

MGRacer said:

Think about this, £600 for a "banger" i.e. no one wanted it followed by the correct application of money on important stuff, springs, throwing surplus bits away, and sorting the brakes and you have a Honda Prelude that may have cost £2000 tops in total. This car around Cadwell Park I know has never been passed by anything other than an R8.

You mean you regarded the mirrors as 'surplus bits'?

Why do you need mirrors? Nothing got to close enough to it yesterday to actually get past.

Track cars are most importantly about handling and not about whether it has 600 bhp in a straight but cant go around the corners.

[mattdaniels]

Evo is the wrong car for a trackday toy as others have said. I shudder to think what your fuel, oil, brake pad and disc costs will be after 12 months, let alone all the other costs mentioned, plus you probably want to budget 200 for a trackday not 150, and if any are not within easy reach you also want to think about B+B costs.

If you're determined to use an Evo, at least get a second set of wheels so that you can have a trackday set and a set to get you home. What you need is a PH'er who owns an evo with a set of wheels for sale.....

Alternatively, and a much better proposition, is to get a decent track car that is fun to drive but is also good on the road so you can drive it to an event, have a good day on track and drive it home again. Something light, with cheap consumables. Something like a Lotus Elise. As it happens, not only do I have such a car for sale, it comes with everything you want as a "ready to drive" trackday package - spare wheels and tyres, harness bar, harnesses etc.

I've been trying to upload the advert to PistonHeads since yesterday but I'm waiting for them to change the password on my Classifieds login so that I can validate it (it was set up years ago on a company email address I know longer work at) so I'm not currently able to upload the advert - however it is on the Bookatrack classifieds so have a look there.