How a race team puts a season together

Every motorsport fan has a favorite team, championship, car or driver and in the motorsport world this can change on a regular basis depending on who is running what, where, and with which drivers. In other team sports such as football, rugby or cricket the only thing that really changes are the players, the team itself keeps the same shirt, the same badge and plays at the same place (well for at least half the season). Motorsport doesn’t.

This blog post is the first of what I hope will be a series of posts looking at how a motorsport team puts a season together, how they prep for a race, what a motorsport teams workshop looks like and a look at the racing world from a mechanics point of view. My aim with these posts is to cast light on an area of motorsport that most fans don’t even think about let alone see.

The wonderful variety of GT3 racers

One of the things that I love about GT racing is the sheer variety of cars on offer for the discerning spectator to gork at. This blog post is going to look at what I believe to be the most varied category, GT3.

Over the last couple of years there have been some great additions to the stable of GT3 cars competing in championships such as Blancpain, British GT and Belcar, and this year we get to see some hotly anticipated cars racing a full season for the first time.

How is motorsport paid for?

This post is to answer a question that I get asked a lot, how is motorsport paid for? It maybe a bit of a dry read for some but I hope to throw a bit of light on the merky world of motorsport finances.

You may think that the team attracts sponsors, gets a share of the ticket sales and then pays the drivers. This is not the case (normally).

The simplest way to get paid as a team is to become a factory run or factory backed team. This is where a manufacturer sets up a team, or employs one, to race their cars. Famous examples of a factory team are Ferrari, Audi or Peugeot. A factory backed team would be a team like Oreca. However, even in the high flying world of Formula One this is not the norm.

Ecurie Ecosse car showing off it's sponsors for the Spa 24 hours

Latest pictures of the new Aston Martin Vantage V12 GT3

Some of you may have read my blog post on the first pictures of the new Aston Martin Vantage V12 GT3 in testing. One of my contacts in motorsport has sent me these photos as a follow up on that post.

The all new Aston Martin Vantage V12 GT3 in it's Beechdean colours

The Pictures are of the new Aston Vantage V12 GT3. This is the test and development chassis ‘X3’ which Prodrive have sold to Andrew Howard to be ‘factory run’ in the British