To all the racers out there...

BUT, other than tires (which actually is a significant part) and race entry fees, just doing a regular track weekend is just as expensive, assuming your bike already has race fairings. Here's a breakdown of what I will be spending this year for a weekend which will be less than in past years:

Club membership (1 time yearly fee of $10)
Race license (1 time yearly fee of $25)
Track Day entry fee for an average weekend (~$350) (I don't actually have to pay this as a Control Rider and Race Clinic instructor, but I use up a lot more tire because I have to run more sessions)
Race entry fees for the weekend (1 race per day, total $120)
1 set of race tires - $450
Hotel for the weekend - $150
Gas to and from an average event - $200

So that's about $1300. But as you can see you can easily spend most of that just for a regular track weekend, so I disagree about racing being all that more expensive. If you are a really fast track day guy you'll be running race tires anyway. Now, obviously you can share some of those expenses with friends who go with you (hotel, gas, etc).

I agree. If you are a novice track guy and really want to do it on a budget you can.

For example my track days go as such (i am novice)

No tire warmers - $0
no hotel. sleep in car - $0
1 track day - $200
gas for travel - $50
gas for bike $25
gatorade and snacks - $25


Admittedly so, I am a cheap ass sometimes. But my point is if someone wanted to they could do it cheap. hell my first track day I literally rode my bike there with supplies in a backpack.lol

I enduranced raced with a friend of mine. He tallied up the cost to run the weekend (race fee, tires and gas) and we split it evenly between 3 or 4 riders. At the time I didn't have my own race bike so it was great. I got to race without the upfront cost of the bike. I got plenty of track time for about $250 a weekend.

We did a full season in 2009 and won the Motoseries Light weight endurance class on an SV650. It was an extremely close championship with three teams having a chance to win the championship entering the last round. The other teams were another SV and a Paul Smart Ducati. The Ducati had a decent HP adavantage on us and they were straight up faster than us in the dry. However they did blow a motor to DNF one round. We also won one round in the rain. All the other rounds they beat us, but we usaully kept it close (i.e within a lap after 3 hours)

It was some of the most fun I've had racing. That year was pretty much the last year that Motoseries had good participation for the endurance series.

I would do it again...in fact I have another friend planning on running endurance with SOAR in Ontario, Cananda this year. I told him I would be up for a round or two with him. Still waiting to see how serious he is about it.

I think the hard part when you own the bike is finding 2 or 3 other guys to ride that you trust with your bike. You also want to be competitive so you want guys that can go fast too...not just guys that won't crash.

We spent a lot of time and effort working on pit stops and strategy. We were consistently faster in and out the pits than our competition and minimzed how many stops we made in three hours. By the end of the season we were doing 45-50 minute stints, where a lot of other teams were only going 30-40 minutes.

Anyways, now that I am back to just racing my own bike, I pretty much focus on the individual endurance race (40 minutes). I volunteer on Saturday as instructor/control rider for either the track day school or new racer school, so I get free track time on Saturyday and usually enter one sprint and the 40 minute race on Sunday. So my typical expenses are one rear tire per weekend and around $200 in fees plus gas for the bike and traveling. I have a small RV I pull to the track so I don't have to spend $ on a hotel and have a full kitchen which helps keep food costs down. It's also really nice to roll out of bed 10 minutes before riders meeting if I want to sleep a little longer LOL!