Project RX8 Race.

Myself and my good friend Jonny have been car enthusiasts as long as I can remember. We also love pretty much all things motorsport. A few years ago after many pub discussions we got around to entering the Club 100 karting series, which you can read more about in earlier blogs. Although the karting was hugely enjoyable we always had a dream of actually getting out on track in a proper race prepared car racing against others on the tracks we all love and know such as, Silverstone, Cadwell Park and Brands Hatch. This is a dream I feel many enthusiast have but due to family commitments, lack of funds, no time etc. etc. there’s usually something that stops you from actually getting out there.

Over this last 6 months we have had plenty of time to think about how we would get to the point of racing. Jonny owns an ever growing fleet of Mazda RX8’s (another story) and 1 of which he was recently planning to restore back to OEM and then sell on to free up space. However as with many car projects he had started to loose his direction with it and wondered if he could simply strip the weight out of it, add some safety gear and go racing. Although technically the answer was yes, the car would be racing in a series surrounded by much faster cars, and due to the regulations and lack of funds there wasn’t much you could do about it. So now with the options of racing in a series where ultimately you wouldn’t be competitive or just carrying on with restoring to OEM, restoring was the better of the option.

This wasn’t to be the end of the story however. Whilst looking in to other racing categories we stumbled across the one make series for the mark 1 RX8. A series designed to keep things cheap and all competitors on a level playing field. The only drawn back was the RX8’s Jonny owns are the limited edition PZ models. These wouldn’t be eligible for the series as only the series 1 231 bhp models are allowed. Now to build a basic car that would match the entry reequipments for the series you were looking at a rough cost of £5000 including the car, although depending on the cost of the car it could be more or less. Once again it felt like 1 step forward and 2 steps back as neither of us could afford the investment, especially during these COVID times.

Facebook to the rescue! Something you don’t often say, but it was to be our saving grace. Jonny had signed us up to the Facebook group of the racing series and a few weeks later a part built race car had come up for sale at a very reasonable price. All the main expensive things had been done including the roll cage and weight reduction. A phone call and visit later we now appear to have our first race car build! The work left to do is probably only a couple of weekends worth and then we can take the car out for testing. As we are already towards the end of the season the car will be hopefully ready for next year and the first round if all goes well. The format of the racing dictates that there must be a mandatory pit stop half way through a race so we will be sharing the driving duties throughout the season.

As soon as the car has been collected and back at the garage we can start working on it and I will be doing updates on here as and when they happen, including race reports and videos of all the action.

Watch this space!