Becoming a real racer might not be as hard as you think

By Andy Hum

ALWAYS DREAMED OF becoming a professional race car driver? With a bit of hard work and the right skills, it’s actually an achievable goal. Look at it this way: you know all those BMW 7 Series and Mercedes S-Classes you see on the road every day? They all have the potential to become a driver in a proper professional racing series, like the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia (PCCA).

The 2010 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car, which has 450bhp 3.8-litre horizontally-opposed six-cylinder engine, costs 148,150 Euros (about S$300,000), or around the average cost of a European sports saloon. Participating in the race series itself will cost you 36,267 Euros (about S$75,000) and having a professional team to check and prepare your car for each race costs 24,000 Euros (about S$50,000) a season, which lasts for 12 races throughout the year.

All that may sound like a lot, but in fact, from next year, the PCCA series will be open to private teams who have their own mechanics and race engineers to service and prepare the cars. That brings the total cost of participating in the series down and also attracts more competition.

In fact, of the 13 GT3 Cup cars entered this year, five are Singaporean drivers. And one of them is Yuey Tan, who is only in his first season in the PCCA series, but has already climbed to third place in the Class B drivers’ standings. So, how hard can it be to start racing seriously?

“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s easy but I wouldn’t say it’s very difficult either. I think that a good combination between financial backing, some experience, the willingness to learn and focus together, can get you into Carrera Cup. How long you can survive in there is a different matter,” said Yuey Tan, who has spent around S$600,000 in total this year, including his second-hand race 110,000 Euro race car.

He adds, “The good thing is, the Carrera Cup car itself has slow depreciation and good residual value around the world. So, although you spend S$600,000 per season, realistically, S$200,000 will come back when the car is sold after two seasons.”

So that still adds up to about S$400,000, which can be covered by sponsors, provided you do your part to market yourself. Yuey, for example, recently raced his GT3 Cup car against a Boeing 747 – and won. Awesome fun, but how has an event as crazy as this helped him?

“The sponsorship aspect has been very difficult throughout 2009. The dollars haven’t come in the way I would’ve liked, though the success of The Changi Airport Race has helped somewhat,” said Yuey. “Porsche Carrera Cup Asia has a confirmed 75 million viewers per year across Southeast Asia. That’s a lot! And probably more who are watching it, who are not recorded statistics. So if you see it from a sponsors angle, is S$600,000 a huge amount of money to spend to reach a regional audience?”

In effect, if participants were able to get more sponsorship money than they required for the season, that essentially means they are being paid to race.

Still want to sit in your sofa, reading this? Or would you rather race?