Clearly things are different in the UK then. In the US, where the economy is a bit stagnant right now, it is tough to get sponsorship yes, but we are not talking about major sponsorship in the beginning and we are not talking about a full ride sponsorship either. My salary when I work is around 50K+ a year before taxes, or around $4100 a month. Estimated cost to live is around $2500 a month, which includes utilities and basic necessities like food and gas. An additional $500 a month for entertainment expenses, which include internet, going out on occasion and the rare movie. This leaves roughly $1100 a month that can be used for hobbies such as racing. If I wanted to get into professional racing, the initial cost for a banger to get started would be around $1500 including engine etc. $3200 for the driving school which is required in order to obtain the license, and any entry fees, race fees, parts etc per event there after. So initial cost or investment if you will would be less than $5000 US or about 5 months of savings. Now comes the fun part. You enter a few events and if you do well, you take videos, standings etc and you go to all those mom and pop racing fan shops around town and ask if they would like to invest in some advertising on a car that is showing some good potential and will put their name out to the public due to publicity from finishing well in the events. Mom and Pop give you a few hundred dollars so they can have their name on the doors of the car, and you use that money to buy tires. The next Mom and Pop shop you convince to advertise with you gives you enough money to get their name on the hood. You take that money and set it aside for entry fees and fuel and some spare parts that you are going to need. You keep doing that until you have enough to make it through the season in which you hope you will do well enough to finish high in the rankings. Rinse and repeat for the next season, but you also start to talk to drivers you meet at other racing events, and start to talk to other guys that are in the higher end racing that you want to move up to. Baby steps here guys or they are just going to laugh at you higher up and ask for your hard earned money. The key is you have to approach sponsors as potential advertisers, not as someone you wish to get money from to race with. You have to expound on the virtues of your racing skill and the amount of folks that are going to see the shops name on the car. You can even tell them you will do personal appearances with your car to help promote their business when you are in town and not racing. That is the low cost way to get into racing and with your skill make it to the top without paying for your ride. Now the question time seeing as you guys are talking about UK stuff. Are there no events other than karting that you can do to learn your racecraft and show your abilities? I am speaking of street stock classes or something similar. That is the area you should be thinking about unless you really plan on being an F1 pilot, then you will likely have to pay a lot.
Tommi Mäkinen is rally championship winner, he started his competition career with plowing competitions and won several titles. He did drove field cars (junk cars driven on field without any sanctioning body or rules, today's safety and health probably has banned that). After he got driver's licence he decided to get rally car and worked almost day and night for three years to get money for that. 1985 first rally in junior class where he was 3rd. 1986 first national junior class win, after that I believe he had to get sponsors to be able to run in national series. He did crash a lot, bought another car, 1987 sold cars and bough N group car, which he crashed in WRC Finland that year. However despite his crashing he managed to get national championship at 1988. After that he took loan and bought seat to racing team in Italy, which lead to financial issues, but old rally legends help him there, also they helped to get him into WRC career. It took lot of money but he started it all by himself, working his ass off to get what he wanted to, rest was talent and great support of other rally legends, but he would of not got that support without talent. Räikkönen started with karting and his parents did work their arses off to pay the hobby, also it took a lot of time, lack of sleep being the norm, I remember old interview of his parents from time when Räikkönen was just got into F1. He was professional during late Karting years too, then Formula Renaults and he did Formula 3 test where after 4 first laps with car he made same times as F3 race drivers, but he never did go there as testing with F1 landed him to there instead, which caused issue with superlicense. It took a lot of money too, but at the end his parents were not rich, just average income people, that made that extra effort to allow their kid to reach his goal. It was only two years when he moved from pro karter to F1. Again expensive, but not impossible, however few of us is ready to push ourselves so much that is required to reach that amount of money. There are lower class racing too, but quite hard to move to higher level, also at those even there are cost limits, in reality you have to put 10x that to get car that really is able to win. It takes a lot, it gives a lot, sadly it starts to be impossible here to have your own personal back road practicing which was quite bit of standard when I was young, risky of course, but none of rally legends would be there without that kind of activity.
Some of the great drivers did have to pay a lot of their way to the top. I am not saying money won't open doors, I am saying it can still be done with creative work and a lot of talent. As far as how much money, it depends on how good you are and what else you know. My brother is very competitive in his racing. He races IMCA sprint cars. Of the people that he normally races against, he has less money in his entire engine than they do just in the heads. The reason he can get away with it is because he knows how to build engines, and he knows how to read the track and setup the car for it. The class of racing he is in, it is typical for someone to spend $10k just on the heads. My brother normally spends around 8k to 9k on a build for his engines.
Those my examples are how even those that got on very top of the motorsport did start with very little after all, anyone can do the same what Tommi did to start rallying, but to actually reach high level one needs talent to get help for reaching enough high.
Agreed, without talent, you might buy a ride, but you won't buy a season unless a team is really desperate for money.
