How the track bitch project was born.

Track days can be expensive business, especially if you embark on more than one a year. This expense can get worse if the car you track is your daily driver and you are not able to maintain the car yourself. Take the following costs incurred last year just on two track days:-

Renaultsport Track day - Oulton Park

• Track day fee - £185
• Insurance - £150
• Petrol - £65
• Helmet hire - £10
• Tuition - £15

General open pit track day – Cadwell Park

• Track day fee - £195
• Insurance - £135
• Petrol - £65
• Helmet hire - £10

After these two track days and 20,000 road mile I also needed four new Michelin Pilot Sport 3 tyres. Admittedly I would’ve needed new tyres anyway within the next 5000 miles, but the cost was incurred quicker and straight after the track day. Total cost £780.

So for two track days total cost in the space of one month was £1,610.

It was turning out track days were costing a good chunk of money. Plus this was only in a Renaultsport Megane R26.

A month later one of my best friends tracked his modified Subaru Impreza, also reducing the life on his tyres, brakes and all other components. Four tyres for him are a similar cost £700 - £800. However other components are a lot higher due to the specification that is currently on the car e.g brake discs £850. Speaking with my mate he expressed similar thoughts to me on track days, great fun but pretty expensive. 

Debates can be had on whether you bother with insurance, as this would reduce costs, but with cars costing around £12,000 neither of us would want to risk having a big off and paying a visit to Mr Armco, in addition to this there are other people on tracks to consider and as there is no third party liability it only takes one clown to ruin your day, as experienced in front of me at Cadwell with an M5 driving down the side of a Skyline. Not having track insurance on our cars is not an option.

All this got me thinking and after reading about other track and Renault enthusiasts Danny Royston & Joe Simpson’s conversations on twitter one evening the seed was sown.

What I needed was a track bitch, a car that can be bought for less than £1,500, does not require insurance on track, has cheaper parts, cheaper tyres, brakes and maybe even co owned with like minded friends.

As it was the middle of winter and with nothing much to look forward to in January or February, I sent a speculative email to four friends all of which have done track days before and all of which understand the spiraling costs of running a car on-track. 

Over the course of the weekend and after multiple emails we’d agreed that three of us would club together and throw £500 in each to purchase a track bitch.