Do a season of competitive club racing on a Ducati and you better be expecting a visit from your bank manager of a finance company at the end of it, if you are trying to fund it yourself.
Yes this racing lark is a very expensive sport, but there are ways of making it easier on the old back pocket.
The biggest money sapper is if you have to pay someone to maintain your bike, so you will save a small fortune if you already have a good toolkit. We, as a group of Ducati enthusiasts in Bristol, organise fund raising days which help buy the Ducati special tools, this saves us money in the long run and gives those keen on having a go themselves a cheaper alternative to a main dealer.
Having a Ducati at the track is a very prominent motorcycle, it will draw a lot of admirers, especially if there is a big group of them, you can use this as an advantage when trying to obtain sponsorship.
If you can get some help in your first season it will be a bonus, but more realistically your second season, with some good results should give you a good enough CV to pull in some help. I started with the local tool hire firm, which I borrowed their generator at first, this has grown over the years to include fuel, oil and generator to keep for the whole season.
Working in a Hotel also has its advantages and a conversation one evening in the bar led to a supply of EPROM chips especially designed for the 748 SP, just a bit of testing and feed back was required in exchange.
Raise your profile in your local community by telling the local paper what you are doing, it's better to wait until the end of the season to start asking for sponsorship so people can see how well you have done. You will find that local businesses like to support say a local rider so the publicity stays in the local area. If you're sponsored by Codplaice fish & chip shop in Cornwall, it's hardly likely they are going to get much notice with you racing at Knock Hill, but when the Lands End Gazette do your feature, the boss at Codplaice will be counting his chips and being self employed can claim that in his quarterly tax return as advertising.
A lot of the time it's who you know that makes a sponsorship deal happen, rather than your ability. The local Motorcycle shop allowed me to use their tyre changing machine and their press, because I have known the owner since we were teenagers and the local auto shop I have used since I was an apprentice mechanic, give me spark plugs, oil, filters etc. Add all this help up over the year and you will be surprised how much all these little things cost.
So my advice is to start off with lots of small local companies, then when you have achieved a couple of good consistent seasons you can try the bigger companies and try to get a deal for tyres and entry fees, you maybe able to push for some company matching leathers and bodywork. But at the end of the day, if the company boss doesn't like motorcycles he maybe more likely to spend his money on something like a hot air balloon, or something that he will benefit from?
Be prepared for writing a lot of begging letters and don't be put off when the 100 you sent out get 10 replies all saying NO. |
