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Comment by wslh | Hacker News Reader

Starting from £57,500, relatively closer to buying an actual car? https://www.caranddriver.com/aston-martin

Not if you're interested in Formula 1 racing. The average price of an F1 car engine alone is $10.5 million. [0]https://www.essentiallysports.com/formula-one-car-cost/

Racing is always expensive, but it's not all F1.

There's a well known racing series where nobody is allowed to spend more than $500 on their car (excluding safety equipment), and someone actually entered an Aston Martin once (sort of):

https://24hoursoflemons.com/blog/aston-martin-db7-the-half-a...

General background:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Hours_of_LeMons

The Lemons rule is more in spirit than enforced. Someone on the team finds a great deal on the $250 timing belt kit they need for the car, it was only $1. The seller just happens to be another team mate.

Or, you know, they find a DB7 shell in a storage facility, spend the maximum amount allowed on it while also getting a bunch of "extras" they can sell at a profit, then bolt it up to the frame of an existing racecar.

Well, originally your car could be claimed for $500, so I guess the trick is to build something nobody wants to buy for that much.

However, the stuff underneath obviously looks like it's worth way more than $500 and I'm not sure what's going on there.

Maybe it isn't what it used to be. Maybe if you don't drive aggressively, they look the other way.

You can buy a raceable F1 car for less than that but the kicker is that you have to be able to run it. They're designed to be raced, so they are able to be run off of checklists but you need a team of qualified mechanics and engineers just to get it to turn over properly.

If you don't mind buying used - but 10,000 miles is barely worn in - the car works out cheaper:

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202006079887116

Many of the fancy simulator setups cost upwards of $50k USD. When I visited Japan earlier this year I visited a performance shop run by Max Orido (famous Japanese driver) and at his shop he has two race sims for training new racers. Both of his setups are prohibitively expensive unless you don't mind spending that kind of money on purely equipment.

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