Racing, writ large, has a problem: It sucks and is boring. Grassroots track days, time attack, even Formula 1 — no matter how many races I watch, they never end up grabbing me the way I want. Only Formula Drift ever seems to keep my attention, and it’s not because of all the tire smoke. It’s because the cars themselves are so wildly varied, so personalized, that no two are perfectly identical.
This should be the basis for a brand-new racing series: Building your own unique car. But rather than FD’s strictly production-based rulebook, or some budget-blowing no-limits extravaganza, we can make a fair-yet-interesting series with one rule: Every car’s body panels are spec and cannot be modified, everything else is open season.
Fenders, door skins, hoods, roofs, bumpers, the entire outside of the car is issued to teams by the sport’s governing body. In my thinking, for maximum flexibility, these panels should come together to form a hatchback — imagine a hollow GTI, all its interior space available to bend towards performance. These panels cannot be modified by the teams.
Beyond that, however, it’s open season. An AWD layout with a rear engine? Go for it. Front-engine, front wheel drive? That’s allowed. Driver location within the chassis, fuel type, even the structure that binds those body panels together is up to the team’s discretion.
Teams in this new racing league would have complete freedom of choice with how to build their cars, but costs would inherently be kept down by the limits in external structure. If you want to fit aero, you’re going to have to figure out how to mount it without drilling out the body. Wider wheels? You can expand inward, towards the center of the car, but those fenders aren’t moving. There’s no exemption in the rules for adding things like intakes for aspiration or cooling, so you’re stuck with the airflow provided by the spec grille.
I am famously not a watcher of racing, but that’s only because the racing itself has never lived up to what it could be. With this new series, we’re entirely breaking the mold, and changing the face of racing forever. FIA, call me, we can figure this thing out.
