Here's how I came up with the stkr.racing donation/sponsor idea.
I've been riding for the last 27 years, and have always dreamed of being able to participate in road racing on a motorcycle. After spending 12 years in the Navy, and raising my daughter, I finally got to a point in my life where I could start to live a little again. I bought my Hayabusa in October of 2003. Not my first bike, but my first sportbike. I couldn't believe that I had waited that long to get a sportbike.
After 1-1/2 years on the Busa, I attended my first track day at Road America with NESBA, and fellow member WWJD. We had identical twin Busa's on the track, and it was the most fun I have had in many, many years. I knew I was hooked on the track after the first session. I'm pretty sure Greg could sense my enthusiasm. One month later, I was back at Road America with NESBA again. This time I was solo. I had tuned the suspension according to Jinkster, and was amazed at how well the Busa handled. The drawback was that I was now risking my beautiful Busa on the track. I couldn't bear the thought of seeing her wadded up in the gravel, so...I purchased a used '98 Suzuki GSXR-600 that was already a fully prepped race bike. Not anything too special, but well maintained with race plastics, and fully safety wired. A lot cheaper investment to risk at the track. This is also when I sold by Busa, because I found myself riding on the street like I would on the track, and I would have ended up in jail or dead if I continued.
During the rest of the year, I went to four more track days, and also attended a race licensing school. The first track day with the new bike, I crashed in the rain with only minor damage. The license class was also a rainy day, and I crashed when my front brake caliper stuck causing the front end to wash out on me. Fairly minor damage again. This was also the end of the season.
Over the winter, I took my gixxer to a professional race shop and had them check the bike over. The engine is in great shape, the clutch got rebuilt, the carbs synched, had a dyno check done (82 hp
), and also had the bike measured on the Computrack alignment machine. This is where it got expensive. The frame was tweaked and the trail was too short, so they had to correct all of that. The bike is now ready for this season mechanically, but this cost me around $1000. Prior to these repairs, I bought a set of Armour Bodies race plastics to replace the old cracked ones. This was $600 spent before I knew the frame was tweaked. So...over the winter I've basically spent what was supposed to be my track budget.
My track budget is funded soley from what used to be my monthly Hayabusa payment, so it takes time to build up a reserve. I am scheduled to retake the race licensing class at Road America on April 21st, and I have a free trackday there on the 19th from gixxer.com, so after that, I'll need another set of tires which is about $300.
When I got to looking at all of the money that I need versus the money that I have, and the allotment going into the account...The budget looked pretty bad. This is when I thought about ways to generate "sponsorship". I don't have a racing resume yet that would allow me to approach the typical sponsors, so I thought why not set up a paypal account and then just ask for voluntary donations to help out. As long as people know that I'm probably not going to be on the podium anytime soon, and I'm still just a novice racer, then I'm not decieving them to get their money. I just figure that any dollar I get donated is one dollar more than I had to start with.
Dam...I got kinda long winded on that one...sorry
Donations: see my signature