The beginner's guide reckons that you can get all of the above for about £250, but I certainly struggled. The minimum standard for the crash-helmet is BS6658-85 A/FR (the FR being Fire Resistant). The cheapest of these that I could find was the Sparco Formula for £235. The good news is that the BS rating exempts the helmet from VAT, unlike the more expensive SNELL rated helmets.
On the race-suit front, it is possible to get a "Proban" suit for about £90. Proban is a treatment applied to a cotton suit to make it fire-resistant. I avoided these suits for a few reasons.
- As they are at the budget end of the market they look really pikey - like indoor karting suits (note how this is my primary concern!)
- Proban eventually washes out of the suit so they have quite a short effective life
- If you want to participate in a higher level of motorsport, these suits are often ineligible.
I therefore opted for the slightly more expensive "Nomex" option. Nomex is a fibre that is fire-resistant in its own right, and therefore does not degrade with washing. The nomex suits also have an FIA label which make them eligible for more serious motorsport. So, should I ever get the money together to do some serious racing, both my helmet & race-suit will still be useable.
I bought a Sparco Sprint 6 racesuit for just over £200.
As you can see, just because sprinting is inexpensive motorsport, this doesn't mean that it's not going to cost you a fair bit of money! Still, as I'm sure that the equipment manufacturers would say - you can't put a price on safety. If you were to try, you would say £440 thank you very much...
So that's the licence & equipment sorted. Next steps are to sort out the car.
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