The Wacky World of Motor Sports

Motorsports has a world wide audience and is worth millions of pounds to the industry.  Covering a variety of sport such as rally cross, rally driving, grand prix, go-karting, truck racing and many more it is big business attracting huge amounts of sponsorship.

Formula one grand prix racing is probably the best known of all motor racing.   With its fast cars, huge sponsorship packages, massive developments it is big business.  The Industry is owned by Bernie Ecclestone who decides where each grand prix is held.  Each event takes up a full weekend at a particular circuit with each circuit being visited once a year.  Split into two competitions one for the best driver and one for the best team points are earned at each race and accumulate over the season.  This past season saw the drivers title go down to the wire with Lewis Hamilton winning the title by passing a rival on the final corner of the final race to move into the higher points bracket and take the title.  Mr Hamilton is the youngest person to win the title and was in only his second season as a formula one driver.  He had however worked his way through the different types of motor racing to reach the pinnacle of the sport.

Formula one has been hit like many sports by the global recession with teams announcing reductions in their development budgets and with one team withdrawing from the competition altogether.  This problem has hit another of the major motorsports that of Rallying.  This form of the sport involves the driving of production road legal cars on closed off roads at extreme speeds and often in extreme conditions.  Very much a race to get from A to B rather than the circuit driving of formula one this type of racing is spectacular with cars spinning, crashing, doing somersaults as well as hitting trees and ending up in ditches.  Winners of this competition are often household names and appear in many advertisements for their car companies.

Kart racing has proved to be the starting point for many future superstars of motorsports.  These have included the likes of the great Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and the a fore mentioned Lewis Hamilton.  Driving at high speeds round a small circuit on small karts powered by little more than a lawnmower engine these little karts require great skill to keep then on the track along with superb timing to pass an adversary. It is no wonder that this form of the sport has produced so many future superstars of motor sport.

Lawn mower engines bring us to one of the more bizarre types of motor sport that of lawn mower racing.  This involves the driving of motorised lawn mowers slipping and sliding around a grass course for a number of laps.  Dangerous to compete in this can be extremely funny to watch and is definitely bizarre.

As we can see motor sports takes many forms from the multi million pound business of Formula One to the Lawn Mower racing and all forms in between.