City Car Cup Testing - Citroen C1

Well with not alot happening in 2020 we decided to do some testing and save our sponsors budget until 2021 and thank them for their continued support. We have done some considerable thinking of what we will be racing and moving forward for 2021. So when the opportunity came up to test the Citroen C1 City Car Cup a new budget racing class which is starting to gather ground with 40 cars now built, how could i refuse!

So lets look at some facts, you can buy a fully built race car for £6995 YES that's under 7K ready to race. Look at the list of parts you get, Brake Calipers Front ,Rear Brake Drums, Rear Brake Cylinders, HEL Braided Brake Lines, Rear Brake Shoes, Rear Brake Shoe Clip Kit, Front Wheel Bearing, Rear Wheel Bearing, Track Rod Ends, Front Wishbone (Left), Front Wishbone (Right), Droplinks (Front roll bar), Brake Fluid, Engine Oil, Gear Oil, Oil Filter, SW Motorsports Full Bolt-in Roll Cage, Gaz Coilovers (CityCar Cup spec), 4x ATS 15″ Wheels & Wheel Bolts, 4x Nankang NS-2R Tyres, Powerflex Full Car Bush kit, CityCar Cup Exhaust Backbox, Drivers Footrest, 2x Door Cards, Dash Blanking Plate – Aluminium, x1 Seat Base Plate, Motordrive Race Seat, Seat Side Mounts, TRS 6 Point Harness & Mounting kit, Fire Extinguisher & Pull Cables, Steering Wheel, Steering Boss, Master Switch & Pull Cable, Tow Straps, Rain Light.

That's alot of kit fully built for under 7k.

With not much time to sort things out, we chose our local track at 3 sisters race circuit to test the car as we just wanted a feel for it and to make some setup changes to see what the car was capable of and how it reacted, so with a cold and windy October morning we signed on, did our sighting laps and got ourselves ready for our first session.

Just before we go any further let me give you some more facts, this is a standard car with a whopping 65bhp and no this is not a typo, it is totally standard apart from the parts you seen in the list above with the addition of a controlled ECU so i had time to read the news and have a coffee down the straights.

Into the first session and with the back set as stiff as it possibly could be and the front very soft it felt like the rear was on a rubber band yoyo and a real handful to drive. After a visit to the pits and a change of front and rear set ups, we started to balance the car out and returning some better lap times.

Over the next few sessions we played around with various suspension and tyre pressures combinations to balance the car achieve some consistency in lap times. I must admit driving a car with very little power with some grip felt like driving a go kart and i wanted to keep jumping out the seat to try and get the engine to pick up out the corners. You have to be extra smooth and cannot afford to scrub any corner speed as you have no power to help you out with any mistakes, so keeping the back end of the car loose was key but then keeping it under control is not the easiest as well when trying to balance through the slow and fast corners without too much compromise.

To sum up the day, you may think, ohhh its only got 65bhp but it does carry good corner speed and if you see the video below i had just passed the aerial atom behind me and although it passed me again down the straight i can pass again through the corners, although this shouldn't be possible but as you can see by the lap times it can hold its own and for the cost you can go racing on a budget and if you are unlucky and to come away with damage all the panels are really cheap or worse case you can buy another car for under £1000.00.

So if you want to go racing on a tight budget and not worry too much about accident damage and even if you want to build a competitive car, this is a good starting point. We have always been looking of how people can get into motorsport without spending a fortune and we are now looking at building one of these on top of our 2021 season. We are hoping to race this at Croft on 31st October and we will also be racing the Ford Focus at Donington on the 7th November before concentrating on 2021.

For more information on getting started in racing or our motorsport experiences with Flatout Motorsport, please contact us.

Finally big thank you to all our partners this year, Pemberton Tyres,, Ravenol Oils, Bloc Eyewear, King Dick Tools, Autobrite Direct, Bespoke Extreme, Davanti Tyres, Eighty Seventy Facilities Management, Abbott & Rowlands, Venue Hire UK, Mintex, Questmead and BrandDrivers.

If you would like to get involved and add to our list of partners please get in touch.