Ouch!

Motorsport is expensive. It’s expensive if you want to do it, and it’s expensive if you want to watch it.

Kate does Senior Rotax karting, and that's expensive. £85 to enter a race (another £65 if you want to practise the day before). Ouch! £200 for a set of slick tyres (another £200 for a set of wet tyres if it starts to rain). Ouch! Then there’s fuel (which has to be the high-octane expensive stuff), 2-stroke oil to add to the fuel, new rear sprocket, air filter, and spark plug (and it’s £20 for a spark plug), and the cost of replacement parts when things get broken during the race (which they do). Ouch!

Everything is an ouch! Even indoor karting at Teamsport isn’t cheap. Everything about motorsport is an ouch!

We’re trying to raise Kate’s profile in the 2025 season, and that means getting her name known. And the more stuff that has her name on, the better. We’re getting her helmet painted, but that’s £1,300 by the time you’ve bought the new helmet. Ouch!

We want to get her name embroidered on her kart suit as well. But go to any ‘motorsports’ embroidery place and it’s expensive. So, it was refreshing to find a little shop in Sydenham called UR-iD, that just did embroidery, whilst you wait, on anything (within reason!).

Not wanting to risk it with a new kart suit, I took Kate’s old kart suit along, and asked them to embroider Kate’s name on the back. They usually do it while you wait. But they were on a lunch break, so I left the suit with them and popped next door to the local coffee shop. They phoned me about 30 minutes later to tell me Kate's suit was ready.

Well, it looks amazing, and Kate will definitely be taking her new suit there for some more embroidery.

The cost? About the same as my cup of coffee and a piece of cake in the local coffee shop next door!

So, if you have some motorsport embroidery needs, pop along to UR-iD in Sydenham, and it will probably be the only motorsport thing you pay for that doesn’t come with an ouch!