Enter the Jedi at Race Retro

Feel the force this weekend as Jedi Racing makes its debut at Race Retro.With a chassis and geometry that has been refined and developed since conception in 1984, the Jedi is the UK’s premier bike engine racing car. It delights its drivers with some of the fastest and most competitive open-wheel club racing in the country.

“Whether you circuit race, hill climb or sprint, and whether you raced in the 1980’s or last year, you’ll still recognise the car as we haven’t chopped and changed the design too much, just developed the original idea. We’ve kept the design simple and all modifications over the years have been focused on keeping the car balanced between cost effectiveness and speed.”

said John Corbyn, Jedi designer and engineer.

The current Jedi Mk6 circuit racing that car runs in the Speed Group F1000 Championship is powered by a high performance 1000cc superbike engine, goes from 0 to 60 in under three seconds and on to over 150mph while revving to around 14000rpm. Its roots are in the Mk1, developed by Corbyn in 1984 as a more cost-effective response to his FF2000 Saracen he was using to hill climb. Designed as a lightweight single seater with a two-stroke motorcycle engine, the Jedi was born. In the second week of August 1984 he raced it in a sprint at Curbourough and, in its first time out, it won.

“They said a two stroke didn’t stand a chance”, said Corbyn, “but we put a Suzuki T500 motorcycle engine in it, ran some road tyres on 13” Mini wheels, and it flew. A couple of years later we added aero with wings front and back and that gave us an instant performance gain. We never looked back.”

The Jedi currently holds the outright lap record at Cadwell Park for a car and 11 lap records over 100 mph average. While maintaining an image as one of the fastest club racing cars on the weekend circuit it is also one of the most forgiving and is used by many novices as a means of stepping up from karting into the senior ranks of motorsport. Many club racers stay with the car in hillclimb, sprints and circuit racing season after season, while others have used the car in many different series as a stepping stone on to other championships such as F3, Indy Lights, GP3, BTCC, and British and worldwide GT.
The future for Jedi Racing is looking strong with the Formula Jedi Series rebranding to F1000 in 2017 and gaining title sponsorship for 2018. Grids are increasing and the Factory continues to build new chassis and the second-hand market constantly trades.

In a marketplace where the temptation is to modify and bring out new features, requiring customers to upgrade, thus creating an “arms race” for speed, Jedi Racing Cars has managed hold on to its values of balancing maximum speed with economic competition in terms of first cost and cost of ownership.

“The Jedi is a proven and user friendly design. We do have a several upgrades in the pipeline, and also possibly a new hillclimb and sprint car although we intend to keep any changes to a minimum as the car is already incredibly quick. All we really want is for drivers, mechanics and families to enjoy the car and their racing weekends. As a family business ourselves, we’re in the business of promoting and supporting club motorsport.”