Pedal Car Racing is a circuit racing

Race track

A race track is a purpose-built facility for racing of animals , automobiles, motorcycles or athletes. A race track may also feature grandstands or concourses. Some motorsport tracks are called speedways.A racetrack is a permanent facility or building...

 endurance sport where teams of up to six drivers race single-seater human powered sports car

Sports car

A sports car is a small, usually two seat, two door automobile designed for high speed driving and maneuverability....

s in races of up to twenty-four hours duration. Four team members share the driving (increasing to six in 24 hour races), with each completing as many laps as he or she can before handing over to the next driver.
Therefore the races are very similar in make up and tactics to endurance sports car races.

Racing pedal cars

The cars are mainly sports prototype

Prototype

A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...

s built by or for the teams that race them. There are no commercial suppliers of racing pedal cars in the UK, although Karbyk in Italy make racing pedal cars commercially. All cars have to comply with the international pedal car specification, but this is quite an open formula so the cars are as varied as the teams who race them with many different solutions to the same problem.

Classes

There are six classes in pedal car racing all sharing circuit space so the safe lapping of back markers is a skill that the faster drivers must acquire.

PC1: Open class - 4 drivers per car (6 in 24 hour races)
All cars automatically qualify for PC1 and it is the cars at the head of this class which usually fight it out for the overall win.

PC2: Under 16s - 4 drivers per car (5 in 10 hour races, 4 in 24 hour races)
The cars are usually very similar in appearance to those racing in PC1 but they tend to be built a little bit more robustly to cope with the increased number of driver changes and the less sympathetic treatment that teenage drivers can sometimes dish out to racing machinery.
Quite often the lead PC2 outfits will be in amongst the top six overall come the end of the race.

PC3: Under 14s - 6 drivers per car in all races
The cars are often lighter and generally have to be somewhat smaller for obvious reasons!
Most of the cars in this class do not run aerodynamic bodywork – the drivers change over far more often and do not reach the higher speeds of PC1 and PC2 so a body shell would generally seen as a hindrance.

PC4: Under 12’s - 6 drivers per car in all races
These cars are generally very basic, unfaired and as light as possible.

PC0: Solo drivers - 1 driver per car only

PCF: Female teams - All drivers must be female. (Number of drivers depends on age range)

British Pedal Car Championship

The British Pedal Car Championship is a series of endurance pedal car races which runs between April and September every year in the UK. Typically, there are 7 races totalling just over 60 racing hours including the Shenington 24 hour race in June.

The Shenington 24 hour race

The Shenington 24 hour race takes place at Shenington Kart Track near Banbury, UK at the end of June and is the flagship event of the British Pedal Car Championship. The race comprises a night practice session on Friday and then the race starts at midday Saturday. Six drivers are allowed per car and all cars must carry head and tail lights for night racing. For the 2010 edition, 38 human powered cars took part totalling 227 drivers racing. The race was won at an average speed of 18.2 mph by Apollo Racing from Rugby who clocked 1182 laps of the 595m circuit.