About Tom O’F Cars

One Man, One Island, One Slightly Ambitious Motorsport Dream

I’m Tom O’Farrell, and Tom O’F Cars is where I document my slightly unconventional attempt to make motorsport a proper part of my life.

I live on the Isle of Islay, off the west coast of Scotland. It’s a brilliant place to live, but perhaps not the most obvious base from which to try and build a racing career. Getting to almost any circuit involves a ferry, a van, hundreds of miles of driving and usually a considerable amount of planning before I’ve even thought about getting into a race car.

That reality is a big part of what Tom O’F Cars has become.

This isn’t a website about pretending I’m a professional racing driver. It’s about documenting what it actually takes to get into motorsport when you have normal jobs, small businesses, limited budgets and no particularly straightforward route onto the grid.

How I Got Here

Motorsport has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up visiting Brands Hatch with my family, raced rental karts for a while and later became a motorsport marshal. Then, in 2018, I moved from Essex to Islay and suddenly regular trips to racing circuits became considerably less practical.

Oddly enough, sim racing eventually provided my route back in.
I started competing properly during 2020 and later became involved in organising championships, broadcasting races and working with Perfect Acceleration Sim Racing. After finishing second in the EnduroKA Winter Sim Series in 2023, I won an ARDS test and finally got my racing licence.

In 2024, I made my real-world racing debut in EnduroKA at Donington Park.
A year later I travelled to Knockhill to compete in the Scottish C1 Cup. I qualified seventh, but thick fog eventually caused both of the planned races to be cancelled.
Then came 2026.

The Weekend That Changed the Plan

A last-minute opportunity appeared to race in the Classic Mini Racing Championship at the Brands Hatch Mini Festival. I said yes. That meant making the journey from Islay to Brands Hatch and arriving with very little preparation. The 15-minute qualifying session was the first time I had ever driven the Mini.
I qualified 7th out of 17.

In my first proper sprint race I finished 4th and set the fastest lap. I followed that with 5th in race two and another fastest lap, this time going even quicker and setting my fastest lap of the entire weekend.
There were also red flags, crashes, contact and considerably more drama than I had anticipated.
But I loved it.

What had been intended as another opportunity to get some race experience became something much bigger. For the first time, I came away from a race weekend thinking that I didn’t just want to find another occasional arrive-and-drive seat.
I wanted to build something of my own.

So, What Is Tom O’F Cars?

Tom O’F Cars is the media and storytelling side of that journey. It’s where I write about my own experiences, but also where I try to answer the questions I had when I first started looking seriously at real-world racing.
How much does it actually cost?
Which championships are realistically accessible?
What happens if you damage an arrive-and-drive car?
How do you get a licence?
What does a race weekend actually look like when you’re not arriving with a huge team and budget?

Alongside my own journey, you’ll find articles about grassroots UK motorsport, racing costs, championships worth looking at, sim racing and the less glamorous realities behind getting onto a grid. The aim is to make motorsport feel a little less mysterious while being realistic about just how difficult , and expensive, it can be. There will (hopefully!) be successes. There will probably be some terrible financial decisions. There will definitely be long journeys in a van.
That’s rather the point.

And What Is Remote Racing Co.?

The Brands Hatch weekend also helped develop another idea: Remote Racing Co. Tom O’F Cars and Remote Racing Co. have two different jobs.
Tom O’F Cars tells the story.
Remote Racing Co. makes the racing happen.

The plan is for Remote Racing Co. to become the operational side of my motorsport projects: owning and running race cars, managing entries and preparation, working with commercial partners and ultimately creating something more sustainable than simply paying for occasional race seats. The first major aim is a Classic Mini. Rather than returning for another one-off weekend, I want to buy a car and compete properly in the Classic Mini Racing Championship, starting with the 2027 season. Doing that from Islay creates some fairly obvious challenges. The car itself is likely to cost around £15,000–£18,000 before considering entries, servicing, consumables, damage, ferries, fuel and travelling around the UK. But those challenges are also what make the project interesting.

Remote Racing Co. is deliberately built around the fact that this isn’t a conventional motorsport operation based five minutes from Silverstone.
It starts on an island.

More Than Putting Logos on a Race Car

The longer-term idea behind Remote Racing Co. is also to approach motorsport partnerships slightly differently. At grassroots level, sponsorship often means paying money in exchange for a logo somewhere on a racing car. There can be considerably more value in the story around the car. Race weekends create onboard footage, photography, articles, social content, YouTube videos, hospitality opportunities, appearances, events and genuine stories that businesses can become part of.

Tom O’F Cars provides the platform to tell those stories, while Remote Racing Co. provides the physical motorsport project behind them. The aim isn’t to pretend that a Classic Mini is going to generate Formula 1-sized exposure. It’s to build useful, interesting partnerships around an unusual motorsport journey and give businesses something more tangible than a sticker.

Where This Is Going

I don’t know exactly where the journey ends. The immediate target is straightforward enough: get my own Classic Mini onto the grid and start racing regularly.
Beyond that, I’d like to keep progressing as a driver, grow Remote Racing Co. into a proper small racing operation and see just how far I can take all of this.
British GT has always been one of the big dreams. There is a fairly considerable gap between racing a Classic Mini and standing on a British GT grid, though.
Tom O’F Cars is going to document what happens in between. The costs, the opportunities, the ferries, the mistakes, the racing and whatever comes next.
From Remote Island to Race Track.

Thanks for stopping by!
Tom