In the United States the best place to start and gain experience is to become a marshal through your local Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) chapter. For example in the Central Florida Region we work F1 Miami, St. Pete GP (Indycar), and 2 of IMSAs endurance races; the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona and Sebring 12 Hours. We also work many other regional and national events at Sebring and Daytona.
Please get to FIA officials about cost cap. How can they put repairing a crashed car into the same category as development? All teams suffer the same due to crashes. Leveling the playing field is one thing, but taking a new design this does not seem to hold the road as well as the last makes the cost cap ridiculous.
A very noble task, but with all the money involved in F1 why the hell would they volunteer to do the job for nothing??? They should be paid as much as those smug, egotistical, prima donna's that drive the cars.
Wayne, as a marshal myself I look at it this way: if we go trackside (e.g. to recover a vehicle) we want to know that everyone in the team has everyone else's back: the guy waving the double yellows to cover us, the observers who are communicating with race control, the marshals ready with the extinguishers, the marshals spotting and reporting any cars that overtake under yellows. If we are volunteers, I know those guys REALLY want to be there. If we were paid minimum wage or similar, I wouldn't be able to say that and I think it would make the role a lot more dangerous. (That said, I wouldn't object to being paid as much as the drivers! :D )
