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If you’re a weekend warrior who enjoys some cone-dodging, time-attacking, grassroots drifting or just some good old-fashion hooning on a twisty piece of backcountry asphalt, then you’ve probably ended up with sore or even bruised legs from bracing yourself against the door and center tunnel. Simply put, the OE seat and 3-point seat belt in most street cars don’t offer anywhere near enough lateral support when cornering hard, which means you end up having to expend a lot of energy bracing yourself to minimize how much sliding around in the seat you’re doing.
For those of you who’ve done some driving in a proper racing bucket with a 5- or 6-point harness holding you down snuggly, you’ll know how much easier it is to drive at the limit. No more bracing yourself against the door and center tunnel, and gone is that death grip on the steering wheel. Instead, you can focus on the road and all the subtle feedback your car is giving you through the seat of your pants and from a more lightly gripped steering wheel.
On the other hand, if you’ve ever spent some time in a racing bucket that fits you poorly, then you’ll know just how uncomfortable this can make the driving experience, especially during any sort of extended street use. So although budget and seat design/construction are very important considerations (more on these later), the single most important factor when choosing a racing bucket for your car is how well it fits your unique (and no doubt Weider-approved) physical dimensions.
SFI-certified seats cost a little extra since the certification process adds cost for the manufacturers, but you can’t put a ...
Well, OK, maybe seat fitment comes second to safety, so make sure the seats on your shopping list are SFI/FIA-certified (look for the SFI/FIA sticker on the shell of the seat), since anything that’s not certified hasn’t been crash tested during its R&D phase. There’s a reason just about every motorsports sanctioning body out there requires racers to equip their cars with SFI-certified seats and harnesses (as well as other safety items), and that reason is driver safety and the structural integrity of the seat during a serious crash. SFI-certified seats cost a little extra since the certification process adds cost for the manufacturers, but you can’t put a price on crashworthiness and the safety of the driver (that’s you, dummy).
Now it’s time to find a seat that fits you properly. Racing buckets come in all shapes and sizes, and the way they’ve been padded and covered also varies a lot, too. Although you can begin your fitment research by looking at seat dimension charts online, just like buying a pair of jeans or shoes, there’s no substitute for trying them on before spending your money. Unless you happen to be attending a big trade show like SEMA or PRI where you can sit in just about every racing bucket on the planet in one day, your only option is to visit a variety of race shops to sit in different brand seats and try out the various models available.
If you have what’s sometimes referred to as “American proportions” (meaning a 36-plus-inch waist and the manboobs that go with it), then you can immediately narrow your search to seats offered in “big boy” sizes. For example, the popular Sparco Evo seat is offered in a number of larger sizes called the Evo 2, Evo 2 Plus and the Evo 3, while Recaro designates their full-figured buckets with the addition of a XL to the end of the seat’s name. Cobra, another highly reputable manufacturer of SFI/FIA-certified seats, adds a GT to the end of the name of their plus-size seats, while Bride uses the oh-so-JDM designation of Type-L.