SHANE KELLY races on a shoestring yet he still managed to finish second in one of the prestigious national single-seater championships.

The 25-year-old Eastleigh racing driver has been plagued by lack of sponsorship since he won the Jim Russell Racing School Championship at Silverstone in 1999.

Kelly's potential looked set to land him a seat in the British Formula 3 Championship - the breeding ground for F1 - in 2001 but as he struggled to meet the budget, the team manager pulled the plug on the drive.

It would have turned some drivers away from the sport for good, but Kelly kept persevering and now in a family-run team headed up by his dad Phil, Kelly is showing most of his opponents a clean pair of heels.

He has just finished second in the national ARP Formula 3 Championship and hopes to go one better in 2005.

During 2004 Kelly won at Mallory Park and made it to the podium eight times. He put his seven-year-old Dallarra Opel on pole for the last race of the season at Donington, but clutch problems reared up and left him lagging at the back of the field in the early stages of the race.

When he did manage to get the car performing, he blasted his way up to fourth place to clinch second place overall in the 12-round series behind Richard Marsh, who took the title for the second year running.

Kelly admits it's hard keeping up with Marsh, who he says has a bigger budget. "He used three engines through the season as opposed to my one.

"I've got some good mechanics who make the most of what we've got," added Kelly, who says one of the biggest handicaps to lack of funds, is having to make tyres stretch.

"I had to use one set of tyres for three meetings - practice, qualifying and racing. And it cost me the chance of a win at Oulton Park where the tyres were shot and I had to back off. Apart from that I have had punctures, which have cost me high places in qualifying and in the races themselves."

Kelly will be spending the early weeks of the new year looking for enough sponsorship to contest the British F3 Championship next summer, but he admits: "It's more likely we'll do the ARP again because it's a lot cheaper.

"And after what we have learnt this year, I feel I can take the title in 2005."

Kelly, whose small team includes engineer Ian Smith and mechanics Chris Davis, Phil Stoodley and Steve Ayres, was sponsored by Motorsport Services, H Young Transport, Romsey Motorcycles, Shake Away and the Swan Shopping Centre in home-town Eastleigh.

"Without them and help from my dad and my mechanics, none of it would have been possible," says former kart champion Kelly.