Series reviewed: Formula 1, NASCAR Nextel Cup, MotoGP, IRL and Champ Car, ALMS LMP1 and LMP2 and GT1, Grand -AM rolex Daytona Prototypes,JGTC GT500, WRC and V8 Supercars


Hello everybody its Glad to be back in a full fledged manner here in SCF. I would start off my third innings at SCF with a look at motorsports team budgets and resources. If possible I would also list sources. For Formula 1 I would use statistics that are from 2004 but you can fairly bet that the present figures top them by around 50 to 100 million dollars.

BAR Honda $238.65 Million
Renault $274.60 Million
BMW Williams $262.45 Million
Ferrari $287.90 Million
Red Bull Racing $176.35 Million
Jordan $ 51.35 Million
McLaren Merc $293.85 Million
Minardi $ 46.60 Million
Sauber $ 98.38 Million
Toyota $298.70 Million

you can get these ficures from www.businessf1.com

Okay now off to NASCAR

Top NASCAR teams(single car) bring in around $20 Million sponsorship per year. A good driver can compliment that sum by around $5 to $8 Million by bringing in prize monies. Assuming that a top level Nextel Cup team makes profit every year the cost of running a victory lane grade car for a year is around $20-$25 Million. And all the teams use high tech telemetries during tests and workstations with $2000 Nvidia
Quadro graphics cards to model the engine and aerodynamics in CAD/CAM. But Telemetry is strictly "verboten" during the races. To make old school push rod V8s push 10,000rpm for 500 miles is nothing short of genius. and yeah..you thought NASCAR was low-tech..

All the four Manufacturers spend around $100-$120 Million each per year in NASCAR

MotoGP

This is one of the most difficult championship as far as obtaining info on Team Budgets. here are various commercial models as far as running teams are concerned But I will give you a lot of info.

First off Ducati. Ducati spent $55 Million in its total racing program in 2004. Considering that it spends around $15 Million every year in World Superbikes , you can farely bet that it spent around $40 Million on its MotoGP project every year. But right now with the move to higher revving and more electronically loaded 800cc and a more expensive contract with Capirossi (5-6 million dollar a year instead of 2 million') you can imagine that Ducati needs $50 Million to take the fight to the Japanese Big Fours
http://www.businessf1.com/Suppo-MotoGP.htm

Ilmor a newcomer from the world of F1 (they used to build Mercedes Benz's F1 engines) calculates that to be even a vague championship contender you need at least 20 million euros /26 million dollars per year for your two rider team
http://www.roadracerx.com/article.php?article_id=117

Okay now a bit of extrapolation of sponsorship data.

Altadis paid Yamaha $54 Million for 2 years for its factory and semi-factory team. Yamaha always said that the sponsorship contract clauses were too harsh and the sponsorship money was like tip compared to the total development and running costs. and remember there is no tipping in Japan. So from these words we can fairly assume that Altadis money could only finance a third of their MotoGP project. A bit of simple mathematics would show that Yamaha needs $80-90 million a year for their MotoGP programme. Whoaaaaa!! thats mid 90s F1 money!!! And Rossi takes around 15-18 milllion from that pie.
You can read more about sponsorship money in MotoGP under these 2 links. Note: Dennis Noyes had once made an extensive 4 part series on sponsorship and development costs in MotoGP at the end of 2005 season when the Japanese manufacturers inexplicably forced big money sponsors out of the series

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/moto/motogp/20737/
http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Crash/2004/07/22/666283?cl=&pbl=15

If Yamaha spends round $90 Million per year you can readily assume that Honda's expenditure is between $90-$110 Million per year although admittedly Honda brings a lot of money back through its racebike leasing program for satellite teams.

So right now we need to figure out how much satellite teams need 2 rider team running Honda,Ducati or Yamaha motorcycles.

The price for leasing bikes for a single rider for a season is around €4 Million. Add to that tyre costs for the whole season- €1 Million. To run a 2 bike satellite operation you need around €10 Million for the equipment. Add to that personnel costs and rider salaries and you are looking at a figure of €15 Million

http://www.crash.net/news_view~cid~6~id~146020~pid~1.htm


IRL and Champ Car

Well don't have any solid infos on these other than some bits and pieces from champ car website and speedtv.com. You need at least 5 million dollars a year to even be able to run 2 car teams in these series. Top teams spend around 20 million dollars.During the late 90s when the horsepower wars were raging on in CART/Champ Car top teams spent around 40 million dollars. Then the bubble burst. Toyota used to pour in around 50 million dollars in Indy Racing League per year before they pulled out.


ALMS

Not much info on this series other than that Audi spends €70 Million a year on its R10 project( this info came out on Sept 2005 edition of Sport Auto)

It costs €1,15 Million euros to lease a single Porsche RS Spyder for a season in ALMS

It costs around $6 million-$10 Million ( driver and personnel salaries included) to run a two car GT1 challenge. A single DBR9 is valued around $750,000. The biggest GT1 teams employ around 35-40 people while the smaller ones around 10.Check out more info under these links

http://www.evo.co.uk/news/evonews/52049/astons_back.html
http://www.astonmartinracing.com/eng/theteams/dbr9teams/larbrecompetition


Grand-Am Rolex Daytona Prototypes

In a November, 2006 interview with Sport Auto Magazine, Jorg Bergmeister (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorg_Bergmeister) reported that Krohn Racing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krohn_Racing) spent $6 million in 2006 to campaign its two-Riley, championship-winning Daytona Prototype team.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_American_Road_Racing_Association#_ note-0

JGTC

JGTC is an extremely prestigious series for Japanese manufacturers even though its popularity may not be widespread and the manufacturers spend top dollar accordingly. Nismo spend around $65 million dollars a year for developing and running its factory and customer GT500 spec 350Zs in the series. A single GT500 race-car is valued around 1 million dollars.

http://www.sportcompactcarweb.com/features/0504_scc_nissan_350z/


WRC

Eventhough I don't have any info other than a sport compact article I believe that it costs manufacturers between $60-$100 million to run a 2-3 car factory effort in WRC


V8 Supercars

WannaKoenigsegg knows way better than everybody else about racing budgets in V8 supercars. He stated in another article that an expenditure cap of €4.2 million a year for 2 car teams has been introduced after it was found last year that a few teams spent around €8.7 Million

That's about it for now. Hope you guyz enjoy all the info

BAR Honda $238.65 Million
Renault $274.60 Million
BMW Williams $262.45 Million
Ferrari $287.90 Million
Red Bull Racing $176.35 Million
Jordan $ 51.35 Million
McLaren Merc $293.85 Million
Minardi $ 46.60 Million
Sauber $ 98.38 Million
Toyota $298.70 Million



Lol @ Toyota, nearly £150 million, and they still can't get it right.
Well some people would call this a massive waste of money, but I don't, yeah, fair enough it's a lot, there's a lot of millions there, but you have to pay the 10 people who are part of the pit crew, you have to pay for the cars, the engineers, the lawyers, the tyres, the drivers, the managers, the aerodynamicists and all the other weird and wonderful people F1 includes. I then suppose that you could argue people are way over paid, but that's part of F1, at the end of the day. These kinda budgets are needed, if you want to win, which at the end of the say is everyone's perogative.

I think Toyota are just unlucky in F1, I mean look at BMW they are making progress ahead of Toyota in just over a year in F1 (well as a manufacturer anyway) anyway those are huge budgets imagine if that money was givin to third world countries it would change their lives forever !!!

Yeah i know, Toyota are just wasting so much money on F1 and they aren't winning much.

There was even an article about how much money F1 Teams spend. It was on the March Issue of F1 Racing. I used the info from the magazine and drew up a table on Microsoft Excel to show all you guys.:cool:

Total Team Spending 2006 (F1 Racing Estimate)

http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/483/f1la3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The biggest waster is Toro Rosso since they spent 75 mil just for 1 single point. Than at 2nd it's Williams at 17.77 mil per point and then in 3rd it's Red Bull at 15.75 mil.

Note: All those money are in Australian Dollars, not in US Dollars becuase the magazine it got it from is Aussie...

Toyota still can't seem to get a jump in F1 can they? LOL...

Yeah i know, Toyota are just wasting so much money on F1 and they aren't winning much.

There was even an article about how much money F1 Teams spend. It was on the March Issue of F1 Racing. I used the info from the magazine and drew up a table on Microsoft Excel to show all you guys.:cool:

Total Team Spending 2006 (F1 Racing Estimate)

http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/483/f1la3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The biggest waster is Toro Rosso since they spent 75 mil just for 1 single point. Than at 2nd it's Williams at 17.77 mil per point and then in 3rd it's Red Bull at 15.75 mil.

Note: All those money are in Australian Dollars, not in US Dollars becuase the magazine it got it from is Aussie...

Thank you very much GT King. It must have taken you quite a bit of time. There is nothing like having the latest financial stats. To all SCFers, What are your thoughts on the budgets in other series??

Har, har, har...

Go Super Aguri, with your lack of funding!

Sato RULES!

Did anyone notice what an extravagant amount of money these sports require?!

V8 Supercars

WannaKoenigsegg knows way better than everybody else about racing budgets in V8 supercars. He stated in another article that an expenditure cap of €4.2 million a year for 2 car teams has been introduced after it was found last year that a few teams spent around €8.7 Million

That's about it for now. Hope you guyz enjoy all the info

I still dont understand how they going to regulate the new cap imposed on many of the other larger teams. I cant see the governing bodies checking receipts for absolutely everything.

Yeah i know, Toyota are just wasting so much money on F1 and they aren't winning much.

There was even an article about how much money F1 Teams spend. It was on the March Issue of F1 Racing. I used the info from the magazine and drew up a table on Microsoft Excel to show all you guys.:cool:

Total Team Spending 2006 (F1 Racing Estimate)

http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/483/f1la3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

The biggest waster is Toro Rosso since they spent 75 mil just for 1 single point. Than at 2nd it's Williams at 17.77 mil per point and then in 3rd it's Red Bull at 15.75 mil.

Note: All those money are in Australian Dollars, not in US Dollars becuase the magazine it got it from is Aussie...

Now that's a cool table, thanks for that. Budgets, value for money and everything else just becomes so much clearer now! Proves that Renault have scored pretty much a bargain championship there, and with STR sucking big time with AUS $7.5M for one championship point, haha.

But as cheeky said, money does havr to be spent on everyone who's part of the organisation, and of course you have to make it work.

Nice thread Juggo.

Toyota has all the money they can shake a stick at, being one of the world’s largest car manufactures. I don’t understand, besides having 2 drivers that are getting old and sloppy but they are dedicated they also seem to prove the importance of aerodynamics instead of mechanical or electrical. If you recall last year i think they introduced 2 or 3 different bodies. They are pouring money into engineering aero packs that don’t seem to help them overcome there mechanical shot comings. If they start with good engine and a quick gear box along there aero and then need better/ younger drivers.

This sort of discussion is always slippery, speculative.

How much of this money is earmarked for "promotion & appearances"; instead of actual development/operating expenses?

Late Icon Dale Earnhardt Sr. wisely did not franchise his name/likeness/sig. At the time of his death 6 years ago; DEI Ent. was grossing $30,000,000/year just on accesory sales: T-shirts, stickers, etc. The well-paid Childress driver could well afford to start his own team for friend Michael Waltrip and son Jr; who finished 1-2 in the Daytona 500, seconds after his death.

Irony? (If so; explain in 25 words or less...).

Sometimes a driver will have a "personal services" contract with a sponsor that will have no financial relationship to his team's budget.

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aMb; money doesn't count when there are fewer designers capable of building a winning car than there are carmakers/sponsors with cubic dollars/euros.

Toyota's Camry has been #1 selling car in the US last 9/10 years. They are in NASCAR to sell TRUCKS.

I agree with you SteveFX...but i cant believe that out of a population of billions that there are only a handful of engineers capable of producing a winning car?

"Winning race cars are never designed. They are developed."

I don't know who said it; but it explains why RR Porsches still spank lots of fanny after 40 years.

More than once in my years of race fandom, a "brilliant" (on paper) new design has turned out to be worthless (on track) and been junked.

Engineers/crew chiefs aren't drivers, and drivers aren't engineers. Bandwidth of communication/understanding between them varies wildly.

I wish mechanical engineer/race drivers Mark Donahue and Alan Kulwicki were still alive. There's no limit to what they might have accomplished.

Engineers/crew chiefs aren't drivers...

Colin Chapman, arguably F1's most innovative and knowledgeable designers, was a driver before he got full time in designing. Newey has also done some race driving as well :)

But 100% agreed on the quote though. Look at the Williams FW26 (the one with the 'walrus nose'). That car was a car that had a lot of new things introduced onto it, an its main change, the front wing/nose assembly, failed to being any hard-set benefits.

Compare that to Ferrari, who under Ross Brawn and the like, kept the same philosophy in their cars for some 5-6 years, from 2001 to 2006, and look where that got them.

"aren't" meant contemporary experience. Many race engineers have raced previously; but their smallbore experience does not guarantee a "feel" for the physics of leading edge race car driving.

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While testing the 917 Turbo in Germany; the late Mark Donahue pissed off the Porsche engineers. He told them stuff like: I need 25 lb more spring in the front and 75 lb-ft less in rear roll stiffness. The factory engineers were appalled! Surviving drivers were supposed to tell the "experts" what the car "did". "Experts" were supposed to decide what changes to make.

Donohue is a legend

I think the spending for MotoGP is outrageous. No wonder the FIM is trying to attract more attention to WSBK. People can relate more to tarted up production motorcycles than all out prototype death machines.

^I am a big fan of bike sports. Dya follow British Superbikes? That's an incredible series. Last year's championship battle was so close, the top three riders at the end of the season were seperated by something ridiculous like 5 points. Last year I followed World Superbikes and MotoGP aswell. Brilliant racing. But British Superbikes just blows your mind away with some of the racing it produces. Leon Haslam, who was running 2nd had around three seconds to make up at the last lap at a wet Knochill circuit last year to catch the race leader. He did it. Up the inside at the second last corner. Amazing.

I think the spending for MotoGP is outrageous. No wonder the FIM is trying to attract more attention to WSBK. People can relate more to tarted up production motorcycles than all out prototype death machines.

Yeah but World SBK will have real problem in its hand if the Big Four Japanes don't ratify Ducati and lately KTM's intention to race 1200cc V-Twins in the series. But I am eagerly waiting for the high tech Aprilia V4 1000 production superbike that will debut in the series next year. Aprilia will be spending €15 million every year on their factory SBK team and €8 million at the very outset to develop the race engine. Seeing the failure of the Cosworth developed RS3 Cube in MotoGP it seems 15 million is peanuts there

http://www.superbike.co.uk/racing/wsb/Superbike_some_good_news_for_WSB_and_fan s_of_Aprilia_news_69755.html



I wish i could download some BSB races though torrents but none are on offer. I manage to find some World SBK videos and all the MotoGP races. Just goes on to show how popular MotoGP really is. By my reckoning, MotoGP is the second most popular Motorsport series in the whole world

I just watched the first two races from the first round of the BSB Championships from Brands Hatch and it was incredible. Double race win for Airwaves Ducati's Gregorio Lavilla. Animal's Leon Camier with second positions in both races. HM Plant Honda's defending BSB Championship defending championship stuck in the bottom half of the field for both races, not going too well for him. Lavilla's looking good for the second round from Thruxton tomorrow.