AH challenge: balance money in professional motor racing

Make Stock Car Racing actually having to use stock chassis, as was the case before the late 1970s.
How do you stop the larger manufactures going full Group B and simply building 201 racing machines? If you set the stock homologation number too high no smaller manufactures can enter and to low and larger one can build racing cars at a loss?
 
How do you stop the larger manufactures going full Group B and simply building 201 racing machines? If you set the stock homologation number too high no smaller manufactures can enter and to low and larger one can build racing cars at a loss?
Except even majors won't build that many, because they know damn well they can't sell them. Hell, Chrysler didn't even manage to sell 100 '69 Daytonas (IIRC; maybe 120), surely not 200, nothing like the 500 (IIRC) NASCAR demanded, even before the 429 & the wing were outlawed.
 
Except even majors won't build that many, because they know damn well they can't sell them. Hell, Chrysler didn't even manage to sell 100 '69 Daytonas (IIRC; maybe 120), surely not 200, nothing like the 500 (IIRC) NASCAR demanded, even before the 429 & the wing were outlawed.
Is the world not much richer than 1969 and so selling far more high performance cars than then? With some F1 for example teams having 140+M$ price "caps" but also WRC at 70ish M$ they could easily afford to subsidies a few hundred special cars for homologation if needed.
 
Is the world not much richer than 1969 and so selling far more high performance cars than then? With some F1 for example teams having 140+M$ price "caps" but also WRC at 70ish M$ they could easily afford to subsidies a few hundred special cars for homologation if needed.
Can, maybe. Will is another matter. If you're Ferrari, do you really want to give away your aero secrets to anybody with a loose million or two? (Not to mention the FIA requires an entrant to actually be the constructor.) And yes, a major car company could give away homologation specials. I don't see any of them doing it, do you? They run factory teams & they sell customer cars, just like they've always done.

BTW, the goal here isn't to find new ways for major companies to give money & expensive goodies to favored teams.

I'd say, the answer to any manufacturer doing it is a rule saying, "No factory teams" & "No gimmes", & if you're caught with one, you lose your points, your share of the fund at season's end goes to somebody else, & you never get to come back, ever. And that doesn't mean a handful of special parts for the guys who know the secret handshake & the right COPO number, that means Joe Six Pack can go to the parts counter & get the same part, at the same price, as Jeff Gordon or John Force or Lewis Hamilton uses. (And if Force or Gordon or Erica Enders is using it, you might need to mandate a minimum production run, too, so the price isn't insane.)
 
I'd say, the answer to any manufacturer doing it is a rule saying, "No factory teams" & "No gimmes", & if you're caught with one,
And what self-respecting major rule setting federation will decide that and give up on its share of the "gimmes".....?
 
And what self-respecting major rule setting federation will decide that and give up on its share of the "gimmes".....?
I'm unaware of FIA getting large numbers of MCL35s, or, indeed, having much use for them. Or a surfeit of titanium con rods for the M12E engine. Those con rods, OTOH, would be exactly the kind of thing a team might want for free, & DCAG could afford to give away.
 
You make up rules limiting sponsorship and someone will start up a new league that won't limit sponsorship. Advertisers will sign up the best drivers for the new league and the old league dies.
 
There is simply not enough money in racing (even Formula 1) to make it work without sponsers. The TV deals are simply not enough to pay the field to run the teams. So as soon as you outlaw direct sponsorship on the side of the car, as well as support deals (hear drive my car kind of thing) or indirect sponsorship (here is a million dollars to talk at my dealership meeting) then you don’t have enough money for a professional team and a modern car after say the early 60s.
So the sport stays basically a glorified club racing circuit. And that makes the TV deals even worse.

Nope, as much as I hate the way motor sports have the wealthy and the rest the reality is you can’t avoid it and keep racing once we get past the bring your old car to the track for a day level.
 
Cant see why this couldn't be done in North America .
Sponsors ( the local pizza joint or hardware store ) like most local stock car races have . Tv coverage the local tv cable channel .

 
There is simply not enough money in racing (even Formula 1) to make it work without sponsers. The TV deals are simply not enough to pay the field to run the teams. So as soon as you outlaw direct sponsorship on the side of the car, as well as support deals (hear drive my car kind of thing) or indirect sponsorship (here is a million dollars to talk at my dealership meeting) then you don’t have enough money for a professional team and a modern car after say the early 60s.
So the sport stays basically a glorified club racing circuit. And that makes the TV deals even worse.

Nope, as much as I hate the way motor sports have the wealthy and the rest the reality is you can’t avoid it and keep racing once we get past the bring your old car to the track for a day level.
You do discourage me. :cryingface: You don't see any way to equalize the amount of money going in? (Which is maybe how I should have phrased it to begin with...) I don't aim to zero-out the amounts, just to cut the disparity between top & bottom. That's why I like the idea of the larger contingency pool: Joe Six Pack gets paid just for showing up with a sponsor decal on the car, more for reaching a semi, more for a win, & the same benefit goes to everybody: if you win, & win regularly, you earn more. IMO, that's how it should be.

I'll agree, in F1 or Champ car, the costs are pretty prohibitive; "run whatcha brung" is out of the question. (It has been a very long time, IMO.) In NHRA/IHRA Pro & Fuel classes, IMO, it should still be possible to be competitive without needing 18-wheelers with spare chassis & a bunch of spare engines, or needing to be part of a three- or four-car team with the budget of a small city.:eek::rolleyes: I don't see Fuel & Pro as so complex as to need budgets that high (even allowing the telemetry systems & other goodies, & the cost of safer chassis); higher than hobby racers in Super Stock or Stock, yes--& many of them manage on contingency (or are helped by it), so a larger contingency fund could make them better, too.

What NASCAR might look like under this model, IDK. I do think there would be lower speeds (& in Fuel, too), which would be good. I think there would be more privateers, which IMO would be a very good thing. (The cars wouldn't have the cool livery they sometimes do now, tho, so not an unvarnished benefit.)

Something else occurs to me: if financing is on contingency, wouldn't it offer opportunities for smaller companies to get in the game? It's one thing for Castrol to put up the entire budget for Force's FC team; it would be quite another for, say, Coker or Speedway or somebody to offer $10000 for a win in TF/D & TF/FC, & $1000 for a win in Super Stock, on top of whatever NHRA & the TV network is putting in. With two dozen sponsor decals on the car (& that's not an outrageous number), & with Castrol or Goodyear or even Edelbrock offering more than $10K a pop (& they reasonably could)...
 
Frankly you don’t NEED anything other then a trailer and you one car, but as you do this for a living you will want more things to increase the likelihood you will be able to compete and cars engines and such all break down so you will want spares. So yes you do need semi trucks full of stuff to ensure you are in the race otherwise you are out of business
As for leveling the playing field. Who would you want to be associated with Milka Duno (sp?) or Mario Andretti in his prime? Which team would you rather be associated with HausF1 or Mercedes? So now we have established that not all cars drivers and teams are equal so we know that sponsors are going to prefer one over the other so they won’t sponsor each team the same and if you make it to where they pay F1 and get assigned a random car they won’t pay. So how do you get big companies to hand over money? They are going to want the best deal they can get. So if you have sponsorship then you have uneven money that is simply the facts of the world. “I have to pay 10 million and I get some unknown Russian who has yet to finish in a Haus that has yet to qualify off the back row and you spend 10 million and get Hamilton in Merc? I don’t think so…
So to even things out you have to pitch sponsorship all together. So now we need another source of money. And even F1 can’t pay for itself from only the TV contracts. Heck Football has other sources of revenue such as tickets, and selling things with the Logo on them and such to help pay the costs and even then the NFL teams are not all completely even in spending and growing up in Michigan I can promise you the NFL teams are not all on an even playing field. My local team has sucked for 60+ years…
So I don’t see a single professional sport in the world that A) pays for itself out of TV money only nor B) has a completely even money distribution and even if they did you still won’t get completely even teams (see the Detroit Lions if you need an example)
Nope I just don’t think it is possible to truly level the playing field in a big time race series (or any other sport for that matter). Go look at Iroc. It tried but ultimately it went bankrupt.
You can perhaps get a bit closer and IndyCar is closer the F1 and F1 with the cost cap is better then it was but it will never be all that close.
The sport just costs to much today. The military has a saying about aircraft. The last 10% of the performance costs 50% of the price. And as we learned more and more about aerodynamics and safety and light weight meterials the cost kept going up. And you can’t stop that.

I am sure that the same argument could be heard at the Circus Maximus back in the day. Chariot racing was better when we only used 1 horse now we have to buy 4. And that guy over there has 8 in case he needs spares. And of course that guy has Caesars backing so he gets the best horses. And that other guy has just introduced a lighter weight Chariot so now we will all have to buy knew ones and i just bought the new 14 spoke wheels to replace those heave 18 spoke jobs we used last year…

Now dont get me wrong you can do some things but they will have limited effect. Personly I want to change engine distribution. All engines from a manufacturer are (in my plan) sent into a FIA warehouse then when a Mercedes team needs a new engine one is chosen at random that way we know they will all run the same.
As for IndyCar I think they should figure out how many laps a car can run full out and how long it takes to fill a car full of fuel. Then require pit stops 2 laps short of the distance and stops 2 secon longer then the fuel time. Thus no incentive to go slow. Dixon has won championships because he could drive a bit slower but save a TON of fuel… that is NOT good racing. And if course DP won her only race that way and probably half the 500s in the past 20 years were won that way.
So there are things you can do to even the playing field a bit but only a very little bit.
 
Keeping the money out of motorsports is a double edged sword. The FIM tried to deal with this issue, with a vengeance in motorcycle GP in the 60s, because companies like Honda, Yamaha, and Suzuki (who had deep financial pockets), made insanely complicated small displacement multi-cylinder motorcycles (6 and 4-cylinder 250s and 350s, 5-cylinder 125s, 3 and 4-cylinder 50s, etc.), with stratospheric redlines (20,000 plus rpms), and 8 and 9 speed or more gearboxes (to deal with the very narrow power bands the engines had) that could go as fast as 150-160 mph. As a result the smaller motorcycle companies. and privateers found it difficult to impossible to compete with the big dollar teams (though MV Agusta [thanks to Count Agusta being a multi-millionaire], and Moto Morini [due to them using exotic metals like beryllium for the pistons, to lighten reciprocating mass], put up a good fight). FIM decided to bring the "fairness" back into grand prix motorcycle racing, by limiting the number of cylinders, motorcycles could have for their displacement (4-cylinders for 500cc machines, 2-cylinders for for 250 cc, machines, etc.), to limit the amount of spending teams did developing exotic machines.

This only worked in part. The motorcycles were still expensive exotica - just not quite as exotic. Also, it didn't do much to help bring back the smaller teams, and Honda, ended up quitting GP motorcycle racing after the ruling went into effect in 1968, until 1979. Also, with the cylinder count limitations, the teams ended up settling on the same 2-stroke engine configurations (Honda being the exception for a while, with the V3 and V4 500 GP machines), to the point, that by the late 90s, some of the classes ended up being boring, and racing kind of became the same old same old (kind of like how NASCAR is accused of being nowadays, due to all of the car restrictions in place]). As a result, in 2002 FIM revamped motorcycle GP racing to stir things up, with new engine displacment classes (the 500cc, and 250 cc classes were eliminated), and the elimination of 2-stroke engines (going green) for racing. This has caused more diversity with teams that didn't do GP before (such as Ducati) joining the racing, but it still is basically a big dollar sport, where the factory teams (or factory sponsored privateers), are the ones who usually are the winners.

IMO, there really is no easy way to keep the big money out of motorsports, unless its done on the grass roots level (like short track dirt racing with modified stock cars), without making it bland and boring.
 
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Frankly you don’t NEED anything other then a trailer and you one car, but as you do this for a living you will want more things to increase the likelihood you will be able to compete and cars engines and such all break down so you will want spares. So yes you do need semi trucks full of stuff to ensure you are in the race otherwise you are out of business
Want, yes. Need, not really. (Depending on if you mean Champ car or Top Fuel.) It's not exactly SOP any more, but IMO, if you break, you shouldn't be able to rebuild in the pits; you should have to trailer it. If you burn a piston or something, okay, rebuild it; if you've thrown a rod, go home. (Unless you've done it in quals, & you've got until Sunday to get it done.) I do wonder if a one engine per weekend rule for Pro &/or (especially) Fuel wouldn't be a really good idea.
As for leveling the playing field. Who would you want to be associated with Milka Duno (sp?) or Mario Andretti in his prime? Which team would you rather be associated with HausF1 or Mercedes? So now we have established that not all cars drivers and teams are equal so we know that sponsors are going to prefer one over the other
That's exactly the problem. Making it contingent on performance means Mario or Big or Force, or whoever, still gets paid more at the end, because they do better.
“I have to pay 10 million and I get some unknown Russian who has yet to finish in a Haus that has yet to qualify off the back row and you spend 10 million and get Hamilton in Merc? I don’t think so…"
I don't recall ever suggesting anything remotely like that...
So to even things out you have to pitch sponsorship all together.
I never said there should be no sponsor money at all. Just more-even access. Again, a contingency fund...
So now we need another source of money. And even F1 can’t pay for itself from only the TV contracts. Heck Football has other sources of revenue such as tickets, and selling things with the Logo on them and such to help pay the costs and even then the NFL teams are not all completely even in spending and growing up in Michigan I can promise you the NFL teams are not all on an even playing field.
NASCAR does it, too. AFAIK, so does NHRA. I have no problem with that. My question is, does that go into the points fund, or the purses, or just to the executives? It should go back to the racers, IMO.

As noted, so long as you don't have name sponsors, everybody gets access to the same pool of money, & whoever does best gets it. Nobody gets to buy their way to a final-round win, & nobody good gets shut out by cheap sponsors. (As noted, it might actually expand the number of sponsors, which would be good for drag racing, & NASCAR, too; it was a pretty big deal when Tide signed with Waltrip.)
So I don’t see a single professional sport in the world that A) pays for itself out of TV money only nor B) has a completely even money distribution and even if they did you still won’t get completely even teams
No, not completely even, ever. Just closer to even. That makes the racing better, which will draw more fans, & generate more money. It will also (probably) encourage more entrants, because more people will feel like they've got a chance to win, & more of them will have.
Now dont get me wrong you can do some things but they will have limited effect. Personly I want to change engine distribution. All engines from a manufacturer are (in my plan) sent into a FIA warehouse then when a Mercedes team needs a new engine one is chosen at random that way we know they will all run the same.
I'd be fine with that...except, in drag racing, how the engine's tuned governs traction, & traction is variable by lane, & pass to pass, so it's effectively impossible to run a spec engine. Unless you mean to start with a spec engine (be it a KB or Donovan or whatever), & let the crew chief work his magic as the weekend goes on; I'd be fine with that.
As for IndyCar I think they should figure out how many laps a car can run full out and how long it takes to fill a car full of fuel. Then require pit stops 2 laps short of the distance and stops 2 secon longer then the fuel time. Thus no incentive to go slow. Dixon has won championships because he could drive a bit slower but save a TON of fuel… that is NOT good racing. And if course DP won her only race that way and probably half the 500s in the past 20 years were won that way.
So there are things you can do to even the playing field a bit but only a very little bit.
I don't see an advantage in carrying more fuel, nor (frankly) in pushing when it's not necessary. That's going to drive costs up.
 
Ironically enough you'd create a sport entirely populated by the idle super rich. Since they are the only ones with the free time and hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars the car, fuel, repairs, and support staff needed to truly compete without sponsors. Just like the early modern Olynpics.
 
Ironically enough you'd create a sport entirely populated by the idle super rich. Since they are the only ones with the free time and hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars the car, fuel, repairs, and support staff needed to truly compete without sponsors. Just like the early modern Olynpics.
*aaaarrrgh*

I should have retitled the thread to begin with.

I am not trying to take all the money out!
 
We get it you want it more even but you can’t get that.
A) the sport does not have enough money without sponsorship to pay for a professional team(s). So we have to have sponsors.
B) you can’t dictate how much Sponsors pay or they won’t pay anything . Thus my example of who do you want to sponsor. If you say all sponsors pay the same thing then you get the Milka vs Mario argument and no one will pay for Milka. If you want let the sponsors decide (as they do now) then you get uneaven money. And the teams that do better get more and do even better.

There is no other way. Either you get sponsors or you don’t and sponsors mean un even money. While no sponsors mean glorified armature racing and that will be even LESS equal as the Billionaire will buy his kid the very best pay for the best crew and spend 10000x as much as everyone else

As for the need vs want for the extra engine or suspension or other parts. I disagree they ARE needed. This is a profession. That means the MUST make money or go broke. And an accident in practice one before Qualifying or during qualifying means no race no race means no money for the race and (back to the sponsors) often the contracts require a set number of races a year must be started. So you could through no fault if youRS get knocked out of enough races that your sponsors don’t pay you and now you lose your house.
And if enough cats crash out of practice the race series could be in big trouble as often they have a contract with the track and the TV promising a minimum number of cars will start the race. Picture the big one happening during practice and while relatively minor damage to most cars, the cars don’t have that trailer full of parts so 1/3 of the cars are out before qualification. Now the series loses the TV money and the track money. So even the cars that race are going to lose money as the series no longer has the same money they would have made so everyone gets a sma l,Er share.

This type of thing is inevitable. You seam to be trying to somehow disconnect the results from the money. And while the series CAN do that (see IndyCar Winners Circle as an example the truth is they still need sponsors and those with the most money tend to do best and thus get more money and so on and so on.
You CANT avoid this unless you get all you money from series sponsors (TV, series naming sponsors and advertising partners and governments and such) As soon as the teams or cars or drivers need to find sponsors you automatically get uneven money. And more money going to the better teams.
So sorry to say but what you are looking for is impossible
 
There is no other way.
Have you read not one word of my contingency fund idea?

BTW, drag racing worked real nicely in the '60s & '70s, even allowing name sponsors, without a handful of teams ending up dominating. So saying it's impossible is pretty strong.
 
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i a. listening but ….
The reality is the money has to come from somewhere.
Sponsors will NOT sponsor cars evenly and i can understand that no one wants yo spend as much for a back maker as the champion.
The sport is NOT popular enough to pay everyone from TV or naming rights sponsors or both.
The tracks do not make enough to pay either (unless it is an F1 track then the local dictatorship that wants to look good will pay for a few years.
You can use sponsors then make up the difference from a slush fund (first. off you probably don't have enough to afford it) as the folks with wealthy spoonsors will get (rightly) upset.

So i just don't see how you accomplish you your goal off leveling the field. You can cut the difference a but but you can acomplish that by other means such as standard parts that are fix priced and or setting a budget cap that is close enough to the low end budget to be reasonable, the problem with that is you will end up with fewer teams or the teams will have a big gap in budget or you reduce the cost so low that you lose the big high end feel. F1 is having to dance that dance and balance this yo avoid become a lesser series then its reputation for being the ultimate form of racing .

So i am sorry but there is no easy answer if there was one of the various race series over the last 30-40 years would probably have figured this out buy now.
 
i a. listening but ….
The reality is the money has to come from somewhere.
Sponsors will NOT sponsor cars evenly and i can understand that no one wants yo spend as much for a back maker as the champion.
The sport is NOT popular enough to pay everyone from TV or naming rights sponsors or both.
The tracks do not make enough to pay either (unless it is an F1 track then the local dictatorship that wants to look good will pay for a few years.
You can use sponsors then make up the difference from a slush fund (first. off you probably don't have enough to afford it) as the folks with wealthy spoonsors will get (rightly) upset.

So i just don't see how you accomplish you your goal off leveling the field. You can cut the difference a but but you can acomplish that by other means such as standard parts that are fix priced and or setting a budget cap that is close enough to the low end budget to be reasonable, the problem with that is you will end up with fewer teams or the teams will have a big gap in budget or you reduce the cost so low that you lose the big high end feel. F1 is having to dance that dance and balance this yo avoid become a lesser series then its reputation for being the ultimate form of racing .

So i am sorry but there is no easy answer if there was one of the various race series over the last 30-40 years would probably have figured this out buy now.

Agreed, and like I said before if you try to restrict sponsorship someone will start a new league that won't. The vast majority viewing audience doesn't care about how the money is spread out, they just want to see the cars go around the track as fast as possible.
 
The reality is the money has to come from somewhere.
It does. There are lots of places it can, & does, come from. I've mentioned more than a few.
Sponsors will NOT sponsor cars evenly
I have never suggested they be compelled to, so that's, at best, a straw man.
The sport is NOT popular enough to pay everyone from TV or naming rights sponsors or both.
I've never suggested all teams' entire budgets be paid entirely from TV rights (or anything else), so that's also a straw man. That teams (in F1, at least) do get a piece of TV rights is a fact; some of them wouldn't be solvent without it.
The tracks do not make enough to pay either
Nowhere did I suggest purses were the only option, either, so that's also a straw man.
You can use sponsors then make up the difference from a slush fund
I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

You've now mentioned many of the sources that, combined, could pay top teams to stay in the game, however, & I take issue with none of them--except in how the money is delivered.
So i am sorry but there is no easy answer if there was one of the various race series over the last 30-40 years would probably have figured this out buy now.
That amounts to saying, "It's never been done, so it can't be." I thought AH was about how it could be.

You've said not one word about why you think sponsors wouldn't put money into a contingency fund that pays to top-performing teams, when they're doing it now in the amateur classes. Yes, some sponsors would get out if it meant they couldn't put their name on the car (in drag racing, at the very least; I'll leave off F1). As I've said already, IMO there are sponsors who can't afford to pay the expense of an entire team, but can give money to a contingency fund that's shared by dozens of sponsors, & paid based on performance. That, IMO, broadens the sponsor base, which is good for the sport.

Might it take spec parts? Yeah, it might. Might it take more "durability" rules, like engines having to last four (or more) F1 race weekends, instead of what it is now (two?)? Yeah, it might. Might it take a ban on tire changes or refuelling or fewer guys over the pit wall? Maybe.

As noted, I should probably have limited to NHRA (& IHRA), which is my primary interest... I don't see a (larger) contingency fund as a deal-breaker to running a Pro team. I remain interested in knowing why you do.
 
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