NASCAR buying Grand Am
09-05-2008, 02:33 AM
#31
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oh and if I ever win and beat a "pro" in any kind of pro race, whether I rent a seat or not, I'll pop some champagne in your direction. you better stop caring so much how or you achieve your goals or you'll never achieve them.
roger penske or flying lizard won't be rushing to pay you to race just because you win an autocross in a 944, SC, etc- you better have wheeled some cup cars, open wheelers etc around and won if you ever expect to get paid.
maybe you can get your own shop/garage and sponsor yourself, and go from there.
roger penske or flying lizard won't be rushing to pay you to race just because you win an autocross in a 944, SC, etc- you better have wheeled some cup cars, open wheelers etc around and won if you ever expect to get paid.
maybe you can get your own shop/garage and sponsor yourself, and go from there.
09-05-2008, 02:39 AM
#32
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I hold no illusions that without being able to buy my own cars, I'll have to pay for seats here and there especially while I'm a novice.(or raise money from sponsorship for seats, which I'm looking to do for the VIR 13HR, ARRC @ road atlanta, and 25 HR thunderhill this fall/winter)
09-05-2008, 02:40 PM
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Mtosi- here comes a rant dude, sorry you're upset that there are a bunch of silicon valley millionaires or venture capitalists or McDreamy's in Grand-AM, or NASA pro racing, or whatever. It's always been that way, because racing is god-damn expensive! even gokarting at the national level is stupid- you've got to spend the green for those things and they don't even have seatbelts!
but seriously, racing is completely different from every other professional sport. How? The equipment is much more expensive (by 100x in most cases) and it's much more dangerous, and it's product oriented rather than entertainment oriented.
the entire nature of racing is marque vs marque as much as man vs man, whereas my sport and every other non-racing sport is man vs man and location vs location (meaning east/west, or city vs city, country vs country)
I'm sorry but if you won the lottery tomorrow and didn't use that money to pay your way via instruction, seat time, testing, equipment etc - and you say you want to be a pro- then you're a prideful moron.
if I won the lottery and could afford to hire jorg bergmeister and pat long and start my own ALMS team, I'm friggin doing it! who cares? every human has a different path, different skill level, etc. If I was broke, I wouldn't have been able to advance my driving skills as fast as I have. You CAN be economical, academic, and very professional about how you learn...but you have to MARKET yourself to sponsors, so that if you can't pay, maybe they can pay for you.
marketing himself/herself is really the newest evolution of the driver- everyone NEEDS support.
about money in the sport of racing- like everyone else has said- development costs money- you think schumacher didn't pay for instruction, or F3, or whatever other development series he ran in? do you really think that the kids in star mazda are all hired guns?
also- in order to be a MLB player (my sport so I can give 100% factual info on it)- you absolutely have to spend your parents money or get a serious job to make it. there are only 11.7 college scholarships in D1 baseball- and those are spread between 33 kids. so the rich kids at USC, or Stanford have to pay for their education and to be on the team just like any other college kid.
maybe you don't understand that there is no money to be made by a team owner just for having winning cars. He has to sell sponsorship, he has to get factory support, otherwise he'll be as broke as a joke in no time.
the nature of racing is: car companies want to make money, so they market themselves, and attach their brands to other brands (cross marketing benefits, macroeconomics 101, marketing 101). cars are moving billboards (marketing), and racing is entertaining (sometimes) for poor and rich folks across the world. some tickets are sold, some tv rights are sold, and cars go around and crash into each other for an hour or so, and then someone finishes first. drivers are needed at this point because they can't design robots to drive 10/10ths, and because people are cheaper to reproduce.
MLB revenue is about 6-7 Billion per year. Half of that is player salaries (~about 1300 players), which are paid by teams that sell 1.5-3.5 million tickets per season (81 games) and a lot of money is generated via media content (cable and network contracts and advertising).
NASCAR drivers are the only american racers that come anywhere near the MINIMUM salary in most of the other professional sports- because it's the only series that generates as much ticket sales and media content. F1 drivers make on average a similar salary to MLB, NBA, NFL athletes, but there are only 20 F1 drivers in the universe!
In summary, don't player hate. I've had to get baseball lessons, pay for tuition, equipment, travel, uniforms, tournament entry fees, etc to get to where I'm at. Getting to the top in any sport has direct and indirect costs- opportunity costs when you allocate cash or time away from something else. That being said, it's much easier to become a pro baseball or football player than to be a legit paid to
drive Pro racer.
if you clubrace, you're gonna have to pay for a car, parts, transport, etc and I bet if you add all that up, doing an arrive and drive against pros in endurance racing isn't that much more money, might as well just allocate it towards that.
but seriously, racing is completely different from every other professional sport. How? The equipment is much more expensive (by 100x in most cases) and it's much more dangerous, and it's product oriented rather than entertainment oriented.
the entire nature of racing is marque vs marque as much as man vs man, whereas my sport and every other non-racing sport is man vs man and location vs location (meaning east/west, or city vs city, country vs country)
I'm sorry but if you won the lottery tomorrow and didn't use that money to pay your way via instruction, seat time, testing, equipment etc - and you say you want to be a pro- then you're a prideful moron.
if I won the lottery and could afford to hire jorg bergmeister and pat long and start my own ALMS team, I'm friggin doing it! who cares? every human has a different path, different skill level, etc. If I was broke, I wouldn't have been able to advance my driving skills as fast as I have. You CAN be economical, academic, and very professional about how you learn...but you have to MARKET yourself to sponsors, so that if you can't pay, maybe they can pay for you.
marketing himself/herself is really the newest evolution of the driver- everyone NEEDS support.
about money in the sport of racing- like everyone else has said- development costs money- you think schumacher didn't pay for instruction, or F3, or whatever other development series he ran in? do you really think that the kids in star mazda are all hired guns?
also- in order to be a MLB player (my sport so I can give 100% factual info on it)- you absolutely have to spend your parents money or get a serious job to make it. there are only 11.7 college scholarships in D1 baseball- and those are spread between 33 kids. so the rich kids at USC, or Stanford have to pay for their education and to be on the team just like any other college kid.
maybe you don't understand that there is no money to be made by a team owner just for having winning cars. He has to sell sponsorship, he has to get factory support, otherwise he'll be as broke as a joke in no time.
the nature of racing is: car companies want to make money, so they market themselves, and attach their brands to other brands (cross marketing benefits, macroeconomics 101, marketing 101). cars are moving billboards (marketing), and racing is entertaining (sometimes) for poor and rich folks across the world. some tickets are sold, some tv rights are sold, and cars go around and crash into each other for an hour or so, and then someone finishes first. drivers are needed at this point because they can't design robots to drive 10/10ths, and because people are cheaper to reproduce.
MLB revenue is about 6-7 Billion per year. Half of that is player salaries (~about 1300 players), which are paid by teams that sell 1.5-3.5 million tickets per season (81 games) and a lot of money is generated via media content (cable and network contracts and advertising).
NASCAR drivers are the only american racers that come anywhere near the MINIMUM salary in most of the other professional sports- because it's the only series that generates as much ticket sales and media content. F1 drivers make on average a similar salary to MLB, NBA, NFL athletes, but there are only 20 F1 drivers in the universe!
In summary, don't player hate. I've had to get baseball lessons, pay for tuition, equipment, travel, uniforms, tournament entry fees, etc to get to where I'm at. Getting to the top in any sport has direct and indirect costs- opportunity costs when you allocate cash or time away from something else. That being said, it's much easier to become a pro baseball or football player than to be a legit paid to
drive Pro racer.
if you clubrace, you're gonna have to pay for a car, parts, transport, etc and I bet if you add all that up, doing an arrive and drive against pros in endurance racing isn't that much more money, might as well just allocate it towards that.
oh and if I ever win and beat a "pro" in any kind of pro race, whether I rent a seat or not, I'll pop some champagne in your direction. you better stop caring so much how or you achieve your goals or you'll never achieve them.
roger penske or flying lizard won't be rushing to pay you to race just because you win an autocross in a 944, SC, etc- you better have wheeled some cup cars, open wheelers etc around and won if you ever expect to get paid.
maybe you can get your own shop/garage and sponsor yourself, and go from there.
roger penske or flying lizard won't be rushing to pay you to race just because you win an autocross in a 944, SC, etc- you better have wheeled some cup cars, open wheelers etc around and won if you ever expect to get paid.
maybe you can get your own shop/garage and sponsor yourself, and go from there.
bryan, I'd love to run the 24HR @ lemans as a gentleman racer, probably won't be for almost a decade. that's my goal and I'm going to leave no stone unturned in that direction. I'm also going to be investing smartly from now til then in order to have "sponsorship".
I hold no illusions that without being able to buy my own cars, I'll have to pay for seats here and there especially while I'm a novice.(or raise money from sponsorship for seats, which I'm looking to do for the VIR 13HR, ARRC @ road atlanta, and 25 HR thunderhill this fall/winter)
I hold no illusions that without being able to buy my own cars, I'll have to pay for seats here and there especially while I'm a novice.(or raise money from sponsorship for seats, which I'm looking to do for the VIR 13HR, ARRC @ road atlanta, and 25 HR thunderhill this fall/winter)
My rant is directed against "Pro" series that try to portray themselves as such yet because they have done such a poor job marketing/running the series, well over half the field is paying for their ride. One would be hard pressed to name a successful sport/series (IE one the public actually cares about and watches), where the "top" athletes are paying to play. I'm not referring to buying a ride (or car) in a feeder series (FF, MX5, Skippy, F3, etc.), because they are exactly that a feeder series, not "pro", nor do I consider anyone running those series "gentleman" drivers. You can bet if I won a realy large amount of money in lottery (first I'd have to buy tickets for that to happen, but thats besides the point) I'd move to europe and buy myself a FF to run in British FF, and then depending on how that went see about F3. If europe were not an option, I'd throw most of it in the bank and run Skippy, FM, MX-5, SRF, or something along those lines. Racing as a whole will forever be a mostly a rich mans (sons) game, I'm under no misconception on that front, but I still will not conceed that the top level of sportscar racing has to be forever relegated to grids full of pay for your riders and playing second fiddle to F1, and NASCAR.
My wish for the era of the "gentlemen" racers in sportscar racing is not directed at the gentleman drivers, as much as that it would signify sportscar racing had finally stepped up into the mainstream. The odds of that happening however are highly unlikely, not because sportscar racing is boring, or because the general public is to stupid to understand it. It's because of the insane amount of XL ego's each believing that their sanctioning body has the best direction for the sport to go and never cooperating with each other or more importantly the manufacturers (Afor mentioned ego's and series..... Stephane Ratal (sp?) FIA GT, Daniel Possienot (sp?) ACO/ALMS/LeMans Series, France family Grand AM etc.....) and on top of that they have to deal with Bernie and Max internationally, who will attempt to kill anything that would threaten F1's position as the "premier" motorsport series (as they already did in the early/mid 90's).
09-05-2008, 05:39 PM
#38
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I think I'm confused. The history of motosports is founded on "gentlemen racing". Yes the factories got involved and yes professional racing teams grew over time, but it all started with guys buying cars and going racing. Why is that a bad thing?
09-05-2008, 06:03 PM
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09-05-2008, 06:21 PM
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Funny you should mention that seeing as how I've had some form of it for the last two semesters 
Is that why attendence is greater at some NASCAR races (0% pay for your riders) than TV viewship of Grand Am and ALMS races?
170,500 TV Viewers over the course of the TWELVE hours of Sebring (trust me it's hard to find the actual figures they are so embarassed about them, you always find percentages referring to how viewship is "up", the only series and race you can ever get a number for is ALMS and the 12 hours of Sebring, Grand Am is off the map)
Attendance of NASCAR Bristol night race, 172,000 (quoted from ESPN broadcast, even though capacity appears to only be 168,000)!
Is that why attendence is greater at some NASCAR races (0% pay for your riders) than TV viewship of Grand Am and ALMS races?
170,500 TV Viewers over the course of the TWELVE hours of Sebring (trust me it's hard to find the actual figures they are so embarassed about them, you always find percentages referring to how viewship is "up", the only series and race you can ever get a number for is ALMS and the 12 hours of Sebring, Grand Am is off the map)
Attendance of NASCAR Bristol night race, 172,000 (quoted from ESPN broadcast, even though capacity appears to only be 168,000)!
09-05-2008, 06:22 PM
#44
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Are you certain no one in NASCAR pays for rides? "Pays for" can also include "brings personal sponsor money"...
Also, NASCAR started in the US and has a greater following than European-oriented sports car racing because it is MARKETED better.
Also, NASCAR started in the US and has a greater following than European-oriented sports car racing because it is MARKETED better.
09-05-2008, 06:34 PM
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Exactly... As I mentioned countless times before the reason I would like to see gentlemen drivers in "pro" series gone, is because it would mean someone in sportscars had actually figured out that concept (my major). Which would create an environment where manufacturers and sponsors had more influence (money), than rich guys who just like to play on weekends.. It would also open up rides for skilled and younger drivers coming up through the ranks because teams would have the motivation to win.