kristap

The Last Turn Clubhouse (http://lastturnclub.com) has a really good series of articles in which they break down the costs of and then paying for racing. The articles are detailed, well-written, and I thought there were really interesting. ymmv

The costs of racing, pt1 : http://lastturnclub.com/index.php?op...=525&Itemid=88

Paying for racing, pt1: http://lastturnclub.com/index.php?op...=600&Itemid=88

DrJupeman

I would have guessed more for Long, but what steady paycheck does Pobst have?

Racerrob

I actually thought Long was in the 300K range so I was surprised also. Not sure what Pobst is doing this year, but in the last several years he has driven regularly in several different series. He is like a racing mercenary

93 FireHawk 968

The Last Turn Clubhouse post was great. Thx for sharing.

Bryan Watts

Probably a rental car.

007DT

Nothing really scheduled yet until I replace the Koni...

paradisenb

Randy P drove for Compass360 Racing in the Koni Challenge (Continental Tire) series last year. He drove a Honda Civic in ST. They said he was driving some other series but I can't remember what that was. I think he's also employed by APR Motorsport.

BrandonH

He may have multiple cars but in one of his columns in 'Sports Car' last year he described his VW diesel that runs on cooking oil.

Circuit Motorsports

Yeah, he wasn't paying for the ride at Compass but I can't imagine he was being paid a whole lot either. It was his second ride. His first ride was in World Challenge in the Volvo. He had to miss one of the Koni races due to a conflict. APR was the previous year ride in Koni for him. I don't remember seeing his name on any of the cars in the Continental Challenge testing but I wasn't looking for it either. I know that he's not on the Compass roster, at least currently.

Veloce Raptor

Randy is big on ecology & green stuff. I remember seeing him check into the same hotel near Mid-Ohio as I was in for the Grand Am races in 2005. When he went back outside for his luggage, I saw he had ridden his motorcycle there from Georgia.






Professional Racing and Driving Coach

Rob in VA

One of Pobst's cars is a very nice 996 Turbo. I heard he was flinging it around nicely last time he was at VIR.

Mike Buck

Randy has a nice yellow 996TT. At Petit this year he was parked in the Lanier Speedway lot, not Road Atlanta paddock

paradisenb

OK, so most road racing drivers are paying their own way at the track. Sad. Only a few are paid and those few don't get big bucks for risking life and limb every time they get in a car.

We are all painfully aware of how expensive this sport is, so, where is the money? Who is taking the lion share?

Tire manufacturers?
Team owners?
Car manufacturers?

Could the pool be spread so thin nobody is really doing well off the sport?

Rassel

Nope
Nope
Nope

If we exclude the pay for a handful of drivers. Racing is mainly an advertising and brand awareness campaign to sell ordinary products. It can be discussed how profitable it is for a brand like Porsche who sells motorsports equipment. Porsche is probably one of the few very successful brands to have a working strategy and build up a complete setup from club-to-semipro ladder racing series and get an economy around it. But there is a lot of moon shining and enthusiasts involved there too.

Some of the last years discussions have circled on how the get the motorsport to move to development countries and get local brand awareness. Campaigning factory touring cars in Europe at least, is quite hard to fit in the marketing budget. Especially now when the manufacturers are under such pressure. Same thing with the subcontractors who carry some heavy development costs and have problems to cover them. I don't know the exact amount of racing expos that we had during the high season, but there are fewer and fewer participants.

Whenever I talk budget with team owners/manager, they always get something dark in their eyes. I'm yet to see an ordinary team to make "big bucks" out of racing. But I'm sure there is one out there..

At least that's my opinion.

kristap

To the best of my knowledge, (opinion) it seems that money is spread so thin that nobody does well.(/opinion)
Team owners have to start out with a large amount of money but that pile only gets smaller. Tire manufacturers pay for sponsorship and then earn on tires sold to teams so they might do OK. Car manufacturers sell a couple of chassis but pay huge expenses for a high echelon factory team - no way they are making money on that. Tracks get usage fees. Parts guys sell a lot of parts for broken cars, etc but they always seem to surviving on fumes.

Check out those last turn articles, they do a pretty good job of breaking it down.