[chernaudi]

And we have to remember that in F1 Mercedes-Benz has spent an insane amount of money on their F1 program. Just working on the current engine rules cost Daimler a half a billion dollars alone. And yes, the cost can be partly justified by winning races and championships, and having a customer engine program.

And because Audi Sport and Porsche are gone doesn't automatically mean that TMG are going to trim the budget. Audi Sport didn't stop spending $75-100 million on their LMP program as a whole just because it became customer focused. The R8 program wasn't absorbing a huge amount of costs, but what they were saving was going into the R10 program.

And there's a big difference between what Audi did with the R10 program vs the hybrid stuff. Audi started work on the R10 in the fall of 2002, and it took them three years to have that car go from an idea to a working car. Even the initial R18 program for 2011 took the best part of two years to get from concept to an actual car.

And it's certainly not above Toyota to spend money when they want to. Even though it looked much the same, the 2012 and 2013 TS030 I don't think even shared the tub with each other. So Toyota basically did what Audi did in 2011-2012 and designed a car based on the old one, but built from the outset around a hybrid spec.

And it can be said that TMG, having all that stuff left over from F1, could do things in house to save money and time as far as having to farm things out to subcontractors. They built their own tubs, had their own wind tunnel, things that VAG didn't really have on site at Audi Sport, who's tubs were built by Dallara or YCom, and used a mix of their own wind tunnels and those of a F1 team.

I don't even think that Porsche built their own tubs or relied solely on their own wind tunnels. Peugeot didn't build their own chassis either. Like Audi and Porsche, they designed it, but didn't manufacture it.

The irony here is that most of the time, companies outsource stuff to try and save money, though that doesn't seem to have worked here.

And as I've said before, racing budgets, R&D budgets, all of that are like Government budgets. If you get things done ahead of time and under budget, you're going to have a harder time getting that big budget back when you really need it.

Wasteful spending? Yes, at least in my mind, but there's a method to the madness, even if I myself think that the method is madness.

Not to mention that with the problems that TMG had in 2015, they had to raise their budget. Bringing the TS050 online a season early and their 2017 facelift didn't come cheap.

And as I've said, the insane spending didn't happen overnight, nor was it motivated just by hybrids being there. It was all down to exploiting the ERS Incentive, aero rules (some of which were loosened up by the ACO, some of which were to get around new restrictions), and trying to make quick work of a new formula that replaced an engine based BOP formula (the air restrictor) that existed for nearly 20 years.

Add in doing so in a time compressed format (initially these rules were only going to last three years, remember--as in they should've been out the door before this season started), you're going to get rising budgets, at least as far as those in the class want to spend it.

That goes back to the whole, as someone put it either here or else where, the "go big, or go home" philosophy. IMo, it seemed that the ACO based that on Audi Sport, Porsche, and even Toyota spending huge sums of money as long as they got a viable R&D return on it.

That's why I asked earlier what's the worth of sticking around in the WEC for Toyota when they can defect to Formula E and learn as much if not more about EVs and things that they can apply to hybrid systems for a fraction of the cost?

I think that the ACO just rode the gravy train. And in doing so, never banked on a back up plan for if things go belly-up. So we're here left to wonder what their next move will be.

It's a problem that in their hands, not ours, not yours, not mine, only their hands. And even though TMG and Toyota have been big benefactors of the hybrid regs, will they stick around should Peugeot have their way? Will Peugeot even come in?

I'll also say that we might not see much if any reduction in the budgets at TMG. Like Audi Sport post 2002 in the ALMS and LM, that money might get shifted elsewhere to another project. Or that money (if they cancel the current LMP1 program) might get saved up for their next LM run.

Like everyone else here, I can only state my opinions and guesses, I don't know what anyone's next move will be until they say it.