Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Mallett
So, if a driver has to bring (say) £200k to a car just to run it who pays for the organisation to run it? Who pays for the maintemance, engine and gearbox rebuilds etc. Yes living the chassis for 5 years helps but development costs an arm and a leg. So I stick by my original thinking that these are not cheap low cost vehicles.
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You are talking about two different things, first of all you said cost to build a car was similar to Super Touring, now you are talking about season costs. To build a complete NGTC car, you are looking at £300k-£350k. Top teams require a budget of around £600k from the drivers for each car. Some teams are likely to want around £300k. Team Hard are probably one of the cheapest rides, but that doesn't include testing etc. Some include crash damage, some want money on top when it happens.
The Super Tourer engines were £50k each at one point, probably a lot more by 2000. NGTC engines were around £25k at the beginning and probably not much more now.
Super Tourers were built with a lot of expensive, specialist materials such as carbon fibre and tungsten for strength and lightness. NGTC does not allow for the use of such materials. I have an aluminium suspension component from a WSR Mondeo, that would have taken a lot of expensive in house design and manufacturing. NGTC cars require none of that. All suspension is built from off the shelf items and mounted on off the shelf subframes.
Basically the teams are restricted to the shared items as far as development is concerned. Where as the Super Tourers were free to develop as much or as often as they liked. Todays costs are nothing like the expense of the Super Touring days.