[BTCC] BTCC 2020 season discussion, News and Rumours!

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by touringlegend

£600k per season in the BMR Subaru days. Plus testing!

Is that the cost of the seat to the driver, or what the team spent running each car?

[RS67]

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

Because it was stated that it cost £600k to run a car, and most teams have two cars.

Like I said before, he keeps moving the goal posts as to what he was talking about, first it was similar cost of building a Super Tourer, then he decided he as talking about running costs per car, now it's running costs for a couple of cars. Seems like a desperate attempt to try to make the figures add up and fail miserably. I am fairly sure Ford's budget in 2000 was something like £30M. So 3 Subarus at £600k each plus £350k for the initial car builds still falls far short of £30M. Even in the mid 90's Ford had yearly budgets of around £10M and that included the drivers wages.

[Peter Mallett]

Put it down to my age. Or you could accept that I was talking about total budget. Up to you. In any event we aren't talking peanuts and you appear to consider a million quid to be a small amount.

I suspect whatever we are talking about, the number won't be sustainable.

Someone mentioned the bespoke components in STs. This was not new, the Group A componentry was seriously expensive and even now when you restore a Sierra or BMW the parts are staggeringly expensive.

[RS67]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Put it down to my age. Or you could accept that I was talking about total budget. Up to you. In any event we aren't talking peanuts and you appear to consider a million quid to be a small amount.

I suspect whatever we are talking about, the number won't be sustainable.

Someone mentioned the bespoke components in STs. This was not new, the Group A componentry was seriously expensive and even now when you restore a Sierra or BMW the parts are staggeringly expensive.

But even total budget is way off the mark. Restoring an old Sierra or BMW will still be expensive as they are bespoke parts that will have to be manufactured. Especially when you factor in the Sierra's will differ from another teams Sierra as they will be designed and built by different companies. Same would go for the BMW's. Now teams who build their own cars only have to design and build the bit of the car between the two subframes.
No one has said a £1M budget is peanuts, but it certainly falls short of anything like that spent in the Super Touring years. Team Hard were running all four of their cars for the cost of two BMR drives and still making a profit.

[touringlegend]

I think the story at the time was Ford spent £10m on the 2000 season. I can’t see how any manufacturer would have justified £30m

[RS67]

Originally Posted by touringlegend

I think the story at the time was Ford spent £10m on the 2000 season. I can’t see how any manufacturer would have justified £30m

Fairly sure the £10M was the 98 budget, around £1M of which paid Mansell for his 3 race meetings.

[Alfisti]

Originally Posted by medius

Add a VW to the casualty list.

Two potentially.

However, trying to find a silver lining: some drivers losing other seats may still be able to fund a #HARD ride; Tony will work hard to get those cars out on track.

[RS67]

Originally Posted by Alfisti

Two potentially.

However, trying to find a silver lining: some drivers losing other seats may still be able to fund a #HARD ride; Tony will work hard to get those cars out on track.

With Fuller now out due to Bushell's return, perhaps Fuller could be in a position to still fill a seat even if only for part of the season. After all they had no way of knowing when Bushell would be fit to drive.

[medius]

Originally Posted by RS67

With Fuller now out due to Bushell's return, perhaps Fuller could be in a position to still fill a seat even if only for part of the season. After all they had no way of knowing when Bushell would be fit to drive.

Howard was very stretched financially to fill the VW seat for one weekend on a temp basis. Unless his Amazon delivery lockdown job paid megabucks and other seats are silly cheap now I don't think he'll be on the grid this year.

[S griffin]

I guess that means the empty Beemer seat is out of the question for Howard

[porsche962fan]

Jordan was championship contender and that car is sure podium material , IMO a very bog loss for the series

too bad Sutton is in the Infinity, imagine him in that WSR Beamer, it would also answer if he is better than Turks or not

[billy bleach]

Originally Posted by RS67

Fairly sure the £10M was the 98 budget, around £1M of which paid Mansell for his 3 race meetings.

I am quite sure that if it was £10 m £9m went to Reynard to produce possibly the worst Super tourer ever built.....

[touringlegend]

Originally Posted by porsche962fan

Jordan was championship contender and that car is sure podium material , IMO a very bog loss for the series

too bad Sutton is in the Infinity, imagine him in that WSR Beamer, it would also answer if he is better than Turks or not

As someone posted the day the Jordan news broke I would bet some drivers were checking their contracts.

[sceptic]

A few points on running costs:

There's one driver who takes 66% of any sponsorship as his "fee". Teams go for that because he can bring a lot of sponsorship.

If you're not a former champion and you need to pay for a drive, then it varies from team to team.

The cheapest deal I've heard about was ~£60,000. For that, the driver had no testing, no crash damage, no engineer, minimum tyres.

Typically, the lower end cars are around £150,000 plus crash damage.

The most expensive car would be around £500,000 plus crash damage.

In each case the team is making a profit at that revenue level, so the actual cost of running the car is lower than those figures.

Nobody is saying that it is cheap. But it is significantly cheaper than it used to be, and the racing is better.

I think it is safe to say that the combined budget of the entire grid this year is less than the budget of the biggest-budget team 25 years ago.

Indeed one team was paying >£2m in driver salaries 25 years ago.

[Craner Curves]

Listening to John Cleland on the Greg Rust podcast gives you a great insight into the expenditure 25 years ago. All the foreign testing and everything that went along with that. The tyre bill for one of Michelin's test weeks was probably more than it cost to drive for a season in the current championship!

[medius]

For operating cost its collectively roughly the same for a single team running 3 different programs (x1 Porsche, x1 F4, x3 Jr) on the package as one single BTCC car. The team own the cars and essentially hire it out to pay pilots for the year. Its more profitable as a business to operate on the package that trying to step up.

I'm addition a 2 car British GT squad is less than a 1 car BTCC team. Speaking of which there's a fast driver with funding looking for a seat possibly this term but outside chance at next year pending health and it might be a unusual pick... Rick Parfitt Jr.

[touringlegend]

£2m in 1995 is roughly equivalent to £3.8m in 2019 going by the Bank of England’s inflation calculator. That is one amazing figure. I bet a lot of F1 drivers wish they were paid that this year.

[porsche962fan]

Originally Posted by medius

I'm addition a 2 car British GT squad is less than a 1 car BTCC team.

but British GT this days run the boring and sterrile GT3 class like pretty much every GT championship for nearly a decade

this cars are like assembly line units and teams are just customers and they are BOP all the time

not at al like in the "powertour" era

and speaking of Cleland ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0NRiUnEy4o

[Steel Wheels]

Originally Posted by medius

For operating cost its collectively roughly the same for a single team running 3 different programs (x1 Porsche, x1 F4, x3 Jr) on the package as one single BTCC car. The team own the cars and essentially hire it out to pay pilots for the year. Its more profitable as a business to operate on the package that trying to step up.

I'm addition a 2 car British GT squad is less than a 1 car BTCC team. Speaking of which there's a fast driver with funding looking for a seat possibly this term but outside chance at next year pending health and it might be a unusual pick... Rick Parfitt Jr.

Good shout on RPJ he openly said BTCC was his target next year, not sure how ‘race ready’ he is but was back training I believe?

[thetool]

Originally Posted by sceptic

There's one driver who takes 66% of any sponsorship as his "fee". Teams go for that because he can bring a lot of sponsorship.

Plato.

[VIVA GT]

When is the racing supposed to be starting? I do hope it's soon...

[medius]

Originally Posted by Steel Wheels

Good shout on RPJ he openly said BTCC was his target next year, not sure how ‘race ready’ he is but was back training I believe?

As of May he said he's fully recovered and fighting fit looking at options.

[touring fan01]

Originally Posted by sceptic

A few points on running costs:

There's one driver who takes 66% of any sponsorship as his "fee". Teams go for that because he can bring a lot of sponsorship.

If you're not a former champion and you need to pay for a drive, then it varies from team to team.

The cheapest deal I've heard about was ~£60,000. For that, the driver had no testing, no crash damage, no engineer, minimum tyres.

Typically, the lower end cars are around £150,000 plus crash damage.

The most expensive car would be around £500,000 plus crash damage.

In each case the team is making a profit at that revenue level, so the actual cost of running the car is lower than those figures.

Nobody is saying that it is cheap. But it is significantly cheaper than it used to be, and the racing is better.

I think it is safe to say that the combined budget of the entire grid this year is less than the budget of the biggest-budget team 25 years ago.

Indeed one team was paying >£2m in driver salaries 25 years ago.

[HarryBrown]

Just watched an old British GT race at Castle Combe and got me thinking how good it would be to have on the BTCC calendar. Unfortunately I don't think the pit lane setup is quite up to scratch and also the strict noise restrictions they have there could pose an issue. Have the British touring cars ever raced there?

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

[bella]

if you fart at combe one of the nimbys files a noise complaint...