Why Gas Prices Don’t Affect Motorsports
[ June 27th, 2008 ] By: Charles Smith Posted in » Ramblings
I have been asked how will gas prices change rally cars. My answer is that they wont…much. Gas is such a small cost compared to registering for a race, buying tires, prepping the car and buying parts to replace broken ones.
Lets Do Some Math
Assume that a rally car rolls for about 300 miles a rally, including transits. Assume the race team pays $6/gallon for 100 octane gas. Their race car, throughout the whole weekend, averages 13 miles per gallon. They’re going to have to buy at least 23 gallons of gas for $138.
Lets Compare
Races often require $500+ registration fees to cover event insurance, marshal’s pay, and tons of other stuff (most staff are volunteers). I can find cheap rally tires at $150 a pop, so that’s $600 a set. Teams usually have a few different types of tires that they can use over a couple rallies. Assume a tarmac, gravel and snow set so that is $1800 in tires per few events. Hotels cost about $60-100 a night for 2 people so a team of 4 (small team!) that stays near the rally for 2 or 3 nights will run anywhere from $240-$600 an event. Feeding your crew costs too (food price is positively correlated with gas price). Not to mention the amount of things that can break on a rally car, and do break! You have to be carrying spares for almost everything, which increases the upfront and between race costs.
Hopefully you’re starting to understand that gas prices aren’t a big deal to most racers. Sure gas prices make it that much more expensive to compete, but the increase in cost is small compared to all the other costs associated with racing. The interesting thing is that the more gas prices increase, the fewer competitors the SCCA is seeing. I guess most racers really are racing on the margins.
If you’re a racer I would to hear what you think about increasing gas prices, comment below.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
That is an excellent point, I never really stopped to consider how small the cost of gasoline is in the grand scheme of things for most race teams. For the SCCA, I can sorta understand, since many of their events are cheap to attend, especially if you’re a member.
I tend to look at it more along the lines of how gas prices affect motorsports from an engineering standpoint. Fuel consumption is an issue that is once again being brought to the forefront of everyone’s mind. Normal people seem to be getting frustrated with the price of gas, and things are ready for a pretty major shift in design philosophy. We might start seeing radical things happen like the introduction of a hybrid or electric only class in some rally events. We actually discussed an electric rally car a while back, and generally decided it would be pretty badass. :P
Racing is starting to see things change already. It looks like the FIA is going to add kinetic energy recovery systems for the 2009 F1 season, which means the F1 cars could technically be considered hybrids. How this will be implemented, I’m not entirely sure yet, but the potential for advancements in fuel usage in the high power range that most motorsports require will surely bring some awesome benefits to the average person over the next couple years.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:01 am
http://www.leftlanenews.com/worst-protest-ever-german-man-burns-bmw-to-protest-gas-prices.html
^somewhat relevant; primarily funny
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:52 pm
[…] in contact with the ground, and while this may generally be a good thing for racing, as we all know racing is not about fuel economy. Increased rolling resistance (which equates to traction) makes your engine work harder. Harder […]
July 9th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I’d imagine that the bigger the percentage of the total cost that the gas represents, the more likely it is to affect attendance. Meaning that grassroots stuff like auto-x and rallyx are what will be (are being) hit worst.
They already have an electric rally in Japan btw.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Yea, good point Phil. Just like the SCCA data: club racers are racing on the margins but factory racers could care less.