..Racing has your disease. The cost of race experience examined – kind of.
Money – mŭn′ē
- that which the author does not have
Before ploughing on with the final installment of those No Experience posts, now slated for posting next week, I decided to compose today’s entry to this humble digital hermitage with respect to costs. Yes, costs, as in….the absolute financial anal hemorrhaging which occurs when whisking supposedly top talents into the newfangled travelling carnival which is modern day Formula One.
You could wager your life a pyramid diagram makes an appearance in this entry.
Considering the post immediately preceding this one is all about the value of karting, a stage which characterizes the longest tenure of an entire junior racing career, it makes sense to start there. I recall reading an article a few years ago (from the time of writing) indicating Toto Wolff’s assessment of costs involved in this subject. I believe he estimated spending of approximately 1,000,000€ for the entirety of Stage One as described on this blog. That is, if the driver in question was a supremely talented individual. It seems appropriate to remind readers that this stage is started by children who are as young as four years of age. Upon further review, it seems this is generally a good estimate – as you would expect from the Team Principal of the Mercedes F1 team. Worry not, esteemed passenger, I would never dissimulate knowing better than someone in such a position. What does this modest corner of the internet look like to you? The iRacing forums?
Just joking, relax. I digress. The point is 1,000,000€ seems a conservative estimate. I believe total investment in the pivotal foundation-building increment of junior racing careers to far exceed this figure.
The motorsport world’s version of the Terminator also indicated that Formula 4 was approximately 400,000€ at that article’s time of writing, with inflation and a greater number of regional series I put this figure at 350,000€ to a hair under 500,000€.
As for Formula 3, that apparently quintessential stage for all budding race drivers..
Toto-nator estimated the cost of 650,000€. By now, though, we know now this figure is more like 1,000,000€ at a minimum.
“..hold up, guy. What? Why are the costs getting so astronomical at just halfway up the pyrami- racing ladder?” – You
To put this bluntly – it likely amounts to billionaires nowadays wanting to give their sons the very best lifestyle possible; you could not pay wealthy folk enough to willingly put their son in a Junior Formula car back thirty or forty years ago. Fast forward to present day? I am willing to wager the top teams would laugh at someone if they approached top teams in Formula 3 inquiring about season costs. That is, despite possessing all of the relevant experience and excellent past results. They would likely respond something like, “muhaha, how much do you have? We will spend it!!”
What the racing world has now more than ever, with an increasing presence of daddybois on the various feeder series grids, is a hyperinflation of the cost of a junior seat – not accounting for the advantages and costs associated with essentially unlimited testing between race rounds.
We see this effect most clearly in the Fourth Stage. Formula 2 is credited as the home of F1’s future prospects, but also somehow exists as a series in which seemingly abysmal drivers can enter without much of any real previous success, and subsequently stay put for several seasons. Why is this the case? You likely already guessed it.
Formula 2 costs have ballooned to 2,500,000€ – 5,000,000€.
…..per season. In fact, all of the figures above are with respect to a single season. It starts to look starkly mad upon the realization more than a single season is required in various series. Appended below, yet another triangle-inspired piece of artwork recapitulating an amalgamation of Mr. Wolff’s assessments and those of the author.
Now that you have a thorough understanding of the costs involved, you understand..
A.) why I, and any other average person from an average family for that matter could never afford to acquire this experience at the age-appropriate stages of life, and
B.) why most people never really advance beyond “hey, being a racing driver would be cool.”
The end result is as mentioned above. Formula 2, intended to be the final stop for future Formula 1 talent, ends up with a grid comprised mostly of…..some interesting characters. That is the kind way to state it. Since F1 is not the subject of this blog or the focus of this story, I am going to pass readers off to this criminally underrated YT personality, Josh Revell for a few moments.
Even if a driver does everything correctly and is proven to possess all the capability in the world, the going rate to enter a given series can leave them essentially marooned in their racing career. To make the jump to Formula 1, the single most important factor is not capability at all. It is about m o n e y, honey. What sort of sponsorship package is a driver bringing to the table? Sometimes, this package arrives or is partly negotiated from Manufacturers and their backed junior drivers. This however seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
Remember, the cars are not as dangerous or as difficult to drive as in previous eras.
On the subject of Manufacturer Junior programmes, a bit of a façade appears at play here. There seems a supposed buy-in effectively involved. Often. Some of these drivers jump ship from one program to another. Given the costs involved in backing one’s own junior career, why would any driver do something like this? Is it possible their backing is not tied to a true Junior Program, meant to develop and usher deserving talents into Formula 1? Maybe, just maybe they are buying in. Look at some examples like Latifi and Stroll; it is all about whoever has the money, really. I think this subject is humorously but fairly described quite well below from, again, this criminally underrated YT personality:
In the case of Stroll, does it really sound plausible that Ferrari would allow their supposed boy wonder, a driver they apparently developed in their academy at great cost, to simply up and leave to Williams Junior position? No matter how flush with cash someone might be, it surely would not be in their best interest as a driver to make such a step from Scarlet to back-marker…
….unless of course there were some masquerading involved, and the average junior program participation was based on matters entirely different from what you could do from the driver’s seat. That is all just one plebeian’s opinion.
It is all quite demoralizing to consider, correct?
It certainly does not have to be.
It is exulting to realize there is a whole, wild world of racing out there. Formula 1 is for some reason the pinnacle of motorsport complete with a totally broken model and a totally broken feeder system, operating within its own bubble – which is why “other” racing has been drawn off to the side in all triangular scrawling thus far.
There, within those obscure, miniaturized pair of pyramid-shaped scribbles is precisely where I intensely want to reside. Those two pyramids represent the goldilocks zone of motor racing. That glorious, miraculous, habitable belt. As an outsider peering in across the great expanse, it may appear as an unforgiving environment.
What makes it worthy of attention to a prospective racing driver then? A driver starting with less financial capability, not as much youth, and less extensive of a junior career can still have a respectable career within it!
While the unwritten business model of Formula 1, if we can call it that, has absolutely permeated and engrained itself in what is denoted as “other” racing in the crude diagrams appearing herein, it does not operate on quite the same scale. In other words, there are still some truly professional opportunities existing.
Many thanks for reading, and do come back in the coming weeks when the GT side of racing is debriefed.
Those numbers are staggering!