lastturnclub.com

We've watched the historic conflict in Formula One over the past weeks. It's striking how much of the commentary of media and fans alike takes its context from a narrow view of a single series in a single sport and on only a few seasons of experience. It's as if everything that happened in the last century is well...the last century.

In Part 2 of our Paying for Racing articles, we look at sponsorships and sponsorship activation, monetizing intellectual property, factory assistance, and self funding. Our path led us to some startling conclusions about the viability of sports car endurance racing. Part 1 is here.

Introduction

We’ve been working on this article for weeks, first with completing our research, asking team owners and managers in North American sports car racing how they finance their racing, and then with pulling it together in some coherent way. It’s been a slow slog. As far as coherency goes, there is no “typical” team funding profile, so we are left needing to explain – best we can – each of the identified sources of revenue and identify the very real trade-offs between them.