Q: Last year BMW, Cadillac and Acura all seemed to downplay the possibility of customer GTP cars. Is that still the company line?
Joe
MP: Best I hear is Acura and Cadillac could look to open the books and consider such a thing in 2025. Acura adding cars to its program via a factory WEC effort, just as BMW has done this year by engaging WRT to do so in WEC, is where I’m looking first for it to grow.
Q: Just after 9pm in the Rolex 24, Bourdais went from sixth to second in about 30 minutes (the No. 6 Porsche did let him by because of a penalty). Queue a flashback to Bourdais lapping the field at Sebring a while back? Can we please give a tip of the hat to his ability to hustle it around the track?
Kyle
MP: My French Fry is officially good at driving race cars. Saw him after his first stint and left with a variety of punches to my arm and other forms of Gallic abuse… we were meant to get together during the event and I failed, so I deserved it.
Q: Any plans by IMSA to rename the GTD PRO and GTD classes to GT3 PRO and GT3 AM?
Willem
MP: No.
Q: I’m curious to know what kind of check the Bronze/Silver drivers need to write for a ride at a race like the Rolex?
Ian
MP: Something in the $250,000 is common for one-off drives in GTD or LMP2, and that price tends to go up based on the quality or reputation of the team. It can also go up if the team knows you’re loaded with money! Signing on to be the extra driver for the Michelin Endurance Cup (the five long races) falls into a similar category. You’ll be asked for at least $1 million, if not $1.25 million, or more.
Q: Can you please provide some insights to IndyCar team financials? We hear that teams are adding cars and that new teams are interested in joining IndyCar. What is their motivation? Is it money, competitive passion, ego?
Do the teams make money — i.e., are they profitable? I think that I can imagine the many expenses of a team, but where does the revenue come from to offset the expenses? Sponsors, ticket sales, and TV/streaming?
We keep hearing that attendance and TV are not great, so do ticket sales and TV/streaming provide much money to the teams?
That brings us to sponsors. What benefits does a sponsor receive, aside from having its name on the side of the car? Having your name on a car would not seem to be worth much unless that car is a frequent race leader that receives a lot of screen time. I just don’t see why a sponsor would contribute much to a team’s profitability.
Please educate me.
Don, Mount Prospect, IL
MP: Why do racers join any series? Because they want to, and obviously, for a variety of reasons. For some, it’s passion. For others it’s business. For others, it’s both. Some teams make a profit, while others do not. All IndyCar teams are independent businesses, which is important to know because other than the roughly $1 million the top 22 entrants receive — based on their finishing position from the previous season’s entrants’ championship — the rest is entirely supplied by themselves through a range of means.
Most teams are looking to assemble at least $7 million per entry this season, and that could be from sponsors, a paying driver, a business-to-business deal that offers a stout commission for the team, an owner who is wealthy, or investors. Or, a combination of all of those options.
On the sponsor side, it’s more of a general question, since this has been going on this the 1960s — writ large — with companies paying to have their brands represented on cars as a normal business deal in the sport. A sponsor could find value from the air time it receives, the trackside activation of its thing in front of lots of people, the B2B opportunities that come from being in the sport and being in the team’s hospitality suite to try and do business deals with other CEOs and CFO/CMO types, or more items of interest to a sponsor. Why did Cadillac go prototype and GT racing at the start of the 2000s? It wanted to change its public perception from being a maker of fluffy land yachts to makers of hardcore performance cars.
Sponsors pay whatever the market value is for the series and team in question because there’s an audience of interest or a B2B opportunity or a perception shift it wants to enable. Just as those sponsors pay a TV network or a digital media outlet to run their ads, this is no different in racing.
Q: I’ve been around long enough to remember when 24-hour races were contested with just two drivers on each team rather than the three- or four-driver lineups we see today. That’s particularly impressive when you consider that most drivers back in the “old days” were not in the top athletic condition that we see now. Did regulations change at some point allowing more drivers on each team, or was that always an option but not considered to be an advantageous strategy? As a fan, I will say that sharing the victory among four drivers just seems to dilute the achievement a little.
Alan, Orlando, FL
MP: Hard to say on the regulations side, but yes, as prototypes and GTs got faster and became more physically demanding, and those cars became more reliable and could be pushed closer to 100 percent for an entire race, the need to spread the driving across three or four drivers was a natural response. In the “old days,” endurance racing was as much about saving the car and not over-taxing it in the hope of lasting 24 hours, and while they weren’t a breeze to drive by any means, it was a different physical and mental task than what today’s top drivers deliver by going on the attack for hours on end. I’d say the three or four who won the four classes last weekend deserve every ounce of respect for their achievement as their predecessors.