Quote:
Originally Posted by touring fan01
so those teams would walk away from their successful campaigns in by far the biggest series in the UK with massive spectators and TV and profile to one that doesnt have any of that, and doesn't allow their manufacturer support or even allow RWD? lol.
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You are thinking about this as a fan, you need to look at it from a team manager perspective.
The like of HARD and Motorbase aren't doing this for fun, they are businesses and need to earn money/make a profit. TCR offers a very similar business model to GT3/GT4, something both have experience of.
The team buys a couple of cars; they aren't hugely expensive and there is no development budget required as there would be when building a new NGTC car. They then run them, or essentially rent them out, to a couple of paying drivers for 6 or 7 TCR UK rounds. With no TBL requirements they don't even need to have the same drivers all year, they can do it on a race-by-race basis with a different driver every week.
On non-UK race weekends, convince your drivers that they would like to race at Spa or wherever and do a Benilux or German TCR round. Doesn't even need to be the same drivers, just as long as someone is paying for a drive. No TCR rounds this weekend?; with minimal changes the car can be run in Britcar or Creventic 24hr series, or even on an arrive-and-drive basis in one of the many club open saloon series.
With that sort of business model, the number of spectators and amount of TV coverage is largely irrelevant to the team - they get paid by the driver, not by the spectators. The more often they run the cars, potentially the more income they can get.
At the end of the season you have a car that needs only minimal updates to be usable for another year, or is still a valuable, easily sell-able asset. Same can not be said for NGTC cars, where unless you sell the car and your TBL as a package, the second-hand NGTC market is almost non-existant.