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A main series team, supporting an HPDC entry, normally has one or two dedicated people looking after the preparation of the car(s) in the workshop... while the regular engineering types, crew chief, team owner and anyone else appropriate ends up coming to a race circuit for a weekend.
A private team by the same token, with the same personnel structure, cannot do it for the same dollars. They can hire 2 people to prepare cars, but would not have the personnel infrastructure of the main series team for development, and on-track knowledge.
Same goes for rent, transporter costs etc etc which the main series team would cover for the most part, and just gets borrowed for race weekends by the HPDC team... something to do with amortising costs across more programs...
If you want to win races in this series, hooking up with a L1 or L2 supported team is the only real way to go, with a sensible budget ($400k+) to do a very good job, in a late model car, supported by the people, team and spare parts kit that such a squad would provide.
What a number of drivers who have made the switch from private teams to main series supported ones have commented on most has been the level of knowledge transfer, of how the driver compares to others who have used the same car, how the tyres perform, what setup differences mean, and even how to adjust the driving style to make the car perform better, and more consistently.
Buying an ex-Fred Nerk AU which has already done loads of race miles for $50k, and thinking that a car of this quality can bring you to the front of the grid isnt exactly grounded in reality...
What is difficult to understand is exactly where AVESCO sees the HPDC series being positioned.. whether it is to run the cars used by the superstars but a year ago, operated by those teams with different drivers... or to get the private teams without the budgets to run a super elswisho campaign back to the weekend warrior ways...
I suspect that once the AU becomes ineligible for HPDC, the TCC will increase in numbers immensely... but that the HPDC series may not see as many replacements to fill the grid gaps....
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