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You guys have brought up some good points. As we have seen with actual drivers that post here, it's not just one thing that is the magic bullet that will fix the problem. It's a combination of things. As I have covered before, the inflation rate in racing is completely out of whack from reality. This the reason why those rich guys that have X amount to spend each year on racing, drop GT3 and go to GT4. Thus GT4 is a global hit and GT3 is not looking so hot. Thus the reason why most of the GS guys from a few years ago are gone completely. They were used to spending $50K per weekend and when it turns into $80K, that's beyond their budget.
One of the issues with having GT3, GT4 and TCR are things like undercover factory teams. Other issues are manufacturers that show up to run and need a year for development under race conditions (why not do that at home like others do). Then those $50K update kits. Why update a car only to slow it back down again? I'm all for a reliability update of certain parts (i.e. uprights, transmissions, engines) but there's no need at all for an aero update and revised pickup points. Yet that's what we do. Another issue is that when the model comes to an end, the manufacturer comes up with the race version within a few months, thus they want you to race the new one, not the old one. A good example of that are all of these Golf TCR cars. If you buy one today, it has a year of life and then VW will have the MK8 (due to go into production in June 2019). By the end of 2019, your TCR car will be worth 30% of what it is today. You will have to buy a new one because VW sure wants to sell those MK8's because their racing program is a profit center.
This is not even getting into the price of admission to pro racing. It's literally double as to what it was 5 years ago. This is what you pay the sanctioning body. How can double be something that is justified? Then the point of the level of professionalism has only to do with presentation and not quality. The problem is, IMSA and PWC reward that in how you are treated. There was a time they were happy when you were giving it your best shot and wanted you to feel welcome. Not any more. So, teams have to spend money on fluff which that budget is exceeding the R&D budgets of when we had to do all of the R&D ourselves. In the end, we reduced one line item and increased another by 2X. This is why doing a budget in the real world for over 30 years makes you see where the trend is going. More show and no go.
Then there's one other thing pro racing will never tell you about. All of the other startup series' that are taking this money from those rich guys. It's happening right now and it's literally only growing those series'.
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