Quote:
Originally Posted by WolfsburgRS
Do you think an increase in prize money will help anything?
And yeah, I'm curious to see what happens with the Michelin deal. It's funny that a spec selection like tires really just means price-controlled / guaranteed customers for the supplier and usually means higher pricing for the teams, not lower.
|
Here's the problem. In 2008 the prize money paid down to 20th for GS and ST. 2008 was the first year for Koni and instead of it being based on the field size it was set no matter the field size. So, if you won in ST, you got $7K (GS was $11K) and if you finished 10th, it was $1K and 20th was $500. In the end no big deal but when you had 40 ST cars, finishing 20th was mid pack and 10th was in the top 25%. It was a challenge because of the sheer numbers.
Today, ST, GS and TCR pay only the top 5. To win gives you $12K in GS, $10K in TCR and $5K in ST. As you can see, IMSA really wants ST to go away, thus the decrease in prize money. If you like math, that's a 37.5% decrease in prize money if you win in ST as compared to 2008. As we all know, IMSA will tell us that it's too hard for teams to build their own cars and develop them. As you can see, a 46-83% increase in IMSA costs with a decrease of 37.5% in IMSA give back, means, the class dies off. With the prize money and the entry fees, IMSA is telling the ST teams, go away or join TCR. Again, we will flush out the old and hope for the new. Same thing we did with GS. Tell everyone that it's too hard and expensive to build your own car so we have the answer. It's GT4 even though the running costs end up being more.