Does a $2 million per year engine lease make economic sense?

[Franklin]

If interested, I have a posting in the Technical Forum under the title "2,500 horsepower, one engine PER SEASON" that offers some perspective on this question.

[Crash Test]

You see, that is a boat engine...,oh no point arguing to a brick wall once again...

Here's a few questions:
Do you think that the sponsors pay too much to get their names on the side of the cars?

Do you think that the team owners are lowly and poor? What sort of money do they have in the bank as a direct result of Champ car racing?

[KC]

I think it makes more sense than the engine formula used in the IRL at this time.

For US$2 million dollars a team can purchase a known quantity race engine. No maintenance is required on the engines and each engine comes with it's own engineer to help keep the system happy. If an engine blows up, the factory supplies another.

For US$83,000 dollars each a team can purchase a Nissan/Infiniti or Oldsmobile engine. This engine does not come fully race tuned as of yet. The The final tune up is done by an engine shop or by the team. This cost is not seen in the engine package price that the IRL uses. Where the costs escalate is when the engines repeatedly fail. If a two car team comes to the race with a minimum of six engines, one each for qualifying, a race engine and a spare they have spent over US$500,000 just to appear for that race. If nothing goes wrong then the engines are rebuilt at a cost of around US$35,000 each. If just one fails then the team has lost the engine price money.

Suddenly things look pretty expensive to be doing your own engine work. I think that one of the reasons for this system over the engine lease program is that quite a few of the engine gurus think that they know better how to build a motor than the factories. In some cases they are correct, but the majority have been able to only make scrap out of plenty of engines. Oldsmobile has had over 10 years of development on their 4.0 liter V8 from various sportscar racing efforts and so they had a huge leg up on Nissan in the engine stakes. Personally if I were a team owner, I would attemp to buy the best equipment I could and would love to lease a Honda or Ford package with all its attendant benefits over attempting to tune engines myself.

[Franklin]

Actually, Crash Test, it's a helicopter engine being used in a boat. (Just as the Rolls-Royce and Allison engines the turbines replaced were also aircraft engines.) The fastest lap average ever turned by an Unlimited hydro is 173 mph (all the more impressive considering that was around a 4,000 pound vehicle running on a flat oval).

[KC]

turbines work great for continuous duty applications. Unlimited hydros employ them because it is cheaper than using piston engines for the available horsepower. The turbine is suited to large oval racing where the car maintains a semi-consistent speed average. Andy Granatelli and John Zink both produced cars powered by turbines and were capable of winning the Indy 500. After a couple of years USAC outlawed the turbine powerplant and it has never been allowed to race again in mainstream auto racing.

Zink always said that the most efficient way to use the turbine for oval racing was to develop the constant velocity transmission so that the engine could be run at a steady rpm for a balance of power and economy. Unfortunately the CVT still has been successfully developed for high horsepower applications.

[Crash Test]

That's nice. Now how much is Roger Penske or Chip Ganasi or Dale Coyne worth?

Of course there are cheaper ways to do anything. I could make a champ car out of macaroni glued to cardboard. It wouldn't be the best, but it would cost me $5...

[jms]

It makes sense to me, since that is how CART wants it to be and it is their series.On another note, Franklin, why do you post here? It is obvious that you don't care a fig about CART and only use a connection to it to go off on one tangent or another.

[This message has been edited by jms (edited 11 May 2000).]