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In order to live out their dreams, these weekend warriors must dig down deep to make that lap around the track

Sunday, April 20, 2003

By Chris Dolack, Special to the Post-Gazette

It happens every Friday or Saturday night in Western Pennsylvania. Someone sitting in the stands at one of the various racetracks in the region leans over to his buddy and says something like: "That doesn't look so tough. Heck, I made passes this morning on the Parkway East that were more daring than that."

Perhaps. But if you had the same amount of money invested in your personal car that these weekend warriors have tied up in their cars, you might slow down a bit, check the mirrors and use a turn signal before dodging in and out of traffic.

Now, with the economy as tight as it has been, drivers are finding it even more difficult to gain the extra funding through sponsors that has become necessary to keep their equipment competitive. Even at the highest level of NASCAR, where the cost of being competitive is measured in millions of dollars, several teams do not have the support of a full-time sponsor and might not last the season.

That might sound improbable, but ask a driver how much it costs to race and you might be surprised.

An expensive sport

An informal survey of drivers who compete at various tracks in the region determined it costs a team between $500 a night to race at the asphalt tracks to about $800 a night to race at the dirt tracks. Schedules vary, but there are at least 20 weeks of races that begin at the end of March and last into September. That mounts to about $10,000 to $16,000 a year to race at only one track, not including the cost of the cars and haulers. Many drivers compete at two or three tracks from Friday through Sunday.

Kevin Bolland, the 2002 Lernerville modified champion, competes not only on Friday nights at the Sarver oval, but also Saturdays at Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio, and Sundays at Tri-City Speedway in Franklin, Venango County. He won the opener at Lernerville this season and then traveled to Concord, N.C., where he beat some of the top modified drivers in the country in the Eckerd 100 at The Dirt Track at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

"The first thing you've got to do is to get your truck there. There's $40 of gas to get one vehicle there and that's just for the hauling rig. We take two vehicles so that's $80 a night," Bolland said. "Then you've got pit passes for eight to 10 guys at $20 apiece. Then, after you get there, you've got fuel prices for the car. Last year we were spending about $65 to $80 a night for a 20-lap event. That doesn't include any tire wear, any engine wear, any oil you're going to use.

"It doesn't include any food you're going to eat. If you're going to have a team that is going on the road, that still has to fit into the budget. From that point, it doesn't include if you tear your car up. If you tear your car up, to replace one could range from $16,000 to $27,000 depending on the quality of parts you're putting on it to the level of sophistication."

	Fast Money A breakdown of average costs of racing and race cars across the top divisions at local speedways: Item Avg. cost Pit entry $20/person Race fuel $60/night Tires $140 each Wheels $200 each Used engine $8,000 New engine $30,000 Rebuilt engine $3,000 Transmission $3,000 Car (no motor) $16,000 Decals $1,000 Safety equipment $2,000 Sponsorship $20,000 Secondary spons. $5,000

None of that includes the engine, which should last for about 1,000 laps on one of the regular half-mile tracks in the area. For Bolland, the backing of his family business, Bolland Machine, is invaluable to making it through a season. The company, in Beaver Falls, is a complete machine shop and engine rebuild facility.

"I don't have to pay for my machine work, but I still have to buy my core parts," Bolland said. "It might cost other people $8,000 to rebuild an engine and they have to take it out after maybe 1,000 laps. Mine, it costs me the parts to buy the rings and the bearings and the gaskets and the pistons, which might be $2,500 or $3,000 so there's considerable savings, but we're spending our own time doing our own labor. A guy could go buy a used engine for anywhere from $8,000 to a new engine as high as $25,000 or $28,000. That gets you one engine, one car."

It can get more expensive, too. In the late model division, John Flinner is one of the region's top drivers. He has won the past two track titles at Lernerville and last season earned four victories at Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Motor Speedway in Imperial. Flinner says a new dirt late model car is about $17,000 to $18,000 but another $35,000 to $40,000 for the motor and its components. Add $200 for each wheel, another $140 for each tire, about $3,000 for the transmission and hundreds more for things such as helmets, firesuits and other safety devices and it's enough to make an accountant's calculator burn up.

Those figures get you only a naked looking car with a decent engine. When it comes to racing, the flashier the car the more attention it draws. The cost to create and put decals on a car starts around $1,000 and increases quickly. That's an expense Flinner doesn't mind, though, because he owns a company that creates and places decals on many of the cars competing throughout the region.

"I've had guys who have been skimping on their motor program but come and pay me $1,000 to $1,500 to letter their car -- and they're going to go out and tear it up," Flinner said. "[Longtime local racer] Lynn Geisler used to say we should just have black-and-white lettering on these cars. I said, 'That's easy for you to say but I do this for a living.' "

The costs of racing in the top division on one of the local asphalt tracks, according to some drivers, seems to be lower than in any of the three main dirt track divisions. But racers on asphalt tend to go through tires more often and the winning purses are usually smaller.

A new asphalt late model car ready to race at either Motordrome or Jennerstown speedways can vary quite a bit but on average it will cost about $500 to $600 a night to race -- if you don't incur any damage.

"And that's not even doing it right," said Logan Dernoshek, who finished fifth in points at Motordrome last season. "It gets pretty expensive when you think about it."

Dernoshek said building a new car is around $20,000 and another $10,000 under the hood. It also costs about $3,000 to rebuild a motor. New this year to Motordrome is a crate motor, which is designed to help reduce engine costs. The program is too new to determine whether or not it is cost-effective.

Ryan Hemphill, who moved into the American Speed Association this season, established himself as a threat to win every week he raced on the local asphalt tracks. He got a deal on his first race car, costing his team only $6,000, and it ended up being a good car, he said.

Ultimately, the only way to cover weekly costs of racing is to put the car in victory lane. Partly because of that, Dernoshek is competing in several USAR Hooters ProCup Series events this season and believes the costs of racing in a touring series justify the expenses.

"It costs between $4,000 and $6,000 a race to [compete in the ProCup Series]," Dernoshek said. "It gets pretty expensive but at Motordrome you're getting $800 to win and $100 to start. In the Hooters deal, you're getting $1,200 to start and $10,000 to win. If you get in the top 10, you might have a chance of breaking even. If you get in the top five, you're going to pay for your weekend definitely."

Nick Jones, the 2000 late model champion at Lernerville who also has had success at PPMS, looked at the big picture. "If you don't have a whole lot of stuff go wrong, you better have $60,000 or $70,000."

Balancing the costs

To help offset some of those costs, drivers and teams need sponsors, which is why a driver climbs out of his car in victory lane and rattles off a seemingly endless list of company and product names.

It's no different at the local level. Teams have as difficult a time finding sponsors in the lower ranks of racing as they do in the national scene.

So for Jones, whose only sponsor is his engine builder, Irvine's Alignment, finding corporate support is critical. "It would make the difference between us running a full season and not running a full season," he said. "We'll probably run out of money before the year is over. It's real important."

The difficulty in gaining support from a company isn't limited to teams that fail to win each week. Some of the established drivers also have struggled.

"It's real tough," said Geisler, who has dominated dirt late model races for a couple of decades. "I lost Budweiser this year and they've been with me for years. It's economics but it's also other things. Sponsorships are tough, money's not quite as free, but it's still out there. It's the side of racing that is a necessity but isn't necessarily the most fun.

"For the local racer, the problem is the time. Most of us have jobs, we work on the car with all of our free time and yet sponsorship takes another chunk of time. It's the first thing that gets given up but it's the most primary thing to going racing. You can't give up your job, you can't give up your family time, you can't really give up working on the car but yet you need time for [sponsors], too.

"Short of sounding remiss, the local racer works a whole lot harder than the professional guy. They do their work, too, but there's people delegated to do things. For any of these local teams, it's whoever has the time and ability to go do it that [gets a sponsor]."

Like Geisler, Rod George is one of the more successful racers in the area who also lost a number of sponsors after last season. George, who won the sprint car titles at Lernerville and Tri-City last season, says unless he can find some more support he won't race more than once a week and is contemplating retirement at the end of the season.

Ed Lynch Jr., the top sprint car driver in the region, had a plan in place to deal with the downturn in the economy. Lynch, who mixes local racing with touring in July and August, believes the teams that will survive are the ones that are used to fixing the various components of their cars rather than buying all new parts.

"We prepared ourselves after [the Sept. 11 attacks]," Lynch said. "We realized our sponsors that did help us were going to be pinched just like everybody was. We said it wasn't going to bother us. We just backed down on our schedule and picked and chose the races we wanted to go to. We don't buy the trickiest stuff out there, we buy stuff that's going to give you speed and the rest of the stuff we make our own. That saves you money."

So what does a company pay to get its logo on a car? Not enough to cover all the costs.

"I'd say $5,000 to $10,000," Hemphill said. "It will cover a team to a point. People race on different budgets. Some people get by with a certain amount while other teams need more. To have an extra $5,000 or $10,000 to spend would be tremendous. If you do well, it's helping out a lot, especially for the whole season."

When it comes to gaining sponsorship, Bolland, who has been racing a big-block modified since 1982, is one of the best in the area. It doesn't come easy, though. He spends a lot of time with the companies that support him and, considering he has a regular job, that isn't always easy. For one of his main sponsors, Cintas, he takes his car to its open house and uses it to kick off the company's golf outing. For another sponsor, the New Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe, his bright red car is often outside and easily draws attention. He also takes it to car cruises, where he can promote not only his sponsors but also the tracks by giving away tickets.

Despite all that, the funding from sponsors doesn't cover everything. For example, if a team finds a sponsor willing to give it $20,000, a high-end sponsorship for a local racer, it won't cover the cost for a new motor and all its components.

"If they go get a sponsor that gives them $20,000 a year and [the team] buys one engine for $24,000, that $20,000 doesn't go too far," he said. "Winning is probably about the only way you have revenue coming in unless you have some sort of side thing that you're doing to help make up the difference."

Bolland has a basic program to help a company market itself through racing. Although he would like a major sponsor to help fund a new tractor-trailer for touring -- he currently pulls his car on an open-wheel trailer with a 1989 flatbed Ford truck -- Bolland understands that until he wins more national events, gaining major corporate support will be difficult.

"To get something from a local marketing area you're really going to have to twist their arms or know somebody really good to get $20,000," Bolland said.

His program is built on a sliding scale. At the top is $20,000 and it drops by increments of $5,000 before it falls to a $2,500 and a $1,000 package. Below that he has either product sponsors or "somebody says here's $500, let me put my little decal on there."

Justifying the cost

The costs of racing make it seem like a bleak enterprise, but none of the local drivers are forced to do it. Many work 9-to-5 jobs, some sell insurance while others even work on the rivers with tow boats.

"It's no different than why people go hunting other than getting something shot or killed," Bolland said. "They've got to go buy guns and ammunition. They're not getting anything from it. I look at it as you do what you want to do. An alcoholic will try to find money to buy beer. I'm not willing to sit in front of the TV and do nothing. This is what we do for fun."

For Flinner, the answer is little more simple. "I don't think it's going to hurt the racing people -- we're nuts."

Chris Dolack is the senior writer at Auto Racing Digest magazine. He can be reached at cdolack@chrisdolack.com.