Right Turns

A NASCAR BLOG BY Jim Duff

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Racing isn’t cheap

Jan 18

Motorsports aren’t for the faint of heart nor weak of wallet. But everything is relative, of course, and one man’s astonishing sum is another’s chump change.

This year, for instance, a lot of Sprint Cup garage insiders are reportedly tossing around all sorts of rumors about how much Toyota is paying Joe Gibbs Racing this season. But even the highest figure said to be making the rounds pales in comparison with how much the manufacturer is spending on its Formula One team.

Eurosport reported Jan. 17 that Toyota’s budget for Formula One is reputedly some $400 million this year for a team that finished only sixth among the 11 teams taking part in the series in 2007. That works out to $200 million a year for each of the team’s two cars over the course of the 18-race season.

Of course, nothing about F1 is cheap. Former world driving champion Fernando Alonso just signed a contract that will pay him a reported $51.3 million a year, just ahead of the $51 million last year’s champion, Kimi Raikkonen, is supposed to make.

It’s no wonder F1’s sanctioning body expects to try to institute some cost controls next year. Whether they’ll have any more success than past measures remains to be seen.

So whatever the truth about Toyota’s JGR budget may be, it could apparently always be worse – a lot worse.