Cost per pass

the bad deal about the 'cost per run' deal is it isn't real world. its a 'perfect world' number that rarely happens. we all know in racing we may have that year where we haul ass and don't tear anything up, then the next you make brad anderson's christmas card list...

with that being said, various numbers are thrown out there by different teams. i ran a complete budget for jay meyer and the budget came out to roughly $1500 a pass, and that was EVERYTHING factored in there, IF YOU DIDNT BLOW STUFF UP. paying tom conway, crew chief stacy mclemore, crew, all racing parts attrition, all the way down to oil filters for the generator. it also included note payments and insurance payments on a pricy rig.

some teams like the reichert gang have contended their price per run is closer to $800 a run. i have to applaud them for this, but they are an extremely efficient team too. you don't see a bunch of flashy bs over there, they come to race and haul ass. when i plugged a/fuel parts into jay meyer's budget i got $1300 a run. thanks to grp, blown racing has got cheaper because you can get about twice the runs out of the new grps as we did the brooks. you have the rpm expenses with blown alky, but alky is $100 a drum, and nitro is about $700 if you are on a deal and $1000 full price. but if you start comparing a budget with product deals to a budget full price you have your apples and oranges.

then you have to factor competitiveness. a/fuel is supposed to be cheaper to run, but from what i've heard a jerry darien tune-up costs $25k before you buy any parts. other competitive a/fuel tune-ups are out there but all come with a steep price tag. you can buy a conway fuel system for about $800 more than the cost of the pump. norm drazy supplies a bad ass fuel system when you buy a blower. a/f tuners cost upwards of $3500-$5000 a race. good tuners like tom conway, ora vasquez and others are around $300 a day.

these prices are based on not blowing stuff up. as the infamous chris russell said 'you dont know what too lean is till you blow it up'

flying j still doesnt care whether you are a/f or blown.

basically it takes a lot of money...

 

either combo, if you don't have at very least $100,000 a year to spend, its going to be hard to be competitive.

how much cheaper is a/f if you have to pay $25k for a tune-up and pay a tuner $2500 a weekend or more in most cases?

its all expensive.

 

if you compared running a competitive blown car with tom conway tuning to running a competitive a/fuel car with gallant tuning at those rates you're probably even then.

it is still expensive either way. with the increasing number of a/fuel cars, i think you're going to see more of them pushing the envelope. for a while there a top a/fueler could show up and have a tenth or so in the bag on a conservative set up. now half the field are hard running a/fuelers, so the fuse has been shortened, at least from my vantage point.