TAD question....any input valued

depends...

that all depends on the owner and tuner how much a ride will cost. i'd say the average renta-ride deal goes for about 8500-10k a race. it's not hard at all to spend that much if you fly in most of the crew and pay any salary to the crew.

as far as a/f vs blown cost, i can guarantee this will get 14 replies that a/f is so much cheaper, but i promise you it isn't. sure if you get an a/f car not hurting motors vs a blown car hurting motors, one's cheaper than the other, but the lowest common denominator isn't the combo, it's the tuner/tuneup. how good your tuner is and how much that tuner costs is a huge proponent of any team's budget.

another thing is to do a little research on the team and make sure they are financially strong enough to uphold your end of the contract to the sponsor. negotiate worst case scenarios up front. what happens in the event of a crash? is that an assumed liability or does the driver have to underwrite the rebuild. what happens if something goes haywire in the tuneup and you blow up all the motors? does the owner have the buying power/credit to get back out there quick? those kind of things factor into the value of the team.

also, winnings need to be discussed along with who gets sponsorship moneys from the car. by paying "X" per race, do you get all the sponsorship rights to the car, so the sponsorships offset your rental expense? If the owner has a lot of existing sponsors, or even a major sponsor, that limits how many sponsors you can sell to recoup your expense.

expectations need to be discussed up front not only with the team but with the sponsor. you may have a $3500 a race sponsor, which is a solid associate deal, but for $3500 that sponsor needs to know you aren't going to ask how high when they say jump. sometimes a sponsor thinks they can tell you where you're going, do this display, host these guests, etc.

while on the subject of guests, be sure to get eye to eye with the sponsor on
entertaining guests/hospitality. while it's not that big of deal to entertain a few people, but when it becomes a group of people and you're basically catering to them, it can get expensive in a hurry. tickets alone is a big expense, and need to be covered by the sponsor in these situations.

in a nutshell, it's going to cost you real low end $5k a race up to $20-$30k a race for the mega budget, full time team.