Your Cost Per Lap or Per Run.

Our Lucky Dog endurance team splits the finances. With only our novice season under our belt, we currently have insufficient data to give accurate numbers. If the baseline assumption is that the car gets to reliably running the full weekend, as opposed to our teething issues kicking our endeavor off, it could probably average ~120 laps per weekend per driver. Our only real team capital expense is the race car itself, which was cheap by racecar standards. Everything else has uses outside of racing. Individually there is also the safety gear. Rough, seemingly conservative, numbers look to put our target around $10/lap or less. Based on actual laps turned so far though, it would probably be an order of magnitude higher. If we keep coming down the learning curve at the rate we have been, we're on track.

This is also factoring separately for each car, and with our second team project still dividing the cost by zero laps.

Relevant

When I still did HPDE, I never broke it down that far. I just went by weekend.

Entry fees, covered garage, water/food (in a cooler, I couldn't eat a greasy burger and fries before the afternoon sessions) fuel.

Brakes and tires on a Miata on a tight, relatively slow track like Hallett, lasted a long time.

What turned me off was the amount of time spent in the garage on the weekends. Have the alignment marks, moved, let's bleed the brakes, etc etc etc. 

To be clear (as the person that started this), my original calculation was just entry fee / track time to get a feeling for how much more expensive this event was compared to the typical vintage race in Colorado.  I wasn't including anything about the car, consumables, travel expenses or anything else.  SVRA events are expensive, have limited track time, and COTA is the most expensive event I ever do.

Locally, entry fees are under $400 for the weekend, and that's typically a practice session, qualifying and 4 races.  The SVRA COTA event was $1000 for one practice, 2 qualifying session and 2 races.  The last race was shortened to 4 laps which makes it sting even more.   Local races are about $8/lap in entry fees, compared to $30 for COTA.  Admittedly, using a $/lap is a pretty weird measurement, given that it takes me 2:51 to get around COTA in a FV.  I was just trying to think, "If I had to toss $30 out of the car every time I crossed the finish line, would I still think it's worth it?"

COTA is an insanely expensive track, but also it's a fantastic track to drive so it's hard to figure out whether it's worth it to me.   The 14 hour tow (which means 2 days off work on either end) makes it even harder.

I don't generally track racing costs with any specificity--it's not worth the effort to me.  As long as I have enough money in my account to pay for it and I'm still enjoying it, I'll keep doing it...

Questions I don't want answers to.....

In reply to z31maniac :

Yeah, I can't see doing it all just for HPDEs.  HPDEs, for me, are a means to an end, not an end themselves.  I'm at the point where I'm turning lap times consistently within a tenth of a second so an HPDE isn't generally worth the time to me anymore.  If I'm doing track days now, it's almost exclusively test & tune before a race weekend in the service of having the best possible time that weekend.  I'm much more interested in the thrill of a race, going side-by-side through a corner with a friend, both of us at the limit.  Not saying that more practice won't help, but the areas I most need to improve, racecraft and strategy, aren't really something I'm going to get better at on a lapping day.  Races where I wind up on my own with no close competition are boring and not why I do this at all...

In reply to Berck :

Your comment is indeed the one that motivated me to start this thread but as the guy who tracks every penny I thought it might be interesting.

z31maniac said:

When I still did HPDE, I never broke it down that far. I just went by weekend.

What turned me off was the amount of time spent in the garage on the weekends. Have the alignment marks, moved, let's bleed the brakes, etc etc etc. 

I am surprised by this. I do 6-8 events a year with the Datsun and the only things I need to do is change the oil, check the alignment and brakes at the end of the season.