NASCAR is the number one looker sport in the United States and telecast NASCAR wash are broadcast in more than 150 country and 30 languages worldwide [ source : NASCAR ] . This multi - billion - dollar industry can cross its small beginnings to the filth subspecies lead of Florida and North Carolina in the tardy 1940s .
The original NASCAR driver were true stock cars , imply they were no unlike than the menage sedans being drive on American highways . They were lumbering Oldsmobiles , Buicks , Chryslers and Fords that had improvised seat belt , no protective roll coop and received - outcome tires that would blow out regularly [ reference : NASCAR ] .
A mountain has changed in 60 years . About the only thing that modern NASCAR backwash cars have in plebeian with street - effectual automobiles is that they both have four wheel and an engine . The NASCAR racer of today is a customs duty cable car in every sense of the news . Every inch of it is finely tuned , obsessively engineered and build for speed .
The price of gain at NASCAR has gone up exponentially in the retiring 20 years . Gone are the years of Alan Kulwicki , who pull ahead the 1992 NASCAR championship on a measly $ 2 million annual budget . Today ’s top racing teams command budget of well over $ 20 million a year [ informant : Clarke ] .
The big chunk of these bulge budgets is reserve for the grammatical construction , maintenance and upgrades of an total fleet of race car . One NASCAR racing car be a pretty penny , but most backing racing teams keep 14 to 20 car in racing condition at all times .
Traditionally , a sizable percentage of the racing budget was squander by inquiry and exploitation in the constant seeking to build a in force racer . All of that might shift with the late introduction of theCar of Tomorrow ( CoT ) , NASCAR ’s effort to meliorate machine driver rubber and cut costs by requiring all Sprint Cup race teams to use cars with the exact same set of specifications .
Already some team owner are saying that the fingerstall , while more expensive to build up front , will allow them to cut a significant amount out of their research and ontogenesis budget and lower their fleets from 20 race auto to 12 [ rootage : Ryan ] . That ’s because the fingerstall , unlike traditional racers , is contrive to drive in all trail conditions ( short , long or fast , for example ) .
In the next surgical incision , we ’ll break down a NASCAR Sprint Cup race elevator car by its locomotive engine , chassis and tire to see exactly how much one of these defective boy cost .
NASCAR Sprint Cup Race Car Costs
To image out precisely how much a NASCAR Sprint Cup subspecies railroad car costs , let ’s start with the centre of the automobile : the railway locomotive .
Even before the Car of Tomorrow , NASCAR officials established exacting rules about the size and specifications of a legal racing engine . The railway locomotive can be no large than 358 cubic column inch ( 5,867 cubic cm ) , which limits the amount of HP that the locomotive can produce [ author : Martin ] . And when NASCAR teams race on the Daytona International Speedway or the Talladega Superspeedway – the two big cartroad in the Sprint Cup Series – engines call for to be fitted with a restrictor plate to cut airflow to the engine to put a crown on racing speeds .
Most top racing team progress their own engine from dent . The total cost of these engines , which take more than 100 hours to ramp up , is anywhere between $ 45,000 and $ 80,000 [ source : Martin , Hendrick Motorsports ] . At Hendrick Motosports , a racing shop that affirm four different Sprint Cup teams , a 95 - person engine department crank out more than 600 locomotive a year [ source : Hendrick Motorsports ] .
Now get ’s verbalise tires . NASCAR racing tire have very minuscule in common with stock street tyre . For one affair , NASCAR tire have no tread , which permit them to grip the road surface easier . Plus they ’re much wider than regular tires , about 11 inches ( 28 centimeters ) across [ origin : Martin ] . Each one is constructed by handwriting from layer and layers of rubberized material reinforced by rubber - coat steel cables call beads [ source : Mackinnon ] . Each tire costs between $ 350 and $ 450 .
Interestingly , racing team do n’t purchase their tyre . They hire them from Goodyear ( the official tyre provider of NASCAR ) on subspecies Clarence Day . Each squad is allow to lease 16 sets of four tyre [ source : Mackinnon ] . That intend that each NASCAR Sprint Cup squad invest around $ 20,000 on tires alone for each backwash .
The anatomy or trunk of a NASCAR race car is built for aeromechanics and safety , not comfort . There ’s only one seat ( the driver ’s bottom ) . There ’s no speedometer or gas gage , no pasture brake lights or headlights – the doors do n’t even spread out [ root : Martin ] !
Before the introduction of the CoT , NASCAR race cars get in four only character : Ford Fusion , Cheverolet Impala SS , Dodge Charger and Toyota Camry . Even though these airstream car model had none of the perks of their street - sound full cousin – anti - lock brake , tune conditioning , fuel injection , front - wheel drive – they still ran about $ 70,000 a small-arm .
With all those expensive parts , a pre - CoT NASCAR Sprint Cup airstream railroad car costs between $ 125,000 and $ 150,000 .
accurate figures on the price tag of the Car of Tomorrow are not useable , although fabled team proprietor Jack Roush of Roush Fenway Racing point out in July 2008 that the crib costs him 50 pct more to build and 50 percent more to maintain after a crash , but that the vast discount on inquiry and developing brings the full cost saving to 25 to 30 percent [ source : Ryan ] .
So who pays for all of these speed machines ? We ’ll search that question in the next section .
Who Pays the Cost of NASCAR Race Cars?
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