Scenario: You own a race car. You wish to enter an endurance race. Two friends agree to share driving and basic costs. What sort of arrangement is typical for sharing wear costs? Collision repair costs? Busted engine costs?
Ps- I am merely curious- There is nothing tragic in my background.
I've only shared for rallycross, but the common procedure is to first pay entry for the owner which covers gas/tires/wear. Then there is a formal handshake deal that destroying the car means buying the car.
I have a standing deal with a friend who wants to track my rallycross RX7. He will leave me with a check for the full cost of the car when he takes it. When he gets back I have the option of accepting the car back or cashing the check. He won't drive any car on track that he can't write that check for. It's a good policy.
I'm curious how this works too. I let a friend do fun runs in my SM 240SX last event and he fell in love with my car. Kinda pissed me off because he beat my official time. Anyway, he was talking about co-driving for 2015. Obviously we would go halves on tires, but that doesn't really cover all the time and money i put in to the car for a season of auto-x. At least there really is no worries of wadding up the car on track.
Have everything in writing. It doesn't matter if friends or not, if E36 M3 goes down it is in black and white who is responsible for what. Usually if it is a mechanical failure, cost is shared unless it is blatantly the driver's fault. I.e. overrev. Use data to record engine parameters if possible. If they wreck the car on track, they fix it. If there is minor rubbing that cant be pinned on one driver, all drivers split repair cost. Drivers pay their own entry. Consumables are split. This has been my experience at least.
We used to rent cars and basically there is an agreed upon split of fees and consumables (half if you are sharing the car equally), and damage is paid in full by whatever party is driving. It doesn't matter whose fault it was/is, if they are in the car, they pay. You need this in writing.
Get your own car. Sharing is just a great way to destroy friendships as cars will break and damage does happen. If you are in an endure, then the advice above makes some sense. It it's Chump or Lemons, all bets are off. Sweat equity can fix most anything unless the whole thing gets wadded up. Racing ain't cheap. If you wanna play, bring your big boy wallet.
I was a member of a team (not at the wheel for the incident though) that spectacularly rolled a very well prepped M3. We were/are all friends with DIY skills so we chose to fix the car ourselves and share the cost but one guy ended up doing 90% of the work. Everyone contributed but not evenly at all. It wasn't really fair though it worked out out OK in the end and we are all still friends... but we all have our own cars now too. We really should have had a clear understanding of responsibility in hard dollars.
IMO, if you own the car - rent the seat. That means each driver is paying something to rent the car and pay for consumables. Each driver is also signing an agreement to own up to a certain amount of damage. You can make that stake any split you like... guy who wrecks it owns it at an agreed price, team splits it evenly, at the wheel pays 75%/25% whatever. Do it up-front and get it signed. If that compromises your relationship with buddies... at least it was free to learn who wasn't going to hold their end of the bargain anyway 
In reply to Cone_Junkie: How can he or why would he be responsible for extra money for your time and money spent on your car? I'm just curious because your time and money spent on the car may be the same if he doesn't co-drive with you next season. I could only imagine him maybe paying for some of your entry fees.
Yeah, unless it's Chump or LeMons I say stick to your own dedicated race car. I will say I have been tossed the keys to various cars to try 'em out (most recent was the MegaBusa, DAMN what a car!) but in no circumstances do I wail on them like I do mine and I have always figured I better be ready to pony up if I smash it.
Streetwiseguy wrote: Scenario: You own a race car. You wish to enter an endurance race. Two friends agree to share driving and basic costs. What sort of arrangement is typical for sharing wear costs? Collision repair costs? Busted engine costs?
Typically, I "ass"ume that a car is completely reprepped before a race. This (IMO) is the way to start looking at it as starting at 0.
For endurance racing especially, stuff gets used up. So for me, its not "oh, we only used half of the wear of those brakes". If it got ran on the car, it is used/consumed, the cost gets split. End of discussion.
So essentially, there should be tires, brakes, etc (wear items) DEDICATED specifically to that event. Considering the owner of the car accepts certain amounts of wear (motor, drivetrain, etc) that is difficult to quantify, he gets to keep the leftovers in good faith for use of his car. Used race brakes/tires are worth nothing (relative to initial cost), which keeps this fair.
This is "ass"uming that the rental drivers are only paying out of their pocket for their associated fees and the owner is not "earning" money on top.
Collision repair is you break it, you have two choices; fix it to the condition it was (its a race car, race cars get damaged, fact of life) or if that is too expensive, buy it for the costs it takes to make the owner whole (or do the Car Insurance buyback deal of "I'll cut you a check for XXXX" and you keep the car).
Busted engine is tricky. Depending on level of prep of car though, I believe busted engine/transmission is actually no fault of the rental driver. Its hard to truly tell just how "worn" those pieces of equipment are. The motor or tranny blowing up could happen to ANYONE over the course of the endurance race. If anything, its the owners fault because the rental driver entered into the race with the understanding that the car is prepped (again, assuming the whole "start from 0" idea).
At the end of the day, one thing to consider when working on a team is that if you don't have teammates, you don't get to race. They are subsidizing you to race, even if a bit more of the money comes out of your pocket.
My 2 cents, only way I'll ever do it.
I've shared cars before and they were always mine.
I considered that something could as easily happen to them as it could to me, and pretty much accepted that whatever did happen, unless he/they stepped up, I was pretty much on my own as if I did it myself. Kind of like the theory that if you lend money to a friend, consider it a gift, and if you get it back, it's a bonus.
I don't lend money to friends, but in every circumstance, offering the car up was purely intended for them to enjoy guilt free. That's what my cars are for.
In your situation, I would provide the car, and ask them to pay all expenses. I would never enter into a partnership on a race car because I need to have 100% creative control.
I personally don't have any problems flipping the keys to friends for a single run or a whole event, but then there's a much lower risk of things going terribly wrong at a rallycross. If I'm going to be using my van to tow the car a long distance to an event and someone is looking to co-drive, I think it's only fair to ask for some gas money since I'm providing the transportation and the car. I guess if something terrible did happen to the car, I'd expect help on-site to get things repaired. If it couldn't be fixed on site, I'd expect some help getting it loaded back onto the trailer, but that'd really be about it. If I were the guy borrowing the car, I'd be offering to come over and help fix, buy parts, whatever I could manage, but I wouldn't expect it if I were the guy who owned the car.
wae wrote: I personally don't have any problems flipping the keys to friends for a single run or a whole event, but then there's a much lower risk of things going terribly wrong at a rallycross.
Hey, are you looking for a co-driver for nationals? 
This is one of the main factors that keeps me out of Lemons/Chump. The teams I've been invited to join both had pretty draconian "break it you buy it" language that doesn't address mechanical or crash damage that occurs through no fault of the driver. Examples:
I'm at the wheel of the well prepared, fairly fast, reliable car. I brake late for T1 to pass several cars and a huge American sedan parade float with brake failure collects me and destroys the tub. Obviously the owner of that car, despite going on track with brakes that should have lasted is not liable due to "that's racing". But I'm unwilling to risk a bill for $7000 from the guy who built the car as he collects every hour in the car at $45ea.
Again, I'm at the wheel, I howlingly berkeley up T10, drop a wheel on the exit, and roll the car a double digit number of times. This is my berkeleying fault and I should pay.
Transmission or engine with 145k street miles and 3 Lemons/Chump races lets go on the drive out of T2. The grenade happened to explode while I was holding it. I'd have to pay to rebuild/ replace. Ummm, no thanks.
I do the 5-2 downshift on the way into T1 and don't catch it in time. The motor feels "soft" on the way out of the corner. I key it off, get a ride back on the strap and the car comes home with me and I build a new head. Since I'm there I'll engage the team to see if they want to split parts to do the bottom end at the same time.
I see Lemons/chump as involving a lot of people with out a lot of racing experience, in racing. And as such they're figuring it out as the go. Ultimately, with my own program where I'm owner/driver/crew of a fairly needy sports racer, it's all on me whether I win and I'm a winged footed god or I get the setup wrong and I go backwards. Or worse, backwards into a tire wall. But it's on me irrespective of fault. If it was a collaboration I'd probably suggest sharing the champagne and the parts bills - but on the basis of fault.
EvanB wrote:wae wrote: I personally don't have any problems flipping the keys to friends for a single run or a whole event, but then there's a much lower risk of things going terribly wrong at a rallycross.Hey, are you looking for a co-driver for nationals?
Jerry was thinking about it, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to bum a ride or drive the Subarust out.
wae wrote:EvanB wrote:Jerry was thinking about it, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to bum a ride or drive the Subarust out.wae wrote: I personally don't have any problems flipping the keys to friends for a single run or a whole event, but then there's a much lower risk of things going terribly wrong at a rallycross.Hey, are you looking for a co-driver for nationals?
It's nationals, what could go wrong. 
Subscribed, I want to build a e36 m3 track car and a friend wants to join in. Splitting cost is tempting.
Anyone care to upload an agreement they have penned before?
There seems to be a wide range of opinions about this. There is some assumption of responsibility for letting some other fool into your seat, but I think it ends up being one of those situations where there isn't a single rule to cover all scenarios. Examples:
The motor in my Neon started to eat the crankshaft this past weekend. My friend was in the car at the time, and I assign exactly no blame to him, partly because its a mechanical failure, and partly because I can't imagine anyone pushing it any harder than I do.
Another situation involved a friends car, which lost the fan belt due to hitting debris on the track. The (non owner) driver came in as soon as possible, but the temp gauge had spiked. There was no loss of coolant, no steam, new belt was rolled on, and out he goes. 30 minutes later, in it comes, hot again, but this time its pretty obvious the head gasket has eaten itself. Post mortem, its quite obvious the previous owner has cleaned the head with roloc discs, had not planed it, and had not torqued it properly... Properly repaired, there would have been no resulting damage. This one, the three drivers are splitting the cost of repair, because its tough to get the PO to pay...
I guess it boils down to discussing the situation and your expectations before the event.
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