Your Cost Per Lap or Per Run.

Another thread got me started on this. Someone mentioned there cost per lap being $30.

I actually have data on mine. My numbers are total cost of ownership. This includes all maintenance an the cost of the two vehicle and trailer.

Vintage Races $40 per lap. These out of town so the cost is higher. If they were local the cost would $23 per lap

Time trials $10 per lap. The track is 9 miles from my house.

Autocross $16 per run. Ironically my vintage race weekends work out to about $16 a minute.......which is essentially what autocross is.

Knowing that number could really put a damper on the fun...  

So in 2021 I bought the Rio, added suspension, wheels, brakes and intake/muffler. Total spent was about $7500. 6 sessions, ~5 laps per session 30 laps per weekend for ~19 weekends. 570 laps. Including gas and oil, around $15 per lap. That doesn't take into account the 40k road miles its also seen, working out to about 19 cents per road mile. 

Basically, very little because it IS the tow vehicle. 

Somewhere around $10 a lap, though I usually do it per hour of run time. Laps vary per track.

Autocross, ~$20/run and yes I would prefer to not have that knowledge.

2014-2019 we spent $3-5 per minute of track time. We've not had our usual cars on track since so I can't comment.

An autocross has a grand total cost of maybe $120CAD at most, so with 6 runs that's $20 per run. Excluding that one run that looks like it's going to cost me clean over $7k and pretty much took me out of racing for a year...

For a track day it depends which one I go to and how many laps I do. One good example, a track night on the Shannonville Nelson short course probably has a total cost of around $170CAD, if I run an hour of laps there (could get some more in if work didn't get in the way) with an average time of 65sec per lap, that's 55 laps so only $3.09 per lap. That's the bargain-bin option though. It would actually have cost more per-lap this year when they switched to the long course for track nights too. I could calculate what that would be with some sim laps.

One on Mosport DDT might be around $350CAD largely due to an entry cost that's almost 4x higher, but that gets around 2hrs of track time. Assuming an average lap time of 1:48, that's 66 laps so $5.30 a lap.

And it can get more expensive from there, a track day on Mosport GP has easily 2x the entry cost of one on DDT and runs on a similar schedule with lap times somewhere in the same ballpark.

Since I'm including transit and food costs etc the GRM Challenge would have to be the most expensive event I've done, with a mix of autocross runs (maybe 6-10), drag passes (maybe 20) and laps (possibly close to 100), with a grand total cost of about $3k, that would average out to around $23 per run/pass/lap, so maybe 2x a Mosport GP track day. I haven't been including brakes and tires because most of the events I do use so little that it's hard to measure, but a FIRM track day alone will eat through an easy 1/4 set of pads so maybe I should tack some on there.

I came up with about $16 per lap for an HPDE day. That considers only consumables--some of us track our daily drivers, some of us have purpose-built racers, and so factoring in the cost for each is kind of tricky. So, fuel for the race car, fuel for the truck, tires, brakes, entry fee... stuff like that. I think I'm OK with that. I guessed that I would have gotten in 55 laps if I had done all five sessions on Saturday.

Tom1200 said:

Vintage Races $40 per lap.

Is that based on race laps only, or also including the practice and qualifying laps?

Driven5 said:

Tom1200 said:

Vintage Races $40 per lap.

Is that based on race laps only, or also including the practice and qualifying laps?

That is every lap I turn. Practice, qualifying and the race. 

Rodan said:

Knowing that number could really put a damper on the fun...  

Not at all.

As a purchasing guy I want to know the cost. 

My D-sports Racer worked out to $65 a lap in today's money. 

While it was 30 seconds a lap faster than the Datsun, it was not $25 a lap more fun.

I track it per hour rather than per lap, and use a figure of $650 (counting fuel).  So that's about $22/lap if you assume a lap time of 2 minutes.

That said, that number doesn't include costs that don't match up directly with the amount of track time -- entry fees, hotel, towing costs vary too much by event so I track them separately.  I'm also not including depreciation of purchase cost on the race car or tow rig, driver safety gear (suit, helmet, etc don't last forever), timing out of seats and harnesses, etc.

Too much.  So I quit.

I wanna do autocross or drag racing with my challenge car, but nothing around.  I might do a track day at Roebling road over thanksgiving.

No.