Castrol says goodbye to John Force Racing

novaderrik wrote: i went to the Nationals in Brainerd back in 2000- i only went because my cousin got some free VIP tickets... it was pretty cool, but there is more downtime between runs than there was runs.. yeah, it's cool walking thru the pits and seeing them rebuild the engines in under a half hour and it's cool seeing them go 300+ mph in a quarter mile from a standing start- but it just didn't hold my attention and the 2 days i spent there seemed like an eternity. the party in the Zoo (the campground- we were way out in the farthest reaches of the track, turn 3 on the road course...) was pretty crazy, tho.. regarding Castrol and Ford pulling back: it's not shocking at all. neither of them probably sells a lot of product from their involvement with the drag racers, some of the top teams are running part time schedules because they can't find sponsorship and they are lucky to get full fields on any given week. John Force is the guy that brought the big money to the NHRA- he had a 4 trailer compound in the pits back in 2000 when he was a 1 car team..

I was at BIR 2 years ago and kind of felt the same. I paid $50 for a one day ticket. Lots of down time between runs, $10 beers, $5 hot dogs, no thanks.

Don't get me started on college or other pro sports and related costs to go to a game lol.

For the outrageous expense of all this, the best seat in the house is my living room recliner.

Will wrote:

novaderrik wrote:

BoostedBrandon wrote: I've heard a funny car body costs about 14k new and that's before the spoiler or vynil wrap. It has gotten ludicrously expensive. I remember hearing on SpeedFreaks awhile back that the purse for winning a top fuel championship was something like $250,000. Any NASCAR race pays more for 10th place.

the Daytona 500 pays something like a million dollars to anyone that takes the green flag.. so qualify, start, then head to the garage after a few laps and fund most of the rest of the season of starting and parking..

Eh, not quite on both counts. In the last race at Michigan, Joey Logano earned $252,393 for the win, and Carl Edwards won $127,110 for 10th place. And at this year's Daytona 500, Joe Nemechek won $264,354 for last place. That's still big money, of course, but let's not inflate the numbers.

that's the race purse- but there's also contingency money, too. that's what all those stickers on the cars are for..

yeah i was off when i said "something like a million dollars" because i was too lazy to look up the actual numbers, but i knew they get paid pretty decent just for showing up and doing the minimum required to get on the track on race day...