R300 / R400 cost/trackday

[willr]

What's a good ballpark estimate of cost per trackday to run an R300 or 400, with CR500 or similar tyres?
Assuming the car isn't driven to the track (no insurance, road mileage, etc).

[pw75]

willr said:

What's a good ballpark estimate of cost per trackday to run an R300 or 400, with CR500 or similar tyres?
Assuming the car isn't driven to the track (no insurance, road mileage, etc).

My r300 duratec race car drinks 15l per 30 mins. From new my CR500's did Snett in the wet, Silverstone National, International and GP before needing replacing. Most of those were test days, and all of them were certainly driven with no regard to tyre wear.

Hope that helps.

[simonreed]

hmmmm I do 4 or 5 track days a year in my R400. Other than annual servicing car costs are

1) Tyres - say every other year - either Yoko 32/48's or second hand ACB10's.
2) Brake pads - I seems to need to change the rear brake pads every year - cost about £40 and 30 minutes
3) Petrol - about 50 to 60 litres per track day
4) Engine oil top up - a five litre can has lasted me 4+ years

The biggest cost by far are the initial cost of the car, any upgrades you do, direct and indirect cost of the track day.

Simon

p.s. Oh forgot to say, if you are serious about track days, get a trailer.

Edited by simonreed on Sunday 19th April 20:27

[willr]

Apart from tyres, what are the "wear and tear" items that would normally need replacing after x trackdays?
What about brake pads & discs, clutch, cables, linkages, suspension parts, etc?

[simonreed]

after 20+ trackdays

Front pads once - just because they felt a bit wooden (still plenty of meat left on them).
Rear pads - once a year

discs, clutch, cables, linkages, suspension parts, etc - No

Simon

[sfaulds]

I've probably got a better idea than most - feel free to email me.

[thinfourth2]

willr said:

Apart from tyres, what are the "wear and tear" items that would normally need replacing after x trackdays?
What about brake pads & discs, clutch, cables, linkages, suspension parts, etc?

This is where the caterhams lightness plays its trump card as there is less stress on parts they can last much longer then a lardy car.

[RMac]

they can be really cheap to run as a track day toy due to weight.

to put things in perspective, compare running to one to an m3.

Tyes actually last about as well on the bmw as on a caterham but cost 3 times more.

brakes on a caterham will do a good 20 days compared to maybe 6 in a bmw and again, pads for a caterham will be £200 and the ones on the bmw will be £500.

fuel useage will be much lower on a lighter car!

In summary - they weigh approximately a third of the amount of most Porsches and bmw's and due to this, they are extremely light on consumables.

Track days will never be cheap but I am not aware of anything cheaper to run on track than a caterham - from my experience there is also nothing that can touch a caterham for fun.

[Tango7]

Use 13" rims and 2nd hand slicks are between £10-15 a tyre and last a few trackdays... compared to other cars, a seven must rank as one of the lowest cost of ownership cars for trackdays - after you get over the initial purchase.

[jackal]

i worked it aout ages ago

including depreciation, interest on a loan, consumables, maintenance etc etc.. teh true cost was over 900 quid a trackday

but that was applicable to my situation at the time and TDs are quite a bit more expensive nowadays

cots of stuff like pads and tyres were zilch.. i dont think i ever changed my pads in 2 years and as for typres i used ex race slicks which were admittedly pretty crap but more or less free

Edited by jackal on Tuesday 21st April 22:09

[jleroux]

jackie has hit the nail on the head (badoom-tish). cost of pads and tyres are negligible compared to depreciation, engine and box rebuilds and god forbid crash damage. you only have to factor in one £5K crash in a 3 year period to have justified renting rather than owning - food for thought nes pas - Crashy Mac!

Jonny

[jackal]

good point

my litle off at spa upped my daily rate with the durabang to around 1500 per trackday for the ~2.5 years I had it




happy days eh

[Finchy172]

I would say that for my R400 race car its in the region of £300 plus the track day fee.

We generally go through £150 petrol, Tyres we pay very little for so we generally get 3 trackdays per tyre and swap them around etc all the time to make them last.
And after the wear on a set of pads, oil and filter change every other trackday, consumables during the pre trackday prep etc.

End of season rebuilds are done myself so there isnt a cost apart from the parts but any vehicle will need this anyway.

[jackal]

you forgot depreciation, petrol for the tow car, depreciation on the trailer, servicing on the trailer, tax, insurance,


and to be fair if you can do your own rebuilds then your figure isn't really going to be relevant to the OP's inquiry

[RMac]

jleroux said:

jackie has hit the nail on the head (badoom-tish). cost of pads and tyres are negligible compared to depreciation, engine and box rebuilds and god forbid crash damage. you only have to factor in one £5K crash in a 3 year period to have justified renting rather than owning - food for thought nes pas - Crashy Mac!

Jonny

A very good point well made.

I ran one for about 3 years quite heavily on track and running costs were generally quite low, my depreciation was quite minimal but by the time you throw in my £10k rebuild, the cost per day would be quite a lot!

I think you have really got to want to own one to actually make it worth while owning one! iyswim

[fergus]

jackal said:

i worked it aout ages ago including depreciation, interest on a loan, consumables, maintenance etc etc.. teh true cost was over 900 quid a trackday but that was applicable to my situation at the time and TDs are quite a bit more expensive nowadays

cots of stuff like pads and tyres were zilch.. i dont think i ever changed my pads in 2 years and as for typres i used ex race slicks which were admittedly pretty crap but more or less free

Rich,

These aren't necesserily the cost of a track day per se, as the depreciation occurs regardless of how you use the car, as does the cost of servicing any loan. I think for a 7, the costs per day are a lot lower for a 7 than for any other car.

As JL points out, a crash can outweigh the savings for any type of car, but a similar (but not directly comparable) argument could be made about renting your home rather than buying - i.e. you wouldn't be liable for the roof replacement, etc!!!

The cost of repairing a 'badly' damaged caterham is *significantly* less than repairing the damage that would be sustained by a 'normal' car in the same accident.

[willr]

Thanks for the replies so far.

I was interested in the costs/trackday (fuel, wear and tear, etc), excluding depreciation. To include depreciation would mean an assumption about the number of trackdays/year, which is very variable. Otherwise, I guess the annual "servicing" cost of the car is minimal.

As for depreciation, how realistic are the advertised resale prices on pistonheads, caterham.co.uk, etc?

[jackal]

fergus said:

jackal said:

i worked it aout ages ago including depreciation, interest on a loan, consumables, maintenance etc etc.. teh true cost was over 900 quid a trackday but that was applicable to my situation at the time and TDs are quite a bit more expensive nowadays

cots of stuff like pads and tyres were zilch.. i dont think i ever changed my pads in 2 years and as for typres i used ex race slicks which were admittedly pretty crap but more or less free

Rich,

These aren't necesserily the cost of a track day per se, as the depreciation occurs regardless of how you use the car, as does the cost of servicing any loan. I think for a 7, the costs per day are a lot lower for a 7 than for any other car.

As JL points out, a crash can outweigh the savings for any type of car, but a similar (but not directly comparable) argument could be made about renting your home rather than buying - i.e. you wouldn't be liable for the roof replacement, etc!!!

The cost of repairing a 'badly' damaged caterham is *significantly* less than repairing the damage that would be sustained by a 'normal' car in the same accident.

Sure Fergus, but then I only ever used my caterhams on the track so wasn't prepared to view the deprecation and loan costs as 'part of everyday motoring costs' as opposed to trackday costs because there was no everyday motoring with the car.

I totally agree that Caterhams are way cheaper than other cars when it comes to costs, whether that be deprectaion, crash damage, disc and pads you name it. Just making the point that trackday costs are a bit more than cost of trackday + set of tyres and a bit of super unleaded. If you don't factor in stuff like trailer costs, trailer car petrol, major repair every so often, refreshes, track insurance etc.. then there's little point trying to work out any 'trackday cost' figure because it won't mean or relate to anything and isn't actually telling anyone anything.

There was always money being spent on my car whether it be a rolling road session, getting the exhaust sorted out to pass drive bys, investigating misfires, getting the trailer serviced, fitting stiffer springs then getting the corner weights re done, fitting a side protection bar, new dash and switch/dash layout etc etc...

[fergus]

jackal said:

fergus said:

jackal said:

i worked it aout ages ago including depreciation, interest on a loan, consumables, maintenance etc etc.. teh true cost was over 900 quid a trackday but that was applicable to my situation at the time and TDs are quite a bit more expensive nowadays

cots of stuff like pads and tyres were zilch.. i dont think i ever changed my pads in 2 years and as for typres i used ex race slicks which were admittedly pretty crap but more or less free

Rich,

These aren't necesserily the cost of a track day per se, as the depreciation occurs regardless of how you use the car, as does the cost of servicing any loan. I think for a 7, the costs per day are a lot lower for a 7 than for any other car.

As JL points out, a crash can outweigh the savings for any type of car, but a similar (but not directly comparable) argument could be made about renting your home rather than buying - i.e. you wouldn't be liable for the roof replacement, etc!!!

The cost of repairing a 'badly' damaged caterham is *significantly* less than repairing the damage that would be sustained by a 'normal' car in the same accident.

Sure Fergus, but then I only ever used my caterhams on the track so wasn't prepared to view the deprecation and loan costs as 'part of everyday motoring costs' as opposed to trackday costs because there was no everyday motoring with the car.

I totally agree that Caterhams are way cheaper than other cars when it comes to costs, whether that be deprectaion, crash damage, disc and pads you name it. Just making the point that trackday costs are a bit more than cost of trackday + set of tyres and a bit of super unleaded. If you don't factor in stuff like trailer costs, trailer car petrol, major repair every so often, refreshes, track insurance etc.. then there's little point trying to work out any 'trackday cost' figure because it won't mean or relate to anything and isn't actually telling anyone anything.

There was always money being spent on my car whether it be a rolling road session, getting the exhaust sorted out to pass drive bys, investigating misfires, getting the trailer serviced, fitting stiffer springs then getting the corner weights re done, fitting a side protection bar, new dash and switch/dash layout etc etc...

What spring rates/damper combo did you end up running out of interest? Who did the setup/geo?

Although I only use my car for the 'Ring, I think you could also see the cost question from the perspective of a mainly road biased driver, where they are perhaps only interested in the *additional* costs arising from heavy track use?!
Cheers

[jackal]

fergus, i changed to the R400 race springs, forget the name
they were the standard poundage from the factory that the race cars used

I found they worked very very well with the standard bilsteins and they also cured that terrible 'stiff srpings at the front, soft rear setup' that seemed to be cusriously pedalled around blatchat by all and sundry in the name of hillclimbs !

my friend Donkey did the setup, his website is racecardoctor.com, former R500 owner himself (one of the very first R500 guinea pigs actually...... unlucky for him ! )

I'll let you into a little secret though. When i fitted those uprated springs I did them myself and because i then neded helpers to get the rear ride height done properly I basically left it as is for the best part of a year, probably 8 trackdays or more. So in short, a lot of my trackdays in that car were with a ludicrous amount of rake. The back was jacked up so high and the car always felt like it was driving on ice !!! But in a masochistic way I kind of liked that and got used to it. The following year when i finally got the ride heights redone properly the car was literally seconds quicker with so much more mechanical grip.

moral of the story: soon as you've built or bought your car, don't delay, get it straight to a circuit and get it set up trackside there and then for once and for all, preferably by someone like fauldsport who know exactly what they are doing and can travel to the circuit etc.