Costs and Why NP is on the Net and not in Print
By Joe McKay

It seems like every race weekend we go to there is always someone complaining about the costs of racing and how much this vendor is charging versus one who ships a part from his home base. Or a photographer who took a fantastic shot of you and now you don’t want to pay the $10 he/she is asking. Or how come you have to pay for your mom to get into the track. Or why some racers don’t want to part with spares they may have in their trailer. Or why some publications cost more then others to subscribe to. These are just a few of the questions I get asked, so let’s try and find some answers that will hopefully soften the blow and give you an understanding about what it takes to service you.

First up: The Vendors (aftermarket and retailers).

Here I am in the business and making a good living (no not me, just an example), sitting in my shop and the phone rings. It’s John (my ego needs to be massaged) Smith. He’s heading to the track and needs two new sprockets for his bike. No problem, $60 for both, put on his charge and shipped. Three weeks later, we decided to cover two race weekends in a row. So, we load the 28’ trailer, fill the truck up with 100 gallons of fuel @ $1.85 per gallon and we are off. We get to the track and the guy at the gate wants $250 for us to park inside and set up. (You bite your tongue hard enough to draw blood, because that’s not the same figure you were told on the phone). Okay, we pay and proceed into the paddock area. We park where we are supposed to and find out there is no electric hookup. Off to the office for a visit with track personnel.

“Oh, you wanted electric, no problem. That will be $35 a day for three days and a deposit of $100 for the box we will need to move over to the pole next to your trailer.”

It’s Friday and you’ve been on the road for 22 hours and are in no mood to argue. So, we pay your fees and get out before I engage my mouth. We spend two hours setting up and getting everything ready for a big weekend of sales.

One of the racers comes over to say hello (John Smith) and wants to know if we have a sprocket for his bike. A quick look over on the wall verifying that you indeed have one.

“How much” he asks?

“35 dollars.”

“What? You sell me that same sprocket for $34 when I call you on the phone. What are you trying to rip me off? I’m the best racer out here and I want a better deal or I’ll go somewhere else,” says John (don’t forget my ego) Smith.

You have almost reached your limit and now you have to bite your tongue again. You give in, after all it’s only a dollar and you have already spent $587 dollars and haven’t eaten yet. The racer tells you he will be right back, but never shows up. He has borrowed a sprocket from a friend. (It’s for a different chain size but he will find that out later).

It’s time to check into the motel and get some dinner for you and the crew. Fully expecting a problem with the motel, you are amazed when you get there and find out the rooms are ready and everything is fine. Amazing, maybe my day is getting better. You and the crew have dinner and fall into a coma until 6:30 am when you meet for a quick breakfast and head to the track. It’s still dark out but you get the uneasy feeling that the weather is going to slip one over on you. The air feels very moist.

As you pull into the paddock, a line is formed at your trailer. This is good. You and the crew jump right into action. The skies have lightened and sure enough it looks like rain. An hour later you and the crew are going full blast when it hits. A monsoon. Four inches of rain fall in just five hours. Everything around you is soaked and the track is slick. Since the first green flag only three races have been run. There have been big problems with red flags and oil everywhere.

Only a few riders are buying anything and basically you and the crew are just standing around. The rain starts to come down so hard that the racing stops. It never does get restarted. So, back to the hotel. You are all soaked and when you try to get into your room, your key doesn’t work. Hmmmm. Down to the desk, where a smiling young lady asks if she can help you?

“Yes, my key won’t work.” I replied.

“Oh, were you going to stay with us another night? We already gave that room to another guest.”

A bomb just went off in my head, and I was sure I was going to have to go to the hospital for a brain transplant. After my mouth finally stopped moving I looked down at this young lady who appeared three inches shorter, and told her to fix it and now!

After a quick conference with the night manager, they finally got it straight. We went to dinner and then to bed. The cable was out but I don't think anyone noticed.

The next morning, I could hear the sound of heavy rain before I even got out of bed. I knew that I was in some very deep stuff in regards to how much money I had lost. There was no way we were going to make it up. Not in three or four race weekends.

We took a lot of time over breakfast to decide whether we should stay or head home. The consensus was to pack it up. We went out to the track and found most everyone had gone home already. We packed up our trailer and headed for the gate.

As we were driving past John Smith’s pit he waved for us to stop. I rolled down the window and heard him ask if he could buy a chain and sprocket? I told him sure thing. “The sprocket is $2 and the chain is $4.” He was all excited and told us “that’s great. Let me get my money.”

I rolled up the window and drove through the gate. What a great day!

Here’s a vendor that just spent $1000 on a weekend that brought zero profit in as he had to pay his staff for their time. It’s easy to complain about the cost of a part, but when you need it yesterday, how much is really too much. Put yourself in the vendors shoes for about ten minutes and think about why he does what he does.

This brings us to spares and why you should be ready to use them. First up, it’s a lot cheaper to buy two of whatever you will consume in a race weekend. You of course need to consider what you will need it you slip off in a corner and break a part of two. Levers top and bottom seem to be the most used parts on any race bike. Shifter and hand levers are the most vulnerable to crash damage.

It makes sense that you would have these as spares. An extra fork brace or triple tree is also a good idea. Granted a triple tree is not cheap, but consider two hours of your time looking around the pits for a replacement tree. If you had one in the trailer, you could be on your way in about an hour, unless, you happen to have a good mechanic who can change one in 20 minutes.

Another high priority item is having a jet kit (if you bike has carbs) with a varying amount of sizes. Needles and springs also fit into this category. Just think about having what you need when you need it. The time saved alone is worth the cost especially if you are chasing championship points. Down time translates to ZERO points.

If your buddy has a spare set of levers and doesn’t want to part with them, it could be he knows something about himself or you that he would rather not discuss. Like the time you borrowed his spare wheels and scratched them while mounting your tires with a set of screw drivers, or the time he loaned you his grade “A” body work and you crashed replacing it with some poor quality (cheap) stuff you got for $10. If you are borrowing $700 worth of body work, replace it with same. If you are borrowing a bike, be prepared to pay for another one just like it. If you can’t afford to replace what you borrow, don’t do it. Murphy’s law:

"If it can go wrong it will!" Believe it. Been there, done that!

Parts are exchanged all the time in the pits as is knowledge. Be a little respectful of your buddy’s ability to have the parts you need. Make sure you give them back or replace them. Somewhere down the road you will need his help again. Trust me on this one.

Plan ahead and you can save a lot of time and money, not to mention all the heartache that goes with not having spares when you need them. And yes, they are cheaper if you order them ahead of time. If you have to buy at the track, pay the price and remember why you have to pay it. Don’t grumble, it might come back to haunt you later. Remember our friend John (not his real name) Smith.

Let’s talk about the admission to the track here for just a paragraph or two (if that’s possible).

One of the biggest complaints by far is the one voiced by many of you concerning the amount of money you have to pay for crew, family and so on. It’s not just that someone is trying to hose you. When the sanctioning body rents a track, they have to pay for the security, the maintenance personal, electric, insurance (the biggest fee), Medical Personal and a variety of other costs. Someone also has to come clean up after you leave.

Let’s use a made up version for an example: ABC rents the track for $6500 including insurance. They then have to hire local folks to administer paperwork at sign up and scoring. Corner workers are given a few bucks by some groups so we will assume this is one of them.

The tracks insurance policy prohibits spectators, a holdover from SCCA days. It keeps the costs down. Folks can come in but the cost is usually quite high for admission. If it wasn’t for this practice there would be no racing at the track, because the insurance would double the cost of renting the facility.

The scoring tower has to be opened, and manned. A security officer or two are required at some tracks depending on how many spectators are allowed. The bathrooms have to have someone cleaning up after you. And the track personal have to be able to run the broom, blower and whatever other equipment needed to keep things running smoothly. When it is all said and done, ABC has to lay out $10,000 for the track for two days. Now, it’s starting to rain or has been raining for two days. This means ABC is in the same situation that our vendors are in and you racers too. After all, you came to race and now there are flooding problems everywhere. A real bummer. The track is still getting their money. They hired the personal needed to cover the event and have to be paid.

Since the weather was bad they did not get any folks at the gate, so the weekend becomes a losing proposition for all concerned. But, the bills still have to be paid. So if you have to lay out $18 for mom, just remember why. It’s necessary.

In a related expenditure, your subscription to this publication. Even though few of you have complained to me (I do hear it occasionally). Why is np more money than the other fine publications out there? Well to answer that we are going to give you a look at just part of what we have to do to make you look good and how much it costs to do so.

Let’s start with the $5000 a month it used to cost just to get np from my desk to the envelop it came in.
When you look at the ads in there, the first thing that pops into you head is “hey Joe is doing pretty good now.”

Nice try, but the truth is “It barely covered the cost of printing never mind the related costs. And forget about a salary.” That’s why we went with subscriptions right off the bat. If it weren’t for the support by many of you, we never would have made it through our first year. But we did and now things are finally looking up. Hopefully, someday I will actually make a living at this. Like our friends the vendors, track owners and sanctioning bodies there are a lot of other costs in being in this business. There is the cost of equipment necessary to do the job better and less expensively. The cost of paper, and now fuel for the trucks that deliver everything here from mail to packages. Fuel just hit $2.25 a gallon in California, and both of our cars run on high octane at $1.87 per gallon. The stores are now raising their prices to recover their costs. Many of you have two vehicles that get 10 to 14 miles a gallon, just think about adding a third to your fuel budget. Now, let’s not forget your racing fuel. It too will go up.

You can plan on spending XYZ dollars but when the unforseen happens, money to cover costs has to come from somewhere. There are advantages to technology and we sure would like to be able to take advantage of some of them. Five years ago this publication would have taken four people to produce, now two are what it takes. Granted we could use some help, but it’s not possible. Why? Money of course. So, after two years of steady but unprofitable months I rolled the print magazine up and called it quits. A few months later the internet started to take off so the transition was an easy decision. $5,000 a month or $52 dollars a month. Tough choice but I made it anyway, (yes, a joke). The other up side of being on the net is the ability we have to update the site from anywhere in the world if necessary. Now, with digital cameras I can download everything in a matter of minutes. Many times this year I did so watching the television coverage and was loaded onto the internet before the last guy got off the track.

Now that you have had a peek into our lives, maybe some of you will understand what it takes to be in this business or any other part of it. Ultimately we are all here because we have paid our dues. Contributing countless hours, spending thousands on film, spending thousands of hours typing articles, standing in the rain with the troops. Listening to every bench racing story ever told, catching colds from many of you. Wondering if the car is going to make it through the weekend without spitting its guts all over the highway. Having to be there when you lay in a hospital bed all broken up, then listening to the family wondering why you are so foolish. Then there is the down side. When one of you doesn’t come back at all.

This is the heaviest burden and one that you can’t put a price on, however it takes a heavy toll out of yours truly each time.

Many of us have given a great part of our lives to the grass roots levels of this sport. Trying to appease everyone is a full time job. So, if we try to make a living at it, understand the costs. They are a lot bigger than we show you here on these pages. Like so many of our racers, it’s an addiction. We spend more than we get back.

Someday I would like to go back to a print edition, maybe a few times a year. Who knows?

I’ll leave you with a quote that comes to mind when someone talks about how much they have to spend to race. Keep in mind most of us start out with a budget. “I made a small fortune out of a large one.”

- smokin' joe