Petrol Heads’ Corner
Expensive moments and whoopsie moments David O’Neill* Expensive moments and whoopsie moments – aka “to race or not to race”. I have not been doing any racing, nor fanging around in exotic cars lately, so your beloved editor [Sub ed: beloved is a bit strong, isn't it?] suggested that I give you an insight into those whoopsie moments and the expenses of racing plus some other tidbits … What not to do! One thing I can assure you – racing is expensive! It’s one of those things where you do not take your beloved with you to the accountants to hear about what it cost you that year. I naively did that some years ago and, so far, it has cost me (and I wasn’t invited) a trip to Samoa, a trip to Fiji, a trip to the Otago Rail Trail and multiple annual visits to WOW in Wellington (with associated expenditure). My current race car cost me a piano. You know all that rubbish about no secrets in marriage? Well forget it, if you want to race a car, keep your gob shut about the cost of running it. You can see that your better half works out very quickly that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, so any money you spend on a race car is balanced up by expenditure on the other half of the ledger (so to speak).
Expenses For the purposes of this article, I did a quick tot up of what I had spent in any financial year on car racing, and roughly I will have spent about $24,000 (plus GST). Not much you say. This is for 2 rallies. To put it in perspective, however (this is the justification bit), $6,400 went on a new engine (and I’ll come to that later), so running expenses were about $17,500. Not bad you say! You try explaining that to my wife! The main Targa, entry fees excluded, cost me about $8,000. This is because I take my co-driver and my two mechanics with me and pay all their expenses (and they eat and drink a lot). And petrol just for my car cost $840. Working it out on a $2.50 per litre basis, my car consumed 337 litres of petrol in the space of five days. The big cars will use two or three times more than that.
SEPTEMBER 2021
Tyre wear is such that I will probably cut out four tyres over five days’ rallying on tarmac. Entry fees for the Targa NZ this year are $7,500 + GST.
When things go wrong Of course, it’s all very well if everything goes swimmingly. So far, with my new car, they haven’t. This is in direct comparison to my old car which didn’t put a foot wrong but was slow to boot. The new car is quicker, but so far I have chewed through three motors and... the first motor that I built up cost me $6,400 plus bits and pieces here and there. That went ‘pop’ after about two days so back to the engine rebuilder, who was honourable enough to rebuild it again for nothing. It developed a similar noise in the motor by the end of the big Targa that year. It cost me another $3,000. Other costs that you can expect to incur are a complete oil change in the gearbox and motor each rally, full wheel alignment and balancing between rallies, and a complete check-up of all bearings, wheels, tyres, new brake pads, new brake fluid, checking the motor and checking for rattles and bangs. All of this takes time and money.
Whoopsie moments Then again, there are those moments which you would prefer others did not catch on film. Believe me – it happens. I’d been banging on at the media guys a few years ago about us slow pokes never getting on TV. Murphy’s Law – I spun out in front of a TV camera, and this was played ad nauseam on national television. However, there are occasions (and you are not insured for this when you are racing) that things go badly wrong. This often requires running repairs to keep on going if it’s possible or retirement from the rally, loss of your entry fee and deposits all around the countryside. You can see from these photos that things do go badly wrong. The silver car was on its first outing ever with the new owner. He had just celebrated his birthday the day before, got it terribly wrong in a corner and instead of
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