The Real Cost of Racing

By Daud Gonzalez - March 10, 2020

Breaking down the associated costs of doing a single season of racing at the legendary Nurburgring.

Here at 6SpeedOnline, we love racing. But it’s a terrifyingly expensive sport. How expensive? Racing driver Misha Charoudin recently shared cold hard facts on his popular YouTube channel about what the financials look like to actually participate in motorsport full-time.

For those unfamiliar with the Nurburgring superstar, Charoudin works both for specialty automaker Rimac creating “digital content” and as a “ring taxi” with Apex Nurburg. However, neither of these positions have gained him the opportunity to do a full season of racing at the legendary German race track. The race series this driver is taking part in is known as VLN, a nine-race series held exclusively at the Nurburgring Nordschleife open to both amateurs and professionals.

Charoudin was able to afford a season of VLN thanks to a single sponsor, Yosu, a Japanese investment company, and the GoFundMe page he created for his followers to donate to his passion. If we were to summarize his argument about this topic in a sentence or two it would be “you need a lot of money and pretty much zero talent” because at the end of the day “motorsport is business.”

The Real Cost of Racing

Normally, racing teams use both sponsors and “gentleman drivers” to survive the costs of a season. Thus, how would it even be possible to make a career out of racing as an individual? According to Charoudin, this is next to impossible “unless you are 5 years old and have parents which are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars” toward your future racing career.

The Real Cost of Racing

He then gives examples from his 2019 season piloting a BMW M240 R Cup. A single race cost 2,800 euros per “seat” and he did five races in that season, bringing the total cost to 14,000 euros or $15,400 USD. However, he had one on-track incident during the season, so even though the car had insurance coverage, he still had to pay 8,000 euros out of pocket. His total cost for the season is now 22,000 euros or $24,307 USD.

However, Charoudin wanted to participate in the legendary 24 Hours of Nurburgring, which required him to acquire a special racing license. That brought up another 8,500 euros in cost for the first race and another $6,700 USD for the second race to obtain the license. However, during this race another car made a “very eager pass” resulting in another 8,000 euros of insurance payment out of his pocket plus an extra 2,000 to repair the barriers.

The Real Cost of Racing

Total cost of a single season?

If you’ve been doing the math, we’re at 47,250 euros or $52,000 USD. Charoudin apprehensively states that “for that money, I could have literally bought a house nearby the Nurburgring.” After this point in the video, Charoudin starts going over the other details and prerequisites a driver has to have before getting to this point.

This includes the gear, racing licenses, and other associated costs. After everything is said and done, the total cost is in excess of 100,000 euros and this is a relatively grassroots level series. Thinking about considering racing now? Charoudin finishes off the video with this lighthearted quote, “If you have kids, let them do drugs, because it’s cheaper than racing”. That’s all we got folks.

The Real Cost of Racing