Any advice on putting a team together?

[David]

I have a car from a previous team that bailed.  I am trying to put together a new team.  With the previous team it was all friends, so we didn't have any formal paperwork and just did business based on trust and a handshake.  I have a feeling that second time around it might be prudent to formalize the relationships.  Wondering if anyone with experience would be willing to share advice on dos and don'ts?

Thanks, 

[TimS]

Own the car yourself, prep the car yourself, and develop regular partners that pay you for those services in exchange for seat time. I have not been able to make a racing partnership team work. 

[chip]

10 hours ago, TimS said:

Own the car yourself, prep the car yourself, and develop regular partners that pay you for those services in exchange for seat time. I have not been able to make a racing partnership team work. 

In the end- this is probably the best way to go.

I was on a team that had multiple owners and costs were split evenly- now this works only when all owners race.  What happens when something happens at a race and not all owners were there- should they have to pay the cost for upkeep of the car from that race?  The team started out with way to many owners and over the course of 5 years it was whittled down to 3 owners and then two owners.  Even with just the two owners it wasn't always easy- much easier than more though.  

Now I rent a seat for races- I help with car prep and upkeep which is almost as fun as the racing itself to me, for many different aspects I feel that I'm kind of an owner of the cars it that I get to work on them, race them, have input on development and what races to attend, and most all aspects of car ownership.  But in the end, I just hand over money after a race and that's it.

 

Good luck with whichever path you choose.

[tyler_j]

On 7/12/2021 at 7:14 AM, chip said:

What happens when something happens at a race and not all owners were there- should they have to pay the cost for upkeep of the car from that race?

 

+1 to what Chip said.  I tried sharing a circle track car a few years ago and luckily I kept my friendships but there were some uncomfortable times.

Say one member doesn't want to travel to a race, and at that event you incur some expensive damage.  The potential for disputes after something like that is pretty high and the added stress/discomfort makes the whole weekend not fun.   

Lots of little money items here that can be tough to balance as well, for instance does the person storing the car get any monthly storage payments or get discounted races? 

 

I think a car owned by one person and a consistent team of renters is the way to go. If those renters are close friends or want to be teammates I am sure you can work out something similar to what Chip mentions above where he has input and gets to work on the car but in the end the cars final decisions and cost management come down to one person.

[Aleric Sanders]

My team consists of 3 college buddies that started out building FSAE cars. Since graduation, we didn't want to stop, so we got an E36 in 2016, made it race legal for our first race in March 2017, and have made continuous improvements to it since.  While we do have a formal agreement that we all have signed as co-owners, I don't think we've really looked at that document in years. We keep up with all purchases between races on a Google Spreadsheet (who purchased what, any links, etc.) and settle up for an even 3 way split following each race. A spreadsheet like this will also help a single owner keep track of what the actual cost of running the car for the event costs, separating out any upgrades or extras, along with storing where you got what parts. I have tabs for each race and another tab for future upgrade items. Organization is key.

[chip]

We did similar with keeping track of who spent what and would settle up after each race- this included race costs and car prep before and typically after (replacement of damaged part from race)- it works great when all team members race at every race- it starts to get ugly when not all members race at each race.

[mender]

My latest deal was I build the car and put in the labour and the other three team members split the building and running/event costs. Being me, the amount of time I've put into the the car outvalues the "free" seat time that I'm getting. 

 

Two of the three have dropped out for various reasons including not wanting to ante up for needed repairs/wear items. I also have a habit of upgrading the car as I see room for improvement and that doesn't always go over well unless it's unanimous. So now there's just the two diehards and two or three dedicated renters. The renters are higher level drivers that really like the car and are willing to pay to drive it. Seems to be working.

 

To summarize: the scenarios that I've tried so far are

1. Even split of labour and costs: hard to keep everything evenly split as work days and weekends get missed.

2. One person do all the labour and the others split the costs. Better control of the car prep. Again, hard to keep things even, and as the labourer, I came out on the short end if I assign even a reasonable equivalent hourly rate. I would have been better off putting those hours in at my regular job and using the money to rent if I was so inclined.

3. One owner with dedicated renters: stiff investment in time and money that you hope will last long enough to break even before the car either wears out or gets trashed.  

 

 

Edited July 14, 2021 by mender

[Rodger Coan-Burningham]

For our team, I own the car.  We all work on it pretty much together so we treat it like all are owners in that respect.  Like Chip said, that's usually as much fun as racing weekends.  One guy provides the shop and supplies.  I credit him an appropriate amount for cost of the shop/supplies.  They split one set of tires and brake pads.  We all split the gas.  I pay for all car general expenses, upgrades, etc.  We all split the entry fee, sometimes if I have a lot of car or prep costs then I have them split the entry fee or maybe I pay the deposit and they split the rest.  I usually end up paying about double what they do on a race weekend, but I am good with that, just my choice, the price of being the benevolent dictator.  If we bring in a guest driver, I work that off line since I end up trading out stints with other teams a lot.  But I show the guest driver as an additional teammate on the spreadsheet to spread out the expenses by that additional person to keep it fair from a driving time standpoint.  I have everybody send me their receipts of stuff they bought, plug it into the spreadsheet and it divides out by the formula above, it spits out who owes who how much.  Nice totalizer on the side to assure the net transfer of funds is zero just to make sure something isn't missed.

[zack_280]

We do something similar to what Roger and Chip mentioned, but slightly different. I'm the owner.  I built the car and bought all of the initial spares out of pocket.  As we use spares and do maintenance, I replace them and add keep up with the costs in a spreadsheet.  If the car is damaged during your stint, you pay to fix it.  I do keep up with expenses (and I pay all expenses), but race cost is based on operating cost of the car plus direct expenses.  Race cost is entry fees, gas, towing, food, lodging, etc.  The operating cost for my car is ~$125/hr.  The total (operating cost plus race cost) for each race is split evenly.  If I start to go too far in the red, I'll raise operating cost.  If I get back into the black, I'll lower it.

[MichaelPal]

I am the benevolent dictator. My teammates help wrench at the garage at my house.

I have typically paid for everything and only charge them race weekend consumables (~1000-1200/weekend).

 

I eat the cost of everything else (that was true until recently for engine upgrades and major fixes that we all shared).

 

I do not charge for maintenance or other things (outside of the engine / major fixes stated above).

 

I love racing / cars / wrenching. I am a poor racecar whore.

 

For me it's just too hard to have a common vision and I like the control to be honest. It also helps that I know every single nook and cranny of the racecar, where it hurts is that because I generally do everything, I sometimes miss some items as I get overwhelmed. 

 

I am learning to share my toys and remind myself that in the grand scheme of things, this is just fun as hell. Endurance racing is great because of the team effort needed to compete. I would not be here if it weren't the support of my teammates! 

Edited July 14, 2021 by MichaelPal

[wvumtnbkr]

In response to the title of this thread.....

 

Here is my advice....

 

1) Take all of your spare money that you gathered for 6 months or a year.

 

2)Clean out your garage.

 

3) put the money in the middle of your garage floor.

 

4) burn it.

 

5) see who else shows up and decides they want to do the same thing.

 

Lolz.

 

Racing is awesome / sucky / stressful / awesome / expensive.

 

I personally own my "teams" racecar.  I am pretty much the only one that works on it.  Most of the people that drive my car I met through champcar racing.  We are all spread out across the country and therefore it's tough to have work sessions that other people show up to.

 

That being said, it makes the money side of stuff straight forward.  I figure out how much to charge them to race and they pay it or don't race. (Usually about 4 to 5k per race weekend all in - for everything.  Divide that by number of drivers for each person's share.)

 

 

Edited July 17, 2021 by wvumtnbkr

[Timothy G. Elliott]

2 hours ago, wvumtnbkr said:

In response to the title of this thread.....

 

Here is my advice....

 

1) Take all of your spare money that you gathered for 6 months or a year.

 

2)Clean out your garage.

 

3) put the money in the middle of your garage floor.

 

4) burn it.

 

5) see who else shows up and decides they want to do the same thing.

 

Lolz.

 

Racing is awesome / sucky / stressful / awesome / expensive.

 

I personally own my "teams" racecar.  I am pretty much the only one that works on it.  Most of the people that drive my car I met through champcar racing.  We are all spread out across the country and therefore it's tough to have work sessions that other people show up to.

 

That being said, it makes the money side of stuff straight forward.  I figure out how much to charge them to race and they pay it or don't race. (Usually about 4 to 5k per race weekend all in - for everything.  Divide that by number of drivers for each person's share.)

 

 

Absolutely true! And I'll add look for a finished car, it most often will cost less then building one from scratch. 

[Timothy G. Elliott]

11 hours ago, Timothy G. Elliott said:

Absolutely true! And I'll add look for a finished car, it most often will cost less then building one from scratch. 

And you can start throwing more money on the garage floor pile that way ! Or spend the money you saved on sticky tires. Lol 

Edited July 18, 2021 by Timothy G. Elliott
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