Sixth Gear

One of the minor rationalizations we’re using for undertaking the 24 hours at Daytona is the celebration of birthdays. The MAJOR rationalization is the charity aspect. We’re teaming with Boston Children’s Hospital on a goal of raising $1,000,000.

The current market pricing for a 24hr ride is approx. $250,000 per car. Across 4 drivers it’s $62k each, across 5 drivers, it would be $50k each. This is an all in, turn key, arrive and drive price. Most teams use either a sponsorship or gentleman racer (i.e. fat checkbook) model. Both are viable but stressful in their own right. We’d like to add a third option.

Our third model is along the walk-a-thon or pledge per lap lines. If you accept the possibility that each person knows at least 200 other people than that means a team of 5 drivers knows 1,000 people. If you also accept the fact that between training, testing and racing, we’ll do 1000 laps in the spirit of raising money, then all we need to do is have each driver find 200 people to pledge $1 per lap.

200 people X $1000 = $200,000 (matching gifts could cut that require by 50%)

5 drivers X 200 people = $200,000 x 5 or $1,000,000

Children’s Hospital has expressed great interest in this undertaking and offered to help assist us in addressing event expenses in return for the donation.

So seat cost could be covered by each driver in 3 ways. A.) Old fashion sponsorship, B.) Old fashion check writing and/or C.) Charitable donations DIRECTLY to Boston Children’s Hospital (100% to charity).

‘Boot Camp’ costs as it were would be something we tackle individually along the way. High level, we see out of pockets running something like the following:

Not so bad huh?