Intro
This is Part 2 of Budgeting in Stage Rally breaking down the cost of rally for competing at national events both locally and across the country. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, I suggest doing that now as I expand on some of the topics I covered there. Understandably a national event is going to cost a bit more than a regional one day event.
In this part, we are going to take a look a the cost of doing a national rally with a comparison between a local national event versus one that is completely across the country. Again we will be focusing on the cost of running the rally itself without regard to preparing the car, annual fees, etc. We’ll still use an all volunteer team of codriver and crew just like in our regional event example and base our efforts out of DirtFish in Snoqualmie, WA. The event we will base our entry fees and stage/transit miles will be the Olympus Rally in Shelton, WA. I’ll also show the additional logistics costs of having to travel across the country to the New England Forest Rally in Newry, Maine in italics in the section below.
Costs
Entry Fee: $1,222
Early entry for the National event including bank fees for paying online. If you’re one of the first ten Subaru entries, you can get a discount of $500. Contingency is also available for Subaru, Ford, and other manufacturers and is worth researching. Regular entry was $1450 if you missed the early entry cut off which was March 31st this year. Registration deadline was April 26th. Three to four weeks before the event is pretty standard for early entry cut offs. Note that you can also enter the event as a regional only competitor and do the exact same stages but for cheaper and not get the national recognition. Regional entries were $800 for early and $1,100 for regular entry. There is also a Subaru discount of $300 for the first ten Subaru regional entries.
Lodging: $450
This was our share of splitting an AirBnb with another team from Wednesday to Sunday. I find this to be the most cost effective way of getting a good night’s rest, having some quiet areas to do note review and not cramming everyone into a single hotel room. Camping, sleeping in a trailer, etc are all budget options but consider the quality of your weekend for you and your crew if you’re not going to provide modest accommodations.
Lodging cross country: $240
It takes on average 3 days to tow across country if you’re pushing and sharing driving duties. The lodging cost goes up if you stayed in a cheap motel for two nights each way for a total of four nights at $60 per night. This is an easy place to cut costs and just sleep in your truck but consider your total rest. Also consider putting in a buffer day on the way out if something breaks down. You don’t want to miss your event because your trailer lost a wheel in North Dakota.
Towing fuel: $112
350 miles / 10 mpg x $3.20/gallon. 200 miles round trip from DirtFish to Shelton plus some extra for getting around (150 miles) and getting 10 miles per gallon towing. You can also use the IRS rate of $0.58 for mileage to help take into account wear and tear on the tow vehicle and trailer (350 miles x $0.58/mile = $203). Notice this is slightly more than what we did for Tour De Forest in Part 1 which is virtually in the same location. I added an additional 100 miles of towing to account for towing the car around the extra days.
Towing cross country: $2,020
6,160 miles round trip and add in the additional 150 of getting around tow miles. This is generally going to be the biggest additional cost.
Recce fuel: $116
543 miles / 15 mpg x $3.20/gallon Since the Supplemental Regulations didn’t include a complete stage schedule, I just doubled the total mileage of event (271.5 including stage + transit). Almost every rally is going to have repeat stages so this includes a buffer and likely over estimates. You can do recce with another team but I highly advise against it. As a side note, the Olympus Rally route is actually fairly low for a national event because of the short transits (part of why it’s one of my favorites). The New England Forest Rally route for example is 440 miles long of stage and transit miles.
Recce Car Rental: $400
Consider if you’re just taking a truck, trailer, and rally car across the country, you’re probably not going to have an extra car around for the crew to go get things done while you’re on recce. Add in that it might be logistically challenging to just get the car for a day, or you have people flying in, and you’ll probably end up having to rent it for the whole event. Absolutely necessary? No, but convenience goes a long way. Also think about full insurance if you’re taking it on recce. A couple extra dollars up front is a lot cheaper in the long run than replacing the oil pan you smashed going through that rain bar on recce.
Airplane Tickets: $880
$440/person from SEA to PWM. This part can also be really rough. We generally all have to work and not everyone can take the days off to tow out, do the rally, and tow back. Think about asking someone to take six additional days off of work to tow out and back with you. Four to six days of missed work is probably more expensive than a plane ticket if they can’t use PTO. If you’re trying to do a cross country event on the cheap I recommend finding people local to the rally to join your team for the event. This can cut costs and time off requests dramatically. Let’s say for this event you had to fly your codriver and your crew chief out and you got another crew person to join you for the tow.
Other fuel: $60
Rental car? Crew? You’ll probably use it.
Race fuel: $240
135 stage miles / 4mpg + 135 transit miles / 8mpg + 9 gallons extra = 34 + 17 + 9 = 60 gallons. 60 gallons x $4.00/gallon = $240. Easiest to just use the Stage Schedule usually found in the Supplemental Regulations and compute using your stage fuel rate and transit fuel rate plus some buffer. I’m using E85 if you’re curious about the numbers. Understanding your car’s fuel consumption rate for stage and transit is important for knowing how much fuel to bring, how many fuel cans or drums, and how much fuel to put in the car at refuels.
Tires: $1000
Plus mounting if you’re getting a brand new set of Hoosiers in the 205 size. I went into detail in Part 1 about cutting costs here. On the flip side, I went through three sets of tires at Olympus Rally in 2018. Yes, that’s $3000 dollars worth of tires gone in 135 stage miles. If you’re thinking of moving up to a higher powered car beware that you will go through tires. Most people can make a new set of tires last a whole event and even more but performance will quickly go.
Food: $540
Again using the $15 per person/meal as the generic formula to budget food. A spreadsheet can help here to figure it out. We had a four person team (driver, codriver, and two crew) with ten meals between Thursday night to Sunday evening. Being that these are longer events, your crew might not show up until later in the event and you can save money in many aspects. Take a look at the event schedule and find out when they’re needed. Usually tech inspection is their first major commitment but you can do that too if notes are not your first priority.
Cross Country Food: $360.
You can probably get by on $40/day for two people on a road trip eating gas station food and coffee. I’d want at least one decent meal a day so $60 is more realistic.
Media: $20 – $150
You’ll probably want a photo from your event and a full photo package is going to be well over $100 for a multiday rallies.
Shakedown: $150
Not all national events have shakedowns or practice stages. Some you only have to pay per run and some you basically pay for a block of time. This is a pretty typical fee.
Miscellaneous: $500
At least have a reserve to cover a wrecker coming out to the woods to retrieve your car should you have a major off. This covers all the random things that can come up during a rally weekend. Parts run, a new windshield, etc. It all adds up rather quickly.
Wrap Up
That’s a budget of $4,630 for doing our local event, the Olympus Rally. Now if you add in the additional costs of traveling across the country, that’s a total of $8,418.
You can see how easy it is to spend this much money just going to an event. Use each section above to see where you think you might want to cut corners and save. You may even want to spend more to make things nicer, more convenient, or less stressful. Getting local crew and cutting out plane tickets, staying in a motel vs. an AirBnb, getting pizzas etc. are all legitimate ways of cutting costs. I’ve spent a good bit less than this to run a national event and I’ve also spent double that cross country total when hiring out the team and there’s multiple rental cars, a full support truck and trailer, etc. You can easily spend upwards of $25-40k an event doing an arrive and drive program in a top spec car.
If you know of ways to run a national event for cheaper, comment below and share your experience or even better, what your budget breakdown was. Somebody might learn something from it and you will be helping the rally community as a whole. Thanks for reading!