With the cost of running a competitive Winston Cup team continuing to escalate, now in the $8 -10 million+ for a top flite team, NASCAR has been considering ways to reduce the amount of capital needed to support a racing operation. One area that has worked for the Busch Series is requiring teams to race the same engine that they use for qualifying. Qualifying in the Winston Cup Series has gotten so high tech that teams build a special “two lap” engine for qualifying runs that would never hold up for 500 miles of competition. The two lap “grenades” can cost $10,000 per race and generally can eat up more than a million dollars a year of the team’s budget. This along with wind tunnel testing ($1,400 an hour) and almost weekly test sessions all give huge advantages to the well financed teams like Roush Racing and Hendrick Racing. The BGN Series is pleased with the way the program has worked. With teams allowed to change engines only with NASCAR approval (cars then go to the back of the starting lineup), teams also save the incredible job of rebuilding a race car following qualifying( Inside Motorsports ) and NASCAR spokesman Tim Sullivan said Friday the Cup series was considering a rule change that would require teams to race with the same engine they use to qualify. The proposed change would be mostly a cost-saving move, Sullivan said( That’s Racin’ )
