Circuit hire costs

[Silver]

Ever wondered how much it costs to hire a track, why trackdays can be so expensive? Well at the weekend I found out...

Cadwell Park £8,000
Oulton Park £16,000
Donington Park £21,500
Silverstone GP £24,000
Brands Hatch GP £27,000

Now, even at Cadwell when you consider that the average day may cost £100 they still need 80 paying riders just to break even on circuit costs. On top of that they have staff salaries, admin, travel, insurance costs etc. I knew it was expensive but never thought it'd be this much. No wonder there are only a handful of organisers left.

I found 13 trackdays at Donington Park between now and the end of the year. At £21.5k a shot that's £280k - not bad when you consider that their biggest outlay during those days will be wages (and not too many at that). I found 43 days at Cadwell (excluding 12 evening events)! At £8k a pop, that's £344k on bike days alone. Evening events, car trackdays and races will add significantly more without doubt. At £60 a ticket for the MotoGP, Donington Park can expect the best part of £5m for race day ticket sales alone. Not to mention all the ancillaray sales and other events.

This is coupled with (relatively) minimal upkeep for something that generates some much revenue; Donington have just rebuilt all the garages from scratch and it cost them £5m, but how long will they last? Probably ten years or more. Even when they resurfaced the track a few years back it was just £2m.

I'm sure that somewhere, someone is making a lot of money.

[JeffT]

[MikeH]

We used to hire Castle Combe with staff for car days at about £6.5K a day a couple of years back, trouble is with Donny and Oulton they're premium circuits so demand premium money. The other problem is they're becoming more in demand as trackdays become more and more popular, gone are the days of the "cheap" trackday

In a car it's not so bad you can do airfield days at places like Bassingbourne, Kemble etc... but even these are starting to creep up in price and I wouldn't fancy it on a bike, the main roads have better surfaces than most WWII airfields.

Goodwood is a cheap circuit to hire, they have noise restrictions but we did a day there for £99 ea with 40 motors.

One of these days when it's depreciated a bit more I'll get the XJR on the track but I'm too scared of binning it ! might have to save for a cheap 600 instead

Mike
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