Quote Originally Posted by AndyRAC
And don't forget testing! Pretty important, something Privateers don't get a lot of.
Yes, I forgot that. It is hard for Petter to Test, for example because he has to use his rally car, and a rebuild after 120km gravel test in portugal, for example can cost anything in between 20.000 and 40.000Euros depending on how many parts you damaged.
The costs are huge and in the end it comes down to about 320Euros per stage kilometer driven for a WRC car on rough gravel.

M-Sport have a good business going on, and a good chunk of the budget of the official team comes from the profits of customer cars running around. new parts like for engine, gearbox, diffs, etc, are first fitted on official cars for maximum reliability. After one rally they are stripped, cleaned and fixed if need be then fitted on customer cars ready to be sold as "new" for clients. Those parts will then be used, rebuilt, charged money for rebuild, re-used, re-re-built, then re-charged until they brake and so on...

So one single shock absorber will not only earn M-Sport 12.000Euros when they sell it, but countless of Euros for every rebuild after that...