hi everyone, my name is Otto and I'm a long time reader and fan of these forums. And now first time poster to.
I'm working on a business paper for my MBA and one of the subjects i'm addressing is cost containment vs. maximum exposure/performance in a variety of business ventures (this current economy in mind). One of those is motorsports, and since i'm a huge OW fan i can't help but try to tackle Indycar (or any race series really, doesnt matter).
So here is the question that I need help with (and this is totally hypathetical so hopefully no one goes off the deep end):
I'm a obnoxiously rich dude who wants to start a "new" Indy car type series. Multiple chassis and engine manufactors. I also want to keep the costs down to around $2-3 mill a year to run a front running, championship caliber team.

Chasis: Does having a template that all manufactors have to build to (but some small areas that they can each customize) work?

Engines: does having "production" based engines that are based off of already made road versions (like if Ford wanted to make a racing version of their Mustang, for example) keep costs down? how much additional $$$ is added to engine fees by taking regular engines that are already in production for road cars and supping them up to be in race cars? (what is the cheapest and most effective means?)

Does leasing engines really driving up costs? does buying a engine and doing you own rebuilds that much cheaper? i seem to recall in the early days of th IRL engines were only $80k or something ridicously cheap liek that.
Grand-Am has many of the same cost containments that equal really close and competetive racing, but no tech. advancments.
I'm trying to find if it's possible to have a series that is ultra-competetive w/close racing AND technalogical freedom (like ALMS) but that also is very affordable and extremely cheap (like i said, $2-3 mil, tops).
There has to be someway to have you cake and eat it to.