How Sponsorship Works

This is such a non-definitive topic. In grass roots racing a lot of time I have found its parents or friends who help foot the bill to keep your car on the track. As your racing tends to progress forward from this corporate sponsors are brought on and racing almost becomes free or earns you money.

- In Formula Ford at a state level a weekend can cost anywhere up to $10,000 and at a national level you could be looking at $30,000 and there are 8 races or more a year!

- V8 Supercar development series yearly budgets can be anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000 a year with the main game being closer to $3m - $5m per car per year.

So where does this leave you, the start up racer who doesn't have a lot of money to throw around and nor does your parents? I met with an ex V8 supercar driver in a location that I have to keep under wraps due to his extensive car collection (which apparently is worth over $10m) who explained to me how sponsorship worked for him. Companies are looking to be sold on the idea that they are going to benefit from giving you money, that they are going to see returns and that the whole exercise wasn't a charitable function of the company.

I met with another race car driver (ex Porsche Carrera Cup champ), who gave me 2 very important pieces of information; racing is 5% racing and 95% business even the best are constantly looking for more money to pay for their sport and their wage. The other very important piece of information is to be ready to sell your soul, everything is for sale when sponsorship pays your way and take every opportunity you can get.

Being in sales has helped me a fair bit with this aspect of racing, I know how to sell ice to eskimo's I do it every day, but even still getting actual dollars from people and business is quite hard.

From this I have managed to procure some sponsors and I have to make special mention to a few:
Jetts Fitness (Hamilton & DFO) - www.jetts.com.au
Life Science - www.life-science.com.au
Nutrition Warehouse - www.nutritionwarehouse.com.au
My Nutrition Warehouse Page - http://www.nutritionwarehouse.com.au/daniel-hall-gi-120.html

I guess these sponsors will be happy to see the plans for the new colour scheme, which will be painted after my next round of racing. The idea for the paint scheme came from the colour of my old Monaro (Holden Devil Yellow), mixed with black in a similar design to my current helmet. I'd like to think Wiz Khalifa's song Black and Yellow comes to mind when you look at this car!

Along with this new paint scheme is a couple of tricks I have done some research into, making the car turn harder and engine produce a couple more horsepower. I will throw these on to see if I can pull some podiums out of the bag for the end of the year.

Stay Quick.