Melbourne, Australia newspaper The Age<\/em> has a story on the break-even point for automakers in Formula One. The numbers are based on research done by Formula Money, a company devoted to detailing the financial goings-on in F1 – however, they don’t make much sense at first glance. According to The Age<\/em>, F1’s manufacturer-backed teams “Ferrari<\/a>, Mercedes-Benz<\/a>, BMW<\/a>, Renault<\/a> and Toyota<\/a> spent €608 million ($970 million) on Formula One racing” last year. To recoup that total investment they needed to sell at least 25,000 cars, combined, at an average price of $38,800.<\/p>\n The questions arise when it is claimed that Ferrari “makes €275,000 ($393,643 U.S.) per car sold, and so only needs to sell 153 vehicles to break even on its €42 million ($60 million U.S.) investment in F1.” We can hardly believe Ferrari spent just $60M on F1 last year; if so, that would have left the other four teams to spend an average of $227.5M apiece based on a total spend of $970M.<\/p>\n According to F1 Fanatic’s team budget numbers<\/a> for 2008, Ferrari spent $414.9 million, and going by F1 Network’s numbers<\/a> for 2009, Ferrari spent $365 million last year. We don’t know where the truth is among the numbers in The Age<\/em>’s report. What we do know, however, is that no matter what the real numbers are, they never added up for BMW<\/a>, Renault<\/a> or Toyota<\/a>.<\/p>\n [Source: The Age<\/a>]<\/p>\n Report: ‘09 F1 participants needed to sell more than 25,000 cars to break even on investment<\/a> originally appeared on Autoblog<\/a> on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds<\/a>.<\/p>\n Read<\/a> | Permalink<\/a> | Email this<\/a> | Comments<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.stoth.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/05571_f1_investment.jpg\")
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