Carmakers seek cost cuts explanation

Both Ferrari and Porsche have sold in the region of 40 cars for GT2 competition in the FIA GT Championship, the American Le Mans Series and in the Le Mans Series, demonstrating a clear market place for their products.

Yet the ACO announced that it wanted to reduce the amount of electronics in the cars and the number of engineers in the pitlane in order to bring down the cost of competing with the cars.

"I asked them after the press conference, what do you want? Do you want a race car that costs the same as a street car, or do you want a race car?" said Porsche's director of motorsport Hartmut Kristen.

"When you have a street car you have to modify a few things to make it a race car. Therefore you have to spend money, and this money you have to divide by the number of cars you will sell. How should this work?

"They said no, no, this is not what we meant. We don't have any complaints from our customers that our cars are too expensive. We sold 37 cars, RSRs, this year and we regard this as a success."

The Porsche RSR uses a similar electronic management system to that of the Porsche Cup car, and Ferrari also says that the electronics are not the most expensive area of development.

"For Ferrari, we just build 40 cars, we sell 40 cars, we gain something, and we re-invest to develop the car for the future," said Ferrari Clienti Corse's Maurizio Nardon.

"If we reduce the cost of the car, we need to find more customers. Data logging is simple. The most important point in the development of the GT cars is the aerodynamics. You need to spend a lot of time in the wind tunnel, and that is very expensive."