WHEEL Heaven/Houseman Racing team principal Greg Wood is as pleased as the rest of the team to see any of the BTCC races completed without incident.

But Greg, while having the main concern of the safety of his brother, driver Lea Wood, is also mindful of counting the cost if things go wrong.

“In ball-park figures, it costs around £100,000 to race independently for the year, that’s around £10,000 per meeting,” he said.

“If Lea were to drive for one of the big teams, it would cost £350,000 so it makes it cost-effective to do it ourselves.

“Fuel costs us around £500 per meeting, engine rental costs us £3,000 per meeting, tyres £3,000 and then there are brakes, entry fees, shock absorbers, feeding the team and new equipment for the car every time.

“So it all adds up, without too much damage to the car, to around £10,000 for a race weekend. When you start getting damage, that’s when it starts getting really expensive.

“If you can have a nice clean weekend with not too much damage, then the money can be put forward to developing the car and buying equipment for the car to go faster rather than spending money on buying new panels or new wheels and everything that goes with it.

“It can be very frustrating and we have to massage Lea’s pride after he’s had an accident,” Greg joked. “But fortunately that doesn’t happen too often.”

One of the main battles in the current financial climate is to attract sponsorship, without which the team would not be able to operate.

“We are very grateful to the sponsors that we have for putting the money in because we would not be able to do it ourselves,” he said.

“It’s an ongoing battle to get sponsorship, we have people working on it all the time to try to find different sponsors to come on board, round by round.

“When they come and see what it’s all about, people think it’s absolutely magical. But you have to get there first of all – get people interested and then see what we can do from there.”

He said that his brother’s high profile in the sport was a help in interesting potential sponsors.

“Lea is a fans’ favourite,” he said. “The BTCC use Lea as one of their main ‘faces’ in the S2000 class because his profile is really good. “He has a great following – a young guy with a clean-cut image.”

Greg admitted that the prizes offered by sponsors Dunlop were very useful.

“You can win tyres by picking up places - this year it’s more difficult because they have split the classes between NGTC and S2000 classifications but we’re trying our best,” he said.

He also acknowledged that this season’s innovation, the Jack Sears Trophy for the older S2000 cars had been a boost for the team.

“The Jack Sears Trophy has made it more interesting for us as it gives the lower, independent teams the chance to go on the podium, pick up some trophies and get their profile up,” said Greg.

“Lea won one at Brands Hatch and then had it taken back off him because he got excluded from the race.

“We were expecting to be slightly low on horsepower here at Donington so we hadn’t thought we would win one here.

“But now people will need to watch him for Thruxton because there may be some changes coming which will make the car faster again.”

Anyone interested in assisting the Wheel Heaven/Houseman Racing team with sponsorship can contact Lea or Greg Wood on 01432 358317.