> As for being won by whomever spends the most money - I don't agree. There is a point after which it stops being how *much* money is spent and becomes in what *way* money is spent. Race car drivers are not exactly poor boys trying to scrape together money to build a car by selling lemonade and cookies by the side of the road. These cars are (correct me if I'm wrong) financed by all sorts of big companies, that being why they're always plastered with advertisements for those companies. The companies get a major advertising boost, and, as such, are not exactly reluctant to finance a car, especially if they think it will be a winner. Money is not likely to be in short supply.
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> I used to play in Magic: the Gathering tournaments (several years back), and the same argument was used. "The game always goes to the person who has spent the most money." So they try all kinds of things to restrict the card pool, so people can't use that as an advantage. They limit the tournament to recent sets, which changes it from "whomever spent the most money" to "whomever spent the most money *recently.*" They try "sealed deck" tournaments - at which everybody buys the cards to be used at the door - which introduces a heavy amount of luck. Altogether, there's no way to make sure that money and luck aren't going the be the deciding factors. And, personally, I'd rather it come down to the person who spent the most money improving his game than to the luck of the draw.

I don't think M:TG is the best example, but:

Spending a lot of money on cards doesn't neccessarily mean that you're going to have an advantage - certainly you're going to have more options when it comes to builing the deck but expensive cards aren't really going to make too much difference compare to your ability to build a deck. I think a couple of years ago the world championship winning deck was made entirely out of common cards. I know I've beaten people with far larger collections than myself, and been consistantly beaten by people with far smaller collections, simply because they're better deck-builders, and better players.

In terms of motor-racing, I don't know much about NASCAR, so I'll use Formula 1 as my reference point. Different teams *do* have different amounts of money available, which is reflected in the fact that Arrows cars don't win as often as McLaren cars do. This is because they can't afford to spend as much tweaking their designs (though they still have to stay within very narrowly defined criteria) and that they can't afford to hire the best drivers. But even between the two drivers on a team, you will frequently see one consistently finish ahead of the other even though they're driving identical cars. This, I think, can only be because one is a better driver than the other.

winter"IMHO"mute