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I’m so bored I might as well be listening to Pink Floyd
It's not a charity. It's far too dangerous a job for that.
It would also destabilize the market. If LH said he'd drive next year for £10, then the other teams will try to pay lower than that.
I’m so bored I might as well be listening to Pink Floyd
https://thetruthaboutwatches.com/2020/11/louis-hamilton-vs-hamilton-watch-company/
Guess his team will be suing Hamilton the musical next.
As said above, at this level sports stars are not charities but business entities.
the brand still exists. He told Bernie to go fuck himself when the lawyers came a calling.
Unfortunately, at the moment F1 is not actually a profitable business for the teams. There is a finite amount of money coming into the sport, and it is less than the amount of money being spent to go racing.
As a result, most of the drivers are expected to bring money with them - directly or indirectly- rather than just being paid. Grosjean and Magnussen didn’t lose their seats because they were bad drivers, they lost them because they didn’t bring money to Haas and Mazepin/Schumacher could.
In 2020, Hamilton’s salary accounted for almost 30% of the total driver’s wage bill for the whole grid. And he’d like it to be an even bigger percentage in 2021. At a time when the cake is shrinking, Sir Lewis would like an even bigger slice for himself.
I'm 100% on making the sport much more sustainable for anyone outside the top 3 teams, as we've seen far too many other teams in financial trouble in recent years; but I don't think it has any bearing on top drivers' salaries. I suspect with the budget caps on team spend and driver salaries we'll see a shift to more direct sponsorship of drivers and lower salaries paid by the teams.
What would be interesting (as a hypothetical scenario) would be to cap total spend including all salaries and not allow drivers to make money from individual sponsorship - then you have a question of how to balance wanting a top driver vs hiring the best technical team vs extra money spent on wind tunnels & testing.
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1137226/formula-one-revenue/#:~:text=Global revenue of the Formula One Group 2017-2019&text=The Formula One Group's revenue,billion U.S. dollars in 2019.
https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/29823419/mercedes-f1-spent-442-million-2019-made-money
Similarly Red Bull, Ferrari, Renault and Alpha Tauri all relied on significant subsidies from their parent companies in order to prop up the balance sheet. Surprisingly, Renault is the biggest direct spender; as they receive much less FOM money than Merc, Ferrari and Red Bull they need to spend more in order to go racing on a smaller budget.
F1 has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020, and it’s very unlikely to be back to business as usual in 2021. Daimler has lost billions. The once-mighty McLaren were on the brink of insolvency, while Williams saw the writing on the wall and put the ‘For Sale’ sign up. Sponsors and consumers are tightening their belts, and it’s going to be a long time before the global financial situation improves.
The teams all realised that costs needed to be drastically cut in order for F1 to survive. Without the cost cap and the flatter redistribution of prize money, I am absolutely certain that more than one team would have withdrawn from F1 by the end of the year. The money simply isn’t there.
In the midst of all of this, while members of his own team are facing redundancy, Sir Lewis - already the best-paid driver on the grid - apparently wants a 20% pay increase. I find it difficult to understand how he can be so grossly insensitive.
I also wonder if it's even true, given Lewis himself suggested the extra stuff he wants is more around other initiatives, and not money-related.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Currently the F1 programme represents excellent value for money; the amount of funding Daimler needs to provide to the GP team is modest for the sustained level of success, with the majority of the budget covered by sponsorship and prize money. And Hamilton’s been a significant part of that success, winning 6 of the 7 drivers championships for Mercedes since the beginning of the hybrid era.
Unarguably though, for all of those years the championship would have gone to a Mercedes driver anyway, such was the car advantage. And if Hamilton had been in the 2015-17 McLaren, he’d have been performing heroics to sneak the car out of Q1 and grab the occasional point while another driver steered the Mercedes to championship glory.
So the question is: is the added marketing value down to the fact that Mercedes are dominant, or that they have Hamilton driving for them? And, if one of his requirements is a reduction of promotional activities (and I couldn’t blame him), what does that do to his marketing value?
Like Alonso was, like Schumacher was.
Yes Hamilton is in the dominant car. But he earned his drive by showing he is a great driver.
- 80% of the grid could win a race in that car.
- 50% could win multiple races, and beat their teammate over a season.
- 25% could win a title
- literally about 2 other guys could win multiple titles with the sort of consistency Hamilton has shown.