"Pay" drivers

[BSchneiderFan]

We hear a lot these days about teams needing to run drivers who bring sponsorship with them - Pastor Maldonado being the most prominent example - but does anyone have a vague idea of how much those drivers who aren't getting a salary bring with them?

[ace007]

Originally Posted by BSchneiderFan

We hear a lot these days about teams needing to run drivers who bring sponsorship with them - Pastor Maldonado being the most prominent example - but does anyone have a vague idea of how much those drivers who aren't getting a salary bring with them?

Without naming teams and play fair games, let's say that it goes between 5M USD to 30M + USD in case of Maldonado (5 year contract actually even available on the net...). Some teams take $$ for the 3rd/reserve driver position as well which explains some long lists... Modern way to finance an F1 team!

It does vary of the team of course but also which driver is asking as all teams try to have the best driver available with the highest budget possible.

The driver normally retains a 100k USD minimum wage from the sponsor but has performance bonuses, of course.

[bella]

i would imagine too that it depends what kind of sponsors they are bringing as well, as per the usual sponsorship thing. if it's technology or services that the team can benefit from then things will be slightly different. then there's the potential for sponsors to take partial ownership in teams to provide investment as well, so there's a lot of scope for the right driver and commercial situation.

there was a figure going around for the price of a rookie test day with sauber that kimiya sato paid as well. young driver schemes can worth both ways financially too - they're a decent way for teams like caterham to get early dibs on the well-financed drivers for their gp2 setups and to try and keep them sweet for a potential f1 role if their "sponsors" are particularly well-endowed.

[ace007]

You know, even Schumacher and Alonso paid something (via their managers at the time) to be given the chance respectively at Jordan and at Minardi. But it was still "reasonable" compared to these escalating figures only affordable by "seriously rich entities" or countries! Maybe this is where it went wrong: in the proportion of things...