F1 Driver Salaries: Hamilton Top With $57,000,000 Deal

[BazzaLB]

The decision is more like this... Do we spend tens of millions trying to develop the car so we can get an extra 0.3 seconds out of it or should we just pay the extra to Lewis and achieve the same result.

Sure, it makes a mockery out of working day to day for a living if you're not one of the lucky few.

 

[apex11]

The decision is more like this... Do we spend tens of millions trying to develop the car so we can get an extra 0.3 seconds out of it or should we just pay the extra to Lewis and achieve the same result.

Sure, it makes a mockery out of working day to day for a living if you're not one of the lucky few.

It doesn't really work like that though. And much of Lewis's fee is his marketability. His image sells Mercs. Not my choice of image granted, but it works...

If Torro Rosso paid Lewis 70 million he won't be winning races, within a year he'd be worth 'less'.. No other team bar Merc would pay Bottas 8 million.

The teams invest in the best engineers, the days of drivers taking bad F1 cars and wining races are long gone.... either the car can do it or nothing...best driver or not..not sure how much more evidence people need on this..

 

[wombat999]

His 'image' isn't selling that many Mercedes in Australia, their sales have dropped dramatically.
And trying to sell a Nissan crew cab with Mercedes badges at a Mercedes price is one really stupid marketing move.
That $57 Mil has to be recouped somehow.

 

[Alex72]

I wonder what the W Series payments will be. That must be equal for all of the women alright?

Depends how much eye balls they generate. Which dictates how much money is brought into the company. Life's not fair.

 

[Mitja Bonca]

Vettel will swap salary with Leclarc for 2020, I`m sure about it. Unless there will be some conspiracy.
Anyway, everbody gets waaaaay to much money, at least all whats over 500k/year. I would do for 100k

 

[Turk]

The teams invest in the best engineers, the days of drivers taking bad F1 cars and wining races are long gone.... either the car can do it or nothing...best driver or not..not sure how much more evidence people need on this..

That's true up to a point, but F1 is about bringing tiny improvements together to be the fastest. The Merc car is probably only marginally better than the Ferrari car. Hamilton get's results, in qualifying he's always seem to have the advantage even if it is only 0.05, he doesn't make mistakes and in modern sport where people have all the training and knowledge making mistakes is what how people end up in second, it's all about who cracks first, not who has the most skill because the skill level is usually on a par.

 

[ZuneGuy]

That's a lot of money to pay a guy like Vettal, a guy who constantly makes rookie mistakes.

 

[Turk]

That's a lot of money to pay a guy like Vettal, a guy who constantly makes rookie mistakes.

He's still basically the second best driver on the grid. I'd say the lack of pace in the Ferrari forced him to overdrive more often to keep up. With a better car he could probably avoid some of the errors.

 

[ZuneGuy]

He's still basically the second best driver on the grid. I'd say the lack of pace in the Ferrari forced him to overdrive more often to keep up. With a better car he could probably avoid some of the errors.

I think the Ferrari had the pace all season long, the difference is that Lewis is clearly the better driver. One thing that could bring more focus to Vettel is the fact that he has a hungry young driver as his teammate now, but I don't think that the actual car was the problem for Vettel last year, could have been the team itself though. He really made a lot of driver errors, you name it he did it. I'm talking mistake after mistake.