organic wrote: ↑01 Nov 2023, 09:16
Joe Saward on his green notebook, as variable as his reliability is, has said that RB can move Checo on with no financial penalty if he has less than 50% of Max's points at the end of 2023 which currently is true.
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I hope you don't mind me quoting more from Joe Saward. he was also talking about the rumours of Albert Frabega and Alonso.
Posted on October 31, 2023 by Joe Saward
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I thought of this when I heard that a well known Spanish F1 journalist declared himself excited by a rumour he had heard on Sunday night, but was unwilling to say more. It did not take long to hear from Spain that Alonso may be about to embark on some more fancy footwork, with the suggestion being that he is not going to stay at Aston Martin in 2024, although he is supposed to have “a multi-year contract”. The word is that he could pop up next year at Red Bull.
This would strengthen the champion team and at the same time blow a torpedo-sized hole in the Aston Martin challenge. So that would be a double whammy. The green team has gone off the boil big time this season, after an exciting start, and it is hard to imagine that Lance Stroll is going to step up and lead the team to glory. The best driver with experience would be… Sergio Perez.
Who knows if this is all contractually possible, but multi-year contracts traditionally have options and when Fernando signed for Aston Martin, they needed him more than he needed them… so he probably got the terms he wanted. I am pretty sure he would have wanted an exit strategy in case the team was not up to much.
It would be a move that makes sense for Red Bull because Perez has not done what he needed to do and although Daniel Ricciardo’s revival has looked quite good, hiring Fernando would probably be better. Red Bull would need to handle the drivers carefully, as Alonso can be prickly but at 42 he is not going to stick around forever… so he would fit the bill nicely until Red Bull has secured someone younger. Paying off Perez, who is reckoned to earn about $8 million a year, might not even be necessary. Driver contracts these days tend to have performance clauses based on percentages of a team-mate’s score. After the Mexico City GP, Perez’s 240 points were equivalent to 48.8 percent of Max Verstappen’s total of 491. If Perez is required to score at least 50 percent of the points of his team-mate, this could be grounds for the contract to be cancelled, without the need for compensation.
This is speculation, but it is based on the logic employed in the contracts.
Perez’s popularity counts in his favour, of course, but the decision by Red Bull to put Daniel Ricciardo into the AlphaTauri team was seen by many as a way to see whether Daniel would be a good replacement for Perez. The fact that Daniel out-qualified Sergio in Mexico was significant, as it is clear that the AlphaTauri is not as good a car as the Red Bull. Perez then crashed at the first corner trying to pull off a rather desperate move, while Daniel was able to finish seventh and help AlphaTauri move up from 10th to eighth in the Constructors’ Championship.
Would Red Bull refuse a proposal from Alonso? Such a move would blow up the driver market to some extent and most people would be happy to see Fernando taking the fight to Verstappen next year if the team is still as dominant as it is today.
If you look at the numbers it adds up. At the moment the 10 teams split $1.157 billion of prize money between them. The difference between the Constructors’ Champion and the second-placed team is in the region of $10 million, although there may be additional success payments that we do not know about, such as consecutive title bonuses. In other words, getting rid of Perez would cost less that finishing second in the Constructors’ title in 2024 because he could not deliver enough points. That is a good incentive.
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https://joesaward.wordpress.com/2023/10 ... pen-creek/
