Driver Salaries of 2020

[Jolle]

So Russell got $750K, and still should have won the last race! You would think these teams would realize it's about the car and not the driver. Pay Russell $750K and sink the rest into the car.

Apply it to all the drivers then. Flat salary but leave them free to negotiate all other things like sponsorship and image rights.

Truth is with salary it's not all about just driving skill. It's about the profile, publicity and commercial opportunities the high earners like Vettel and particularly Hamilton bring to a team.

That is how it’s done now... literally.

[El Scorchio]

So Russell got $750K, and still should have won the last race! You would think these teams would realize it's about the car and not the driver. Pay Russell $750K and sink the rest into the car.

Apply it to all the drivers then. Flat salary but leave them free to negotiate all other things like sponsorship and image rights.

Truth is with salary it's not all about just driving skill. It's about the profile, publicity and commercial opportunities the high earners like Vettel and particularly Hamilton bring to a team.

That is how it’s done now... literally.

Yes, I know that but it's not a base salary like 750k a year for all of them, which is what I was getting at. What I meant is that if it's just all about the car (and I disagree with the notion) just pay them all 1M a year each, no matter what car they are in or how experienced they are. (which I would also disagree with).

Clearly all the drivers have a much different level of worth both in terms of their actual driving skill and commercial value.

[Jolle]

Apply it to all the drivers then. Flat salary but leave them free to negotiate all other things like sponsorship and image rights.

Truth is with salary it's not all about just driving skill. It's about the profile, publicity and commercial opportunities the high earners like Vettel and particularly Hamilton bring to a team.

That is how it’s done now... literally.

Yes, I know that but it's not a base salary like 750k a year for all of them, which is what I was getting at. What I meant is that if it's just all about the car (and I disagree with the notion) just pay them all 1M a year each, no matter what car they are in or how experienced they are. (which I would also disagree with).

Clearly all the drivers have a much different level of worth both in terms of their actual driving skill and commercial value.

At the moment the first part of a drivers contract is “expenses”, which include SL fee, travel, trainer and insurance. With someone like Russell this would be in the thousands, with someone like Hamilton in the millions. This you could see as the flat fee (although they go up depending on the driver). The rest is mostly commercial use of image, time and stuff.

As the driver cost cap comes in, it’s the commercial side that gets capped but it’s so high that still only the big companies in F1 (PMI, Daimler and RedBull) can afford the real superstars.