Left field
The Reuters global sports blog
Helping to pay your way in F1
Indian Narain Karthikeyan’s return to Formula One, along with Renault’s retention of Russian Vitaly Petrov and the imminent arrival of Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado and Mexican Sergio Perez, has put the issue of the so-called ‘pay driver’ — a man whose place on the grid is rightly or wrongly considered as much down to the amount of sponsorship he brings as talent behind the wheel — firmly back in the spotlight.
There are those who bemoan the situation, lamenting the lack of opportunities for the talented but hard-up aspirant, but that is not a new phenomenon even if it was more muted in the era of manufacturer dominance.
In the early days of the championship, you had the well-heeled gentleman racer — flamboyant types like Thailand’s Prince Bira — who could afford to buy a Maserati or two and go racing.
“Do you think we are running on air? The money has to come from somewhere,” HRT team principal Colin Kolles, Karthikeyan’s boss, told Reuters last week when asked about the Indiank. “For more than 100 years if you want to race, you have to put money on the table.”
You only have to ask Niki Lauda about that.
By the early 1970s, with the arrival of swathes of on-car branding and ostentatious sponsorship, the pay driver was a recognised species and Austrian Lauda was in the vanguard.
“To the best of my knowledge, Spain’s Alex Soler-Roig (1971-72) was the first driver to use his own cash to buy himself a few Formula One starts,” Lauda wrote in his 1985 autobiography “To Hell and Back”.
Button to McLaren – the real deal or just pretend?
Jenson Button’s eye-catching visit to McLaren on Friday is of obvious benefit to both parties, whatever the reality behind the headlines.
If a deal is done, the new Formula One champion gets the bigger salary that Brawn are reluctant or unable to pay as well as a potentially winning car for next season.
McLaren would get a line-up of champions that will appeal to global sponsors like Vodafone and show that they remain, along with Ferrari, a big hitting team that can always pull in the top talent.
At the very least, Button is able to send a clear message to Brawn that he has other, viable and possibly more lucrative, options and that they cannot assume he will just stay out of loyalty.
McLaren are similarly able to remind Kimi Raikkonen, until now widely considered the main choice to partner Lewis Hamilton, that they too have alternatives and that he should consider reducing his wage demands.
Raikkonen, their former driver who won the 2007 title with Ferrari and has now left the Italian team, was seen at the factory on Wednesday with his management.
But what if Brawn don’t blink, Raikkonen refuses to accept McLaren’s terms and Button signs up to join Hamilton?
Jenson just try and stay with Brawn if not go to Mclaren if not then I dunno
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Resident Left Field Expert
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>None would describe themselves openly as pay drivers, certainly not in the old-fashioned sense, even if their sponsorship is clearly welcome.
Taki Inoue openly calls himself a paydriver.
Moreover he has spoken of why he decided to pay for the drive, how raised the money and finally why F1 sponsors put money into the teams or the drivers – money laundering, kickback, tax evasion and so on.