SILLY SEASON 2009/2010

ralf-schumacher.jpg
 
whatthef-!
 
that was an unnecessary scorching of my retinas...

In other news - Petrov's Seat might be given away!

I guess the cost of his seat was 15 million euros or ~ 20 million dollars. And he is missing the second half of it...

That is expensive!!
 
I really don't like this pay to drive crap.
 
The bad old days like Delatraz- Pay driver era.

But we have so much history with great drivers like Alex Yoong :)
 
I agree this pay driver deal sucks, but from what I can tell its really the lesser of 3 evils. 1 being that idiotic two tier system that was going to happen, 2 being a bunch of the teams not being able to get to the grid (though clearly some may not anyway, which is depressing) and the third being the current situation. With the financial climate being what it is I think pay drivers are an unfortunate reality, truly unfortunate when you see guy in the lower series who can't get any seat, in any series because they have to sponsors.

This seems to be the case for Canada's best up and coming driver, Robert Wickens. He had a great season last year in F2 coming second over all with the Red Bull Jr squad. In my opinion he should probably be a GP2 driver this year if we were to go on merit. But, Canada isn't exactly a F1 hotbed outside of Montreal and as a Torontonian I can't see him getting the local corporate support of guys like Petrov.
 
pay-drivers are not new and I don't see a big problem there, normally they will just fill a smaller team second seat!? and even Schumacher had his first race as a pay-driver, his sponsor payed for his seat, in the case o Petrov originally they were saying that "gazprom" would pay the 15mi but it seems now that this is not the case, and that his father is trying to pay by taking a bank loan! I will feel a bit sorry if after his tests and the expectations he fail to secure his seat,

as for Renault wanting a paydriver, since Renault sold most of the team, their interest in F1 is very low right now, so the team needs the money from other sources, a payed driver is choice, since their 1st driver is a good one...

also I think Petrov is better than Tung...
 
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And Nigel Mansell was a pay-driver as well, at least in lower formulae.

If we go like this, even Schuey started out as a pay-driver, he brought $100 thousand worth of sponsorship from Mercedes to the Ford-powered Jordan team... :lol:
 
I'm actually a bit unclear about this. If you're a pay driver, you don't get paid at all by the team right?
 
Pay driver = you have a contract with the team, but you pay for your seat and you stop a small percentage of that sponsorship money for yourself instead of a wage.
 
Kobayashi > Nakajima
 
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