Haas determined to avoid need to hire 'pay drivers'
- Published on 07 Sep 2017 12:57
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- By: Rob Veenstra
Team owner Gene Haas seems determined to avoid the 'pay driver' trend in F1. For the American team's first season last year, Haas took on Esteban Gutierrez, who came with the backing of team supplier Ferrari as well as his Mexican sponsors.
But the Mexican underperformed, and for 2017 Haas replaced him with Kevin Magnussen. Now, even though Ferrari is actively looking for seats for its juniors Antonio Giovinazzi and Charles Leclerc, Haas has confirmed it is keeping Magnussen alongside Romain Grosjean for 2018.
Asked if he rules out ever taking on a 'pay driver' again, Gene Haas said: "No, I don't think we rule it out. But for a business model it doesn't really make a lot of sense. It's no secret that it costs $60m to put a car on the track for the season, and if someone - not just Ferrari - gives you a driver and they're going to pay you $5 or $6 million, there's a $55m deficit there."
"I think our point of view has always been that we need to score points and that's how we make money moving forward. So that's our business model," Haas added. "I think Ferrari respects that. Based on that, if there's some mutual agreement we could come to, we probably would be more open to it," he said. (GMM)
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Replies (3)
Login to replyMr N71
Posts: 31
OH MY.... :O
There's no pay drivers today. you only got a licens if you ar good enough and all driver comes with a sponsor contract. How many millions do yo think Hamiltons contract with moster are worth? Monster have to pay a big bill to get their brand on that Mercedes
krommenaas
Posts: 155
Would Mercedes replace Hamilton if Monster stopped sponsoring him? If yes, he's a pay driver. If not, he isn't.
ajpennypacker
Posts: 2,475
@KROMMENAAS spot on. Nothing wrong with being richly sponsored. All the better if you actually have talent. All top driver have big sponsors. But drivers like Maldonado, Gutierrez, Bruno Senna, Rio Haryanto, are examples of drivers that would not have gotten to/or remain more than one season without sponsorship. Let's not forget that Alonso, Schumacher, and Niki Lauda also started as pay drivers, but their overflowing talent eventually erased that pejorative. I would argue that Sergio Perez for example has erased that tag on talent. I believe he would be driving in Formula 1 with or without Telmex sponsorship.