In the round-up: Adrian Sutil says the ease with which drivers can buy their way into Formula One makes it less of a sport.
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Pay driver situation ‘out of control’ (Autosport)
“It would be good to have this [situation] back [having fewer pay drivers], and then maybe you could call it a sport again. Right now, it’s hard to say what it is.”
The best and worst of BBC’s F1 coverage in 2014 (The F1 Broadcasting Blog)
“In my opinion, BBC’s product went into reverse during 2014, even when considering the fact that they only screen half the races live.”
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Comment of the day
The official 2014 F1 season review video has a lot to commend it – but not its title:
The title gives the impression the DVD was two minutes away from shipping and the work experience guy blurted out the first bland thing he could think of and the team went “yeah, that’ll have to do”.
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On this day in F1
Following his first season back in F1 with Mercedes, Michael Schumacher said four years ago today he believed it would take Mercedes until 2012 to become title contenders. He was only out by a couple of years, but sadly following his skiing accident almost 12 months ago Schumacher was unable to join them in their triumph.
Poignantly, Mercedes’ cars ran with the message ‘Keep fighting Michael’ throughout their championship-winning season.
Paul (@frankjaeger)
22nd December 2014, 0:06
I find it hard to imagine Sutil securing a seat without the factor of pay drivers. To me, he’s the definition of ‘averagely average’
Honest point though, It would be a fairer landscape without pay drivers abound; though I think some teams have pay drivers to thank for saving them from the quicksand.
Paul (@frankjaeger)
22nd December 2014, 0:19
A point to add: Suzi Perry has admittedly honed her broadcasting prowess this season but it’s far from complete, or entertaining for that matter. I am aware of her work experience within motorsports alike, but I find her ill-informed, hesitant and faux-passionate about the sport. DC is pretty much the only redeeming factor about BBC’s team even with his somewhat questionable pitwalks, with EJ alongside, performing as the lovable jester. Gary Anderson’s leave was sad and deep felt, and the void just hasn’t quite been filled with [insert name here – Brown haired chap] acting as technical reporter.
I long for a public, unified, terrestrial F1 broadcaster. Splitting the audience is painful and not having full, live races on the BBC is a sham. Hypothetically it would seem ideal to sell the rights back to ITV and run a whole Sky Sports-esque operation, using advertising and sponsor as funding, showing all 20 races to a concentrated audience?
Neil (@neilosjames)
22nd December 2014, 0:49
I’d probably cry if ITV ever got anywhere near the F1 rights again. Split it, pay-TV it, make it only available to people who’ll sit pedalling on an exercise bike powering their own TV and EcoBox+ for an hour and a half every Sunday… just never let ITV have it back.
What they did last time makes the current BBC effort look good.
JerseyF1 (@jerseyf1)
22nd December 2014, 9:40
@neilosjames When ITV got the rights in 1998 (or thereabouts) the standards of UK F1 coverage were raised significantly from what had gone before. It was only when the BBC fought to get them back that the started putting serious effort into their coverage and then when they sold out to Sky and were left having to provide coverage that they no longer had the appetite for the standards fell again. If ITV genuinely wanted to do it then I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be significantly better than the rubbish on BBC at the moment.
Deej92 (@deej92)
22nd December 2014, 19:33
I think ITV may be an option in a few years’ time when the BBC’s contract runs out.
ITV have lost the FA Cup and from next season they are going to lose their live Champions League and Europa League coverage to highlights only. So all they have left is England matches (about 10 matches a year), the World Cup and the Euros (both every four years). Other big events like the Tour de France and the French Open are on ITV4.
ITV surely must be looking at a seasonal flagship sport now others have bought theirs of them. I’m guessing a return to F1 is something that has crossed their minds.
Sven (@crammond)
22nd December 2014, 0:37
Absolutely. Just as strong as Rosberg seemed before 2013.
G Breese (@breesegp)
22nd December 2014, 1:22
@crammond Rosberg was a already a race winner and had just beaten a 7 time world champion in the championship standings for 3 consecutive seasons, Sutil has yet to score a podium in all of his 128 Grand Prix starts, so I think judging Rosberg as ‘averagely average’ pre-2013 massively detracts from his efforts up to that point in formula 1. Rosberg might not have been considered a truly top driver, but he was held in much better regard than Sutil! Anyway, weren’t there rumours Sutil only got this years Sauber drive through his medion sponsorship so it’s pretty ironic for him to say pay drivers aren’t good for the sport…
OmarR-Pepper (@)
22nd December 2014, 3:04
@breesegp about the podiums, I start to think Hulkenberg is becoming the new “averagely average”. Perez had some podiums with Sauber and one with FI, Magnussen already has one, Kobayashi had one or two, I’m talking of all the drivers who have already been on a good midfield car (as Hulkenberg has been as well).
Neusalz (@dpod)
22nd December 2014, 5:07
In all fairness, I don’t think these “one-off” results are just down to the driver. I would think strategy calls are more influential, but that’s just my guess and not backed by evidence. I find Hulkenburg a “solid” driver that can consistently gather valuable point, but nothing spectacular.
G Breese (@breesegp)
22nd December 2014, 10:17
@omarr-pepper @dpod I agree with you both, and it’s not as if Hulkenberg hasn’t had his opportunities, Brazil 2012 springs to mind! I think Hulkenberg is now establishing himself as a ‘journeyman driver’, like Heidfeld and Trulli. Good enough to justify a position in F1, but not good enough to justify a place in a top team, and able to consistently score minor points for the team.
Michael (@freelittlebirds)
22nd December 2014, 15:31
@dpod @breesegp But you could make the same point about Daniel Ricciardo. Before 2014, I didn’t think Daniel was that special. In fact, he really underperformed in the Torro Rosso. If JEV is now a test driver, maybe Daniel should have been driving for a midfield team.
The same goes for Sergio vs Kamui. Hulkenberg scored 96 to 59 of Sergio’s points. That’s a clobbering in the midfield and I think Nico wasn’t getting good strategy calls at the end of the season. In a way, that makes it hard for him to leave, right? Why risk losing your best earner if he beats Perez by 80 points and annoys Perez who is paying Force India a bazillion dollars? I fear Nico is a business casualty because his results at the end of 2014 are not in line with his previous results and I don’t believe it was his fault.
PorscheF1 (@xtwl)
22nd December 2014, 17:57
He doesn’t mean pay drivers. He means drivers who can pay more than him.
sop
23rd December 2014, 11:56
F1 is NOT a sport.it is a business and after that maybe a hobby.Money first.
Biggsy
22nd December 2014, 0:06
So you say that pay driver debate needs to move on, and then you feature an article to debate about pay drivers? :)
And not just feature it, but make it a title one.
Neel Jani (@neelv27)
22nd December 2014, 8:28
Don’t talk like Adrian Sutil.
JerseyF1 (@jerseyf1)
22nd December 2014, 9:42
And tt was such a busy day for F1 news too.
Keith isn’t making the news, just reporting on what’s out there.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
22nd December 2014, 17:03
I don’t understand your complaint at all.
R.J. O'Connell (@rjoconnell)
22nd December 2014, 0:16
Right message, wrong messenger. Adrian Sutil may not be the most well-fortuned of all pay-drivers, but what he brought did help to leverage a comeback at Force India over Jules Bianchi, and his Sauber drive. Felipe Nasr may be bringing 8 figures from Banco do Brasil, but he has a stellar resume – Formula BMW champ, possibly the last great British F3 champ, success in GP2 – and way more upside than Sutil can deliver going forward.
The shrinking grid size does not help with regards to allowing F1 to allow less-funded drivers into its ranks, or retaining drivers without a lot of sponsorship. It really doesn’t. Cutting from 24 to 22 now down to as few as maybe 18 cars will not suddenly give Sauber a sizeable injection of cash.. Instead of blaming the teams, which a lot of us are as guilty of as anyone else, for doing what they had to to keep their teams operating, we should be looking into ways to make the sport more accessible to teams – and without taking it back thirty years or more.
Sutil is right that Minardi did often weigh talent over money for a team of their size. That’s part of why I admire them. Minardi was also the team that dropped Giancarlo Fisichella mid-season for Giovanni Lavaggi and almost ran Taki Inoue for all of 1996 if his checks cleared.
Antz
22nd December 2014, 0:53
Think Sutil is jealous that other drivers sponsors have more money than his?
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
22nd December 2014, 4:07
Yes a little but now that he is offside, he can bash the sport, which sport? I’m not going off-topic here, what professional activity is actually a sport, we call it sport but people are making a living here not just fun. F1 with or without pay drivers is not a sport Sutil nor is tennis or Olympics or basketball all fought to keep the professionals out but these days all are professionals, all… all…. but F1 as it seems, it’s litteraly the only activity going on reverse. If you pay to race it means you are not a professional therefore you are doing it for SPORT. Who knew pay drivers helped the sport. Sutil you’re wrong again.
David Not Coulthard (@davidnotcoulthard)
22nd December 2014, 10:54
@peartree Then again, pay drivers don’t pay for their drive (except the likes Lauda, perhaps?), somebody else (most probably an organisation, or a father) pays for it.
Alec Glen (@alec-glen)
22nd December 2014, 13:05
@peartree You need to update your definition of sport, it’s never been about doing it for fun, that’s called play.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
22nd December 2014, 15:35
@davidnotcoulthard Semantics. It’s pretty much the same thing, just joking around by the way. @alec-glen Well, but the word play in the dictionary is the act of doing something for fun.
JackySteeg (@jackysteeg)
22nd December 2014, 1:14
Sutil does have a point, even if it seems like a bit of sour grapes on his part. I think it speaks volumes that, as it is, neither the GP2 champion nor the runner up will graduate to F1 for the third year running. Although I don’t rate Palmer that highly, it makes the whole notion of a feeder series a bit redundant if the champion doesn’t even get a mention in the F1 silly season.
I think that’s the other problem with pay drivers that we don’t talk about all that much. It just seems that if you enter GP2 without some very wealthy backers or the support of an F1 team you might as well not bother. How can GP2 justify the enormous costs to race in the series when, in the end, it’s all pretty much irrelevant?
Neusalz (@dpod)
22nd December 2014, 1:40
There has almost always been pay drivers, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I find it extremely disappointing and I have always wondered how many “Senna’s”, “Alonso’s”, and “Schumacher’s” have missed out on F1 because of the lack of funding. Even winning the feeder series does not even come close to guaranteeing you a shot at F1.
Sutil’s time in Formula 1 has obviously come to an end, but it’s hard to be surprised after his 2014 season. What I saw as a solid potential #2 driver in a top team just couldn’t find his footing anymore.
anon
22nd December 2014, 11:04
And yet the irony is that all of those drivers you have mentioned entered into F1 because of financial backing – Ron Dennis has publicly claimed that Senna bought his way into a seat at Toleman, Schumacher’s position at Jordan was brokered by Mercedes and Telefonica may have helped Alonso into Minardi (he was signed by Minardi just before Telefonica quit their position as lead sponsor, and they also happened to be one of Alonso’s personal sponsors).
Dave (@)
22nd December 2014, 14:04
The difference being that Senna, Alonso and Schumacher had the talent to back up the promises ;)
anon
22nd December 2014, 19:11
I am not denying the fact that those drivers, once they were in the sport, were able to demonstrate their abilities and therefore retain a position based on merit. However, what I was trying to do was to puncture the myth that drivers like them could simply walk into the sport based on merit alone – money has tended to play its part throughout the history of the sport, and even great drivers routinely smoothed their path into the sport with cash.
Neusalz (@dpod)
22nd December 2014, 17:57
I’m only referring to the level of talent we might be missing out on. You might argue that very good drivers can catch the eye of sponsors, but drivers from smaller nations don’t have the same opportunity to do that.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
22nd December 2014, 2:38
Haha, oh Adrian. What have you done to deserve a place among the “non-pay drivers”?
You claim that F1 needs less pay drivers, without adressing the fact that if talent decided places in the sport, you’d be far from being a candidate. As someone above said, averagely average.
Considering the field today, as it is for 2015, has very little in terms of pay drivers (Nasr and Ericsson?… add Maldonado if you want), it really isn’t a bigger problem than it used to be.
Neusalz (@dpod)
22nd December 2014, 5:01
I noticed that as well, but a lot of that has to do with the fall of Caterham and Marussia. The teams that are left are established enough to hire drivers by merit, but even some of these drivers have backing anyways. For a few years I believed Adrian was good enough to be in F1 on talent alone, and that his sponsorship deals were just an added bonus (not so much as of late).
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
22nd December 2014, 15:09
@dpod add Caterham and Marussia then. We had Bianchi and Kobayashi between the two. And Caterham had Lotterer for 1 race, plus Alex Rossi in both teams as reserve driver.
We might have less teams, but the quality of the drivers is very good. Compare it with the 90s…
Deej92 (@deej92)
22nd December 2014, 19:57
Exactly – I don’t really see the problem. Nasr has a good junior record, no problems with him getting an F1 drive. Ericsson showed improvements towards the end of his Caterham spell and I don’t think he can be begrudged a drive at Sauber, even with financial help. Maldonado is probably the person most people generally associate with the term ‘pay-driver’, and despite having some bone-headed moments, the guy is still quick and definitely worthy of an F1 seat in my opinion. Perez has more than justified his place in F1 since 2011, Slim backing or not.
I have a more relaxed take on pay-drivers, I will admit. I think they can sometimes be too readily criticised. These days, pay-drivers are often good drivers who have had to work hard to gain the backing (even if the same nationality or family linked, backing doesn’t just land on a plate).
Jordi Casademunt (@casjo)
22nd December 2014, 2:41
F1 needs fewer pay drivers to be a sport – A pay driver.
Lets be fair. Which drivers in Formula One in 2015 are worse than Sutil?
Sauber: Ericsson and Nasr. Well, Ericsson is probably worse than Sutil, fair enough. Nasr might be, might not be.
Force India: Hülkenberg and Pérez. Nope.
Williams: Massa and Bottas. Keep dreaming.
Lotus: Grosjean and Maldonado. Maybe Maldonado, but on his good days he’s at least pretty good, even if those don’t happen that often.
Toro Rosso: Verstappen and Sainz Jr. No clue. Not like Sutil ever had a chance to get a Toro Rosso ride, so it’s a pointless comparison.
Red Bull: Ricciardo and Kvyat. Don’t even try, Adrian.
Ferrari: Vettel and Räikkönen. Given Räikkönen’s poor 2014 season, someone might have the audacity of theorizing that Sutil might be better than him. In Kimi’s words: “No”. As for Vettel…No chance.
Mercedes: Not even bothering with this one.
McLaren: I think we could start laughing at this point.
And that’s about it. Skill wise, I think he could only compete with Maldonado and Ericsson in 2015’s grid. So basically, Sutil is out of Formula One because he’s at best, the third worst driver in the grid. Not a big loss, so whatever.
Sri Harsha (@harsha)
22nd December 2014, 11:41
@casjo
Well Put ,
Don’t let the door hit you on the exit Sutil. You had your time in F1 Lot more talented drivers with/without backing are out side and trying to knock the door
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
22nd December 2014, 3:54
The standard of F1 broadcasting in the UK was lower in 2014, but as usual BBC did a better job. I agree that Suzi improved, whilst I’m far from a fan of Ben Edwards, he’s more bearable than the loud and sometimes disrespectful David Croft. I think Gary Anderson would have worked out great in 2013 if they had given the man more trust, but instead of that no Gary Anderson for 2014 which was a great technical year. In my view BBC’s stand out is DC, in his first ever year I thought he had brought nothing to the plate but if you can get past his joyless speech, DC showcases a deep understanding of the inner working of F1 teams and F1 teams in general, often pointing the true undercover reasons in which F1 tries to hide not to ruin its product.
About Sky. I think their specials were unimaginative and heartless, for instances BBC did a heart-warming job with the Button special and were actually funny and approachable on specials such as the Williams test drive clip. Brundle is losing his creativity and Crofty Herbert and Kravitz just poke fun bully and spread prejudice and a bunch of misconceptions and wrong ideas around.
Perfect team for me is Brundle and Coulthard, with Hill giving his honest view on all things F1 and an upbeat presenter.
Sri Harsha (@harsha)
22nd December 2014, 5:03
@peartree
I absolutely agree Sky is getting worse and worse and will be even worse in future
I hope Brundle go back to BBC
JerseyF1 (@jerseyf1)
22nd December 2014, 9:48
@peartree @harsha
I agree that Sky has declined, as has the BBC. I don’t really think that having the rights split works because the total amount spent on coverage has probably increased but by doing it twice the actual quality of both is lower than we had before. I think the rights need to go to a single broadcaster who wants them – clearly the BBC decided it hadn’t bid to get them back so either Sky, ITV or C4 should get the rights. I don’t mind paying for Sky coverage but it irks me that they don’t make the effort they would if they didn’t have to compete against free-to-air TV for viewers.
RogerA
22nd December 2014, 10:50
I completely disagree, I think Sky’s coverage is miles better than the BBC.
I don’t like Suzi Perry, I can’t stand Eddie Jordan (Who seems to throw nonsense out there most of the time) & I think David Coulthard commentary is horrendous.
I like the Sky on-air team, I prefer the David Croft/Martin Brundle commentary & adore all of the extra content they provide throughout a race weekend, From all the video feeds to the extra programming.
I’d go as far as saying that the coverage that Sky provide is the best coverage of F1 that i’ve ever experienced :)
AlexanderF1
22nd December 2014, 11:45
suzi perry is terrible, yes she makes less mistakes now but she doesnt bring anything to the coverage and doesnt really get on with dc and eddie.
2012 was the best i think(of this deal) jake ,dc,edie were great and we had gary anderson in the pitlane.
the only good thing about bbc f1 this year has been some of there vts such as dc at silverstone in jim clarks lotus,dc in the williams. and also towards the end of the season dc and eddie disagreeing with eachother all the time was brilliant.
Jules Winfield (@jules-winfield)
22nd December 2014, 13:27
Croft is a buffoon and an oaf. He makes far too many mistakes and witters on far too much. Brundle is still very good, but he’s not as good as he used to be. At least Edwards (Mr. Shouty) and Coulthard have a history of being properly involved in motorsport. Sky fill their coverage with far too much irrelevant twaddle.
For me, Sky’s coverage suffers from having far too many additional people. There’s Lazenby (who is embarrassing, clueless and dull), Senna, Hill, Herbert (who answers “Lewis Hamilton” to every question he’s asked), Brookes, Pinkham, Kravitz, Davidson and probably half a dozen more whose names I forget. Of all of those, Kravitz is by far the best, and the reason why I sometimes found myself tuning into Sky’s coverage instead of the Beeb’s.
Sky should ditch Lazenby pronto and find a sport more suited to his skill set, such as tiddlywinks. Get Brookes to front the show or get Anna Woolhouse out of the studio – both of them are excellent. Show Herbert old videos of Mark Blundell from ITV’s coverage and tell him that’s what he’s like – that ought to make him smarten up his act. Ditch Senna as well – he’s a nice enough guy, but he’s not that interesting.
As for the Beeb, I used to love Ben Edwards and Jeremy Shaw’s double-act during the CART coverage during the late 1990s – watch the end of the 2000 Michigan 2000 on YouTube to see how good it was. Edwards needs to stop shouting and he’ll be fine. DC is excellent. I don’t mind EJ – at least he’s entertaining, but Tom Clarkson is far inferior to Gary Anderson. Lee McK. is very good and has a good rapport with a lot of the drivers. As for Suzi, well, she’s okay. Not as good as Jake, but certainly a lot better than her equivalent on the other side.
The best coverage I’ve seen in recent years was the Beeb’s 2011 effort, with Brundle and Coulthard in the commentary box. They were a superb pairing.
Steve Freegard (@smfreegard)
22nd December 2014, 14:20
@RogerA – I’ll add a ‘me too’ to your comment. I love the Sky coverage, it’s brilliant – I much prefer Croft/Brundle to Edwards/Coulthard in commentary and from what I’ve seen of the BBC coverage; it’s awful.
I also love being able to watch GP2, GP3 and the classic races; I’ve had the 88, 89, 90, 91, 92 and 93 season reviews on my Sky+ for several years now from when the channel first started.
I just wish they’d show stuff like F3, WEC and some karting – I can get Motors TV, but the coverage isn’t great and it’s not HD.
I got to drive a 125 Gearbox kart last year on an experience day and got hooked on how great it was to drive, so I started watching some of the KZ races on YouTube. Max Verstappen was the absolute class of the field in that category – he was absolutely amazing to watch in a KZ kart; he had some absolutely epic drives from down the field to the front, can’t wait to see him in the Toro Rosso next year.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
24th December 2014, 0:51
@smfreegard I like the Sky Sports F1 channel. It’s not about the channel or the money, my dim view on sky is on the team. Sky team makes more mistakes. Sky teams produces lacklustre specials. Sky team is often offensive and blatantly bias. I think its classy of BBC not too keep saying who they want to win, even though it is clear who we wanted to win, it’s about journalism and not bogus and disrespectful banter. None are perfect, things were perfect in 2012 in regarding to F1 coverage.
I love more racing and motors plus Sky are better than ever. I would suggest Lewis Hamilton karting on youtube, check out the similarities.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
24th December 2014, 0:43
@harsha @3dom @jules-winfield I agree with you and AlexandreF1. 2012 bbc teams was really good.
Dom (@3dom)
23rd December 2014, 11:40
@peartree the loss of Gary Anderson from BBC was a massive negative in my eyes. I found his concise technical overviews excellent. Understanding “why” the cars are faster from one weekend to the next, and from one circuit to another really enhances my enjoyment of the sport, and Mr Anderson would have excelled in 2014 with the regulation changes. It isn’t enough for me to hear a team principle/technical director say “we have a few new bits on the car”, unfortunately that’s what we’ve regressed to
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
22nd December 2014, 3:59
The thing that has changed in the pay driver scenario is that rather than shelling out £5m from sponsors and personal wealth, these newer breed are paying £20m or more. On the other side even the best paid drivers don’t earn 20m but, sponsors often follow them around with massive 50m sponsorship deals, effectively making both the top and bottom drivers assets to F1.
f1-neil
22nd December 2014, 4:37
I could agree with this if it wasn’t coming from Sutil, the bloke was a liability on the track, guaranteed to spin or crash at every track, its even him who brought out the JCB in Japan.
McL88AsAp (@deongunner)
22nd December 2014, 4:49
You can say pay driver is useless and I think so, but without them maybe F1 only have 7 teams
tristanh (@tristanh)
22nd December 2014, 7:59
I think the pay driver debate is a little false, many of the drivers have personal sponsors- how much money did Alonso take to Ferrari via Santander? And what about Senna having Banco Nacional supporting him?
F1 is a hugely expensive commercial enterprise, teams are forever talking about drivers as “the complete package”, well I think that in the 21st century part of that package is the ability to bring sponsors online.
CountryGent (@countrygent)
22nd December 2014, 8:40
Can the irony of this statement from Adrian “gimme that Medion money” Sutil be a belated entrant for “20 things that made F1 great in 2014”?
bad_whippet (@bad_whippet)
22nd December 2014, 12:04
Haha, this ^
Pandaslap (@pandaslap)
22nd December 2014, 21:10
@countrygent Exactly. I believe this is what we call “the pot calling the kettle black”.
ColdFly F1 (@)
22nd December 2014, 9:29
Agree with Sutil F1 needs fewer pay drivers and more skilled drivers. It’s wrong that at the pinnacle of motorsport one can buy a seat.
But how do you define ‘pay driver’? According to the 2014 Salary list all drivers are paid a salary; thus technically there are no ‘pay drivers’.
But it is widely commented that some driver’s family/sponsors pay monies to the teams linked to the contract of their preferred driver (Chilton shortly lost his seat because his family’s/sponsor’s money did not come through).
Maldonado, Chilton, Ericsson are all considered pay drivers. But Medien always follows Sutil, Kobayashi probably handed over the supporter funds he collected, and Carlos Sim’s companies always follow Perez and Gutierrez (even as Ferrari tester). So probably the list is a lot longer.
But similarly Banco do Brasil and Petrobras seem to favour sponsoring teams with a Brazilian driver, and Santander closely follows Alonso. Checking the list of teams sponsors you will find more examples of small companies from the driver’s country who join the team at the same time.
Even Schumacher had his faithful list of backers following him in F1.
Therefore I find it difficult to draw the line who is, and who is not, pay driver.
Maybe we should only look at who is in F1 based on skills. And as there is no official list we can use Keith’s annual ranking of driver’s performance.
Meander
22nd December 2014, 10:12
All I can say about Sutil dropping out of the F1 line-up at the end of 2014 is: “It Was Fair”.
PeterG
22nd December 2014, 11:05
I don’t really think the pay driver situation is necessarily that bad right now, Its certainly better than its been in the past. Also the pay drivers you do see in F1 today are actually fairly good unlike in the past when you often had pay drivers who were miles off the pace & had never done anything of note in any category.
For instance I don’t think there’s what you would consider a pay driver in F1 that has not won a race or more in one of the top level junior categories.
Looking at drivers in 2015 who are considered to be pay driver-
For all the flack Pastor Maldonado gets for been a pay driver, He’s won a race in F1, A couple junior championships & a fair few races.
Esteban Guttierez had won races in GP2 & was GP3 champion before that.
Marcus Ericsson did win races/championships in the junior ladder.
Felipe Nasr has a decent level of talent & again has won races/Championships on his way up.
Adrian Sutil should also perhaps remember that he himself has brought money to teams to help himself get an F1 seat before.
Ibrahim (@ibrahim)
22nd December 2014, 12:37
For everyone who believes Ham and thinks Rosberg did the “brakegate” at Monaco move on purpose. What are you saying? Derek Warwick was lying? Did not understand the reams of telemetry, video and data presented to him?
Really?
He comments on his decision at the end of the video interview I posted on this thread in the forum.
https://www.racefans.net/groups/not-f1/forum/topic/the-rose-tinted-glasses-zone/page/3/#post-289436
RogerA
22nd December 2014, 13:11
http://youtu.be/EZejDlBWYPs?t=52m04s
f1-neil
22nd December 2014, 13:56
Not sure I fully trust Warwicks bias when he’s conclusions seems to start and stop with Nico’s a nice guy and wouldn’t do anything like that.
Dizzy
22nd December 2014, 19:33
so the usual stance is been taken then…. anyone & anything that goes against lewis is doing so only because of bias?
guess you also saw all of the data that warwick & the other stewards looked at before they made there decision?
as derek says in that video, there are 4 stewards (including himself) & at times they don’t all agree as he says when talking about the hungary 2010 incident.
just face it, they looked at the data, looked at the video & concluded that since they could not prove intent they could not penalize… you know innocent until proven guilty… kinda how the everyday law courts work.
ColdFly F1 (@)
22nd December 2014, 15:39
We’ll never know until Rosberg publishes his memoirs!
Arnold Triyudho Wardono (@ernietheracefan)
22nd December 2014, 20:35
Adrian’s only skill : girly run..xD
SauberS1 (@saubers1)
23rd December 2014, 0:21
There are few drivers who have money and talent as well.