Should Sauber go for pay drivers to solve financial crisis?
- This topic has 4 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 8 months ago by
.
- Posts
Should Sauber go for pay drivers? and who should it be then?
Because most of the time pay drivers are not the most qualified drivers.The question is: do they have another choice? Everyone likes to see the most talented F1 drivers get F1 seats, at least that is what I assume.
Everyone would like to see a F1 field full of deserving veterans alike. Everyone would like to see, for example, Robert Wickens and Rubens Barrichello on the grid. Sadly, what fans like is only worth so much. Sure it might help with merchandising sales and higher advertisment money but those effects are neglible and, in some cases, not even measureable. Any team that has a significant need for cash cannot afford to wait and pray for those effects and just has to look for drivers who can provide an immediate cash injection.
It depends. I would personally like a team not to use pay drivers, at least not the Max Chilton kind of pay drivers. That said, 22 cars on the grid with two of them being pay drivers is a lot better then only having 20 cars on the grid.
Point is, if the choice is between not racing, and racing, then I would want them to go racing. Even if that means using terrible drivers with a large chequebook.It depends on the pay drivers. If, for example, Nasr or Juncadella wound up at Sauber, nobody would doubt their talent, even if they were technically signing as pay drivers. Sauber’s desperate times called for desperate measures, however. And in the midst of Sauber’s financial woes, a pay driver has been signed to possibly race for them in 2014. Sergey Sirotkin is a pay driver. Obviously, this term carries a negative connotation owing from the wealthy underachievers of the sport. Sergey Sirotkin, however, is no slowpoke. In signing him, the team may have found the next Raikkonen. If Sirotkin can adapt and the team can nurture him into a competitive F1 driver, he’ll be likened to Sergio Perez instead of Vitaly Petrov, for example. Peter Sauber has always had an eye for talent. In Sirtokin, Sauber is taking a gamble: everyone agrees he needs more time in the junior formulae. However, the team isn’t unreasonable; they know that Sirotkin is a far better driver than Ma Qinghua or Ricardo Teixeira. If Sirotkin races for Sauber in 2014, the team will receive the money they need and may even produce a real F1 talent should their gamble pay off.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.