219 replies to this topic

[JHSingo]

Thinking out loud here...

 

So, we all know that F1 has a rich history of pay-drivers throughout the decades. Some of the more memorable ones (Taki Inoue, Ricardo Rosset, Pastor Maldonado) have gone down in infamy, and still provoke chuckles years after they've departed the sport. In many ways, we tolerate even the most hapless pay-drivers, because we know that none of them generally last that long before they either run out of funds or are replaced by an even more well-backed driver.

 

But it seems that in recent times, as Formula One has become more and more expensive, and more and more inaccessible to the vast majority of drivers, the emergence of the pay-dad (to coin a phrase) has become increasingly prevalent. Lawrence Stroll was the first, but there's now Michael Latifi (who, correct me if I'm wrong, but owns shares in Williams and most of their historic car collection?) and Dmitry Mazepin. I include the last of those, because his intentions have been clear - he tried to buy Force India, and even if Haas had fired his son, Dmitry would likely have bought the team before much longer anyway. This club may well increase further in years to come.

 

In some ways, it's a double-edged sword. Without these extremely wealthy individuals, these teams (Force India and Williams in particular) probably would have disappeared from the grid. And yet, in buying teams as a play thing for their children, they lock in seats (and likely for a lot longer than traditional pay-drivers) for those who are arguably less deserving of having a place on the grid than others. Much was made of Perez having to vacate Racing Point due to it being unthinkable that Lawrence would replace his son as a driver - and there was a similar situation when Esteban Ocon had to make way for Stroll a couple of seasons prior.

 

So, how do you look at it? Is having these drivers on the grid a (ahem) price worth paying to save these teams from bankruptcy, and therefore saving hundreds of jobs in the process? Or is it making the sport even more out of touch when an increasing number of teams are being bought by people for their children perhaps more than for any other reason? Is this really a new development? Perhaps some historians can enlighten me as to whether this really happened quite so much in previous eras. I can't recall hearing about any examples, or as many as there are at the moment, anyway.

 

What, if anything, can F1/the FIA really do to stop this becoming increasingly prevalent? Even with the introduction of a budget cap, surely there's still going to be some people with an abundance of cash who will happily throw a few hundred million dollars at a struggling team so that their son/daughter can play at being an F1 driver? It's a worrying time, and perhaps something that should be looked at. After all, you don't hear of many billionaires buying an NFL team so their son can be a quarterback, do you?

 

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

[pdac]

Not sure what they could do - but whatever it is, they should not do it. Once the governing body starts deciding who can take part based on who is funding them - regardless of whether or not that funding is legal and above board - the sport is rotten the core.

[baddog]

No they should not. Its not in the end different than corporates funding people of whatever nationality or connections suits them is it? Where does this kind of restriction end?

[jjcale]

Isnt it only the Strolls who have bought a team ... and even then they are fronting for a wider group of people.

 

Are there any other examples of "buying a team for your son"?  ... and can this actually be called a trend? 

[Murl]

F1 is not a sport, it is more a pissing contest for people with $$$ to throw around.

 

It has always been this way.

Back in the day it might have been $100,000, $1,000,000.

Now, it's billionaires who play with their spare change.

 

People were getting drives that they didn't "deserve" back then too.

 

It's all about who your backers are. As has already been said, it doesn't matter if it is your Dad, or the political connections your family has with a state oil company, milk producer(!) or whatever. 

 

It would suck if F1 was a sport.

[Rodaknee]

Thinking out loud here...

 

You've moaned for gawd knows how long about Mercedes/Hamilton, now you're on about another group, what do you want - Team Singo sponsored by car boot sales?

[ensign14]

It's almost the wrong end of the telescope.  It's not the megarich buying teams so their offspring can wank around at the back in F1.  It's that their presence automatically means someone else cannot get a drive.  And that's because of the 20 car closed-shop nature of F1.

 

At least when de Cesaris was buying a ride at Minardi back in the day, it meant Nannini could get a drive as well.  And it wasn't as if Minardi being there meant that Jordan couldn't be there as well.

[LightningMcQueen]

I don’t think it’s a huge issue tbh, there is plenty of room for more teams.. hopefully the budget cap addresses that and I keep my fingers crossed for simplified / less expensive engines.

[PayasYouRace]

I don’t think it’s a huge issue tbh, there is plenty of room for more teams.. hopefully the budget cap addresses that and I keep my fingers crossed for simplified / less expensive engines.

There might be room for new teams in a physical sense, but new teams are not welcome in F1. F1 would rather protect its current teams, turning them into franchises. To enter a new team requires such a high entry fee that it’s not worth it to anyone. That’s what needs to change.

[Nemo1965]

Tough problem. Niki Lauda was a paydriver at the beginning of his F1-career. Ronnie Peterson wouldn’t have had several drives without cash payments by Count Zanon (most famously for his move to Lotus in 1978). Fangio got drives paid by his country, so mad were they about him. In essence, I could go on and on and name drivers who never would have had drives or careers based on their talent alone. (EDIT: With that, I meant to say: if these drivers had not brought cash, they would not have been able to show their immeasurable talent.)

Edited by Nemo1965, 24 December 2020 - 08:42.

[balage06]

The fact that Adam Norris is missing from the OP is the proof that there is a right way to do this. I guess he's nowhere near that wealthy as the other three, but Lando is a great kid, drives fast and had the results to earn his place in F1, so nothing to make a fuss about.

[jjcale]

Isnt this thread (or at least the OP) about families buying teams or investing in teams as part owners to ensure the driver or their choice - a family member..... I didnt read is as being about pay drivers in general - about which there have been a million threads in the past

 

... I thought this thread was about a new development?  

[Dolph]

Tough problem. Niki Lauda was a paydriver at the beginning of his F1-career. Ronnie Peterson wouldn’t have had several drives without cash payments by Count Zanon (most famously for his move to Lotus in 1978). Fangio got drives paid by his country, so mad were they about him. In essence, I could go on and on and name drivers who never would have had drives or careers based on their talent alone. (EDIT: With that, I meant to say: if these drivers had not brought cash, they would not have been able to show their immeasurable talent.)

 

That's pretty interesting. I didn't know about that. Would financial assistance from a friendly count be acceptable, JHSingo?

 

Count ‘Gughi’ Zanon

The man who was instrumental in the career of Ronnie Peterson died in Turin recently at the age of 78.

Giuseppe Zanon di Valgiurata first became involved in the business side of Formula One in the early 1960s but became better known for his passion in helping set young drivers on the road to the top.

Zanon most famously supported the young Peterson in his March days and is even said to have funded the Swede’s return to Lotus in 1978. Along with his cousin (Count Vittorio) he later supported Michele Alboreto. Other drivers sported the branding of Lavazza coffee machines. owned by Zanon’s wife. He even helped Ayrton Senna Zanon assisted in buying him out of his Toleman contract in ’84

[Chillimeister]

Should F1 allow individuals to buy teams? Can't stop it, arguably its allowed some teams to remain on the grid. Is it any different to groups of investors buying ('investing in') a team? Not really. The issue being only that in the former case there might be family members getting a drive as a result, and in the latter there's potential for investor sponsored individuals to get a drive and those family members/sponsored drivers might not be the absolute best around. However the FIA ensures they have to earn a superlicense before they can compete in F1, so they should all be at least competent and its probably the price that has to be paid for a decent number of teams in a ruinously expensive sport.

[Kalmake]

Maldonado's reputation really plummeted towards the end. From GP2 champion and Pirelli-GP winner to getting listed along side Inoue and Rosset.

[prty]

F1 is not a sport

 

Yep, it's surprising that many didn't realize that yet.
 

[ensign14]

I don’t think it’s a huge issue tbh, there is plenty of room for more teams.. hopefully the budget cap addresses that and I keep my fingers crossed for simplified / less expensive engines.

It'll cost you $200m to enter F1.  And that money goes to your competitors.

 

Why would you do that when you could buy an existing team for probably less?  And take over things like their travel money benefits?

 

It's a complete closed shop and anti-competitive. 

[Imperial]

We could ask this question of many sports really. Tennis stars only become tennis stars because their parents had the money to send them to the training academies in America, which is why most of your Russian players sound like American's when they talk. I know you can't buy your way into tennis stardom by way of a sponsors logo, but you also don't get there having only ever played tennis in the local park. And nobody who has ever reached F1 doesn't know how to race a car.

[Arundo]

No not really, F1 has always drawn the rich to the sport. Difference is that they have a few sons who can atleast steer a car. 

The current generation of paydrivers is a whole lot better then the ones we had in the past. 

[motorhead]

F1 is mostly entertainment like many sports, of course there are sports where you can´t by your way to the top. Sadly F1 is rich kids playground

[DutchQuicksilver]

Well if the other option is a team less on the grid, then I’m glad some rich sugar daddy buys his way into a team. We’ll just have to deal with his son then driving. But hopefully with the budget cap coming in, we’ll see less of these people.

Edited by DutchQuicksilver, 24 December 2020 - 10:07.

[Imperial]

The current generation of paydrivers is a whole lot better then the ones we had in the past. 

 

Never heard of Peter Revson then?

[jonpollak]

God Bless Peter Revson.
Jp

[Anderis]

I think FIA have already done enough imposing quite a strict superlicence system. You can't get your child into F1 only because you're rich, it's pretty damn hard to get a superlicence so everyone who gets into F1 nowadays is a pretty competent racing driver even if it's not always 20 best drivers in the world.

 

There's not much more that could be done unless you want to arbitraliry decide who can and cannot own a team which could of course lead in a very dangerous direction.

[absinthedude]

Firstly it is not Lawrence Stroll who personally owns the team. And in all honesty whatever "rules" the FIA might try and introduce to prevent rich parents buying teams for their offspring....there will always be loopholes...shell companies, money filtered lawfully through other sources and so on.

 

And...other than the rather upsetting dropping of Perez....what harm has the Stroll family done? Lance has developed into a decent driver with several podiums under his belt, and the Stroll-lead consortium has stabilised the team and increased it's competitiveness.....finally turning them into winners and hiring a multiple WDC.

 

Honestly is this much different from Revson, Courage or any other number of drivers in the past? 

 

In the end where someone has lawfully acquired money, whilst hopefully paying the required taxes, who are we to demand how they do or don't spend it?

[Nemo1965]

We could ask this question of many sports really. Tennis stars only become tennis stars because their parents had the money to send them to the training academies in America, which is why most of your Russian players sound like American's when they talk. I know you can't buy your way into tennis stardom by way of a sponsors logo, but you also don't get there having only ever played tennis in the local park. And nobody who has ever reached F1 doesn't know how to race a car.

 

This is not... entirely correct. Yes, if you have a son or daughter and you want to bring him/her to the top in tennis, then you have to spend about 250.000 euros a year until they can earn money on the tour. (I'm not guessing, I used to work for the Dutch tennisfederation as a qualified pro and was involved in their youth-program.)

 

However. Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg and Roger Federer or their parents spend about as much on tennis per year as you and I if we are amateur players. They had the luck of being EXTREMELY talented and lived in a country when they had excellent scouting and finanicing systems. (Sweden had the SAAB-program in the 70's and 80's, Switzerland just has a very smart federation).

 

Oh, and I remembered something: Alain Prost famously said that in his whole life he had spend about 750 French Franks on his motorsport-career. For his first kart. The rest was paid for by Elf. SO perhaps the FIA could counter the money-problem by starting a fund for the very talented? So they can pay for one or two supertalents to get a seat in F1?

Edited by Nemo1965, 24 December 2020 - 11:29.

[Izzyeviel]

Never heard of Peter Revson then?

I like how Revson was your go to guy and not people like Lauda, Piquet et al

[absinthedude]

No not really, F1 has always drawn the rich to the sport. Difference is that they have a few sons who can atleast steer a car. 

The current generation of paydrivers is a whole lot better then the ones we had in the past. 

 

I think that really depends on which period of "the past" you look at.

 

Guys like Lance Stroll and even Nicolas Latifi, possibly even Nikita Mazepin, are far better than the likes of Yuji Ide, Jean-Denis Delatras and Giovanni Lavaggi. But then Pedro Diniz in the 90s ended up being respected....guys like Revson and Courage were pretty good....what about Niki Lauda? Going back earlier, in the 1950s F1 was known for a number of "rich, fat Italians" buying drives...resulting famously in Horace Gould deducing that a fat, rich Bristolian could do likewise. He wasn't bad either.

Edited by absinthedude, 24 December 2020 - 11:43.

[JHSingo]

You've moaned for gawd knows how long about Mercedes/Hamilton, now you're on about another group, what do you want - Team Singo sponsored by car boot sales?

 

I'm flattered that you choose to pay such close attention to my posts. And apologies for wanting a better, healthier sport! I guess I should accept it for all its flaws and never criticise it at all, right?

 

And it's not such a moan, but something I thought as an interesting discussion point. But thank you for your ever valuable contribution.

 

The fact that Adam Norris is missing from the OP is the proof that there is a right way to do this. I guess he's nowhere near that wealthy as the other three, but Lando is a great kid, drives fast and had the results to earn his place in F1, so nothing to make a fuss about.

 

He did cross my mind, but I feel that Lando has got on the grid more through ability than cash. Although yes, if he hadn't delivered in the junior formulae, it is probably likely that he'd have ended up in F1 anyway through virtue of having a very wealthy family. I just find it sort of depressing that with so few seats in the sport, your best chance of becoming an F1 driver these days is to either be born into enormous wealth, have a famous surname, or both.

 

If the thread is about rubbishing patrons then let's start with Ron Dennis - the kid he helped out is not good enough to win 8 titles.

 

The difference there is that Ron Dennis never used his money to buy a seat for one of his children, did he? That's the point I'm getting at here. I've not got a problem with benefactors - but surely it's not a healthy direction for the sport to be heading in, when there's so few teams anyway, and more and more teams are being bought either in part or outright to ensure places on the grid for drivers who, on talent alone, probably wouldn't have made it this far.
 

Edited by JHSingo, 24 December 2020 - 12:01.

[cpbell]

Not sure what they could do - but whatever it is, they should not do it. Once the governing body starts deciding who can take part based on who is funding them - regardless of whether or not that funding is legal and above board - the sport is rotten the core.

Absolutely.  It would be unfortunate, IMO if F1 became populated mainly by the mediocre sons of the vastly wealthy; it would probably suggest that WEC or Indycar was the category with the greatest depth of talent, but I'm not sure there's anything we can ethically do about it.

[cpbell]

Firstly it is not Lawrence Stroll who personally owns the team. And in all honesty whatever "rules" the FIA might try and introduce to prevent rich parents buying teams for their offspring....there will always be loopholes...shell companies, money filtered lawfully through other sources and so on.

 

And...other than the rather upsetting dropping of Perez....what harm has the Stroll family done? Lance has developed into a decent driver with several podiums under his belt, and the Stroll-lead consortium has stabilised the team and increased it's competitiveness.....finally turning them into winners and hiring a multiple WDC.

 

Honestly is this much different from Revson, Courage or any other number of drivers in the past? 

 

In the end where someone has lawfully acquired money, whilst hopefully paying the required taxes, who are we to demand how they do or don't spend it?

+1000

[ensign14]

It's easy enough to do something about it.  You make talent the currency rather than actual currency.  And the way to do that is with cost-cutting and an open entry list.  This is not rocket science.

 

And you do the same thing with the lower formulae.  I don't like them being one make, I'd rather there be options available.  But they are one make.  Fine.  So why is there no benefit of cost-saving by having only one manufacturer?  Leave aside Dallara's business model is to gouge on spare parts for the moment (the Xbox model).  Do what Palmer Audi did, do what W Series does.  Don't let hugely expensive engineers engineer spec cars.  Take them all off at the end of the race and allocate them randomly for the next one.   What's wrong with a 40 car entry in F2 with everyone paying £100k a pop?  That way if an oligarch's kid is talented they will show it by qualifying in a highly competitive environment. 

[noikeee]

I think FIA have already done enough imposing quite a strict superlicence system. You can't get your child into F1 only because you're rich, it's pretty damn hard to get a superlicence so everyone who gets into F1 nowadays is a pretty competent racing driver even if it's not always 20 best drivers in the world.

There's not much more that could be done unless you want to arbitraliry decide who can and cannot own a team which could of course lead in a very dangerous direction.

Yeah I think I agree but a secondary problem is its already ridiculously prohibitively expensive to run F3 and F2. So the superlicense points scheme hasn't really fully solved the problem, but passed on the problem to another level, because increasingly only crazy super wealthy people or drivers already contracted to F1 teams, can race in those categories at all. And now those categories are pretty much the only path to F1 as that's the only way you'll get superlicense points.

[Imperial]

This is not... entirely correct. Yes, if you have a son or daughter and you want to bring him/her to the top in tennis, then you have to spend about 250.000 euros a year until they can earn money on the tour. (I'm not guessing, I used to work for the Dutch tennisfederation as a qualified pro and was involved in their youth-program.)

However. Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg and Roger Federer or their parents spend about as much on tennis per year as you and I if we are amateur players. They had the luck of being EXTREMELY talented and lived in a country when they had excellent scouting and finanicing systems. (Sweden had the SAAB-program in the 70's and 80's, Switzerland just has a very smart federation).

Oh, and I remembered something: Alain Prost famously said that in his whole life he had spend about 750 French Franks on his motorsport-career. For his first kart. The rest was paid for by Elf. SO perhaps the FIA could counter the money-problem by starting a fund for the very talented? So they can pay for one or two supertalents to get a seat in F1?

Great information, but while not 'pay tennis players', I bet that on tennis forums people will complain that those players only made it because they had access to a great scouting system!

[absinthedude]

It would be better if there were more teams. One tangible difference in the past was that there were more teams, more seats....which meant that there was capacity for a handful of "pay drivers" as well as plenty of drivers who arrived in F1 based purely or mostly on talent/results. We all knew that at least one of the Minardi or Tyrrell drivers brought money/sponsorship....but it didn't matter because there was likely a driver in the other car on merit. 

 

It strikes me that part of the problem today is the perception that pay drivers are taking seats away from more deserving drivers.....though there's no proof  that Ilott or others would be on the grid if things were different it does - at least on the face of it - seem unfortunate that he's not and Mazepin is.

[noriaki]

It's easy enough to do something about it. You make talent the currency rather than actual currency. And the way to do that is with cost-cutting and an open entry list. This is not rocket science.

And you do the same thing with the lower formulae. I don't like them being one make, I'd rather there be options available. But they are one make. Fine. So why is there no benefit of cost-saving by having only one manufacturer? Leave aside Dallara's business model is to gouge on spare parts for the moment (the Xbox model). Do what Palmer Audi did, do what W Series does. Don't let hugely expensive engineers engineer spec cars. Take them all off at the end of the race and allocate them randomly for the next one. What's wrong with a 40 car entry in F2 with everyone paying £100k a pop? That way if an oligarch's kid is talented they will show it by qualifying in a highly competitive environment.

Yeah, having actual racing teams in junior series makes very little sense from F1's point of view atm. It would serve a purpose if it was development ground for teams to promote to f1 too but right now, it ain't serving as one. In a spec series that's not top of the ladder it makes little sense to have them compete with each other. They just hike up the costs for the drivers and uneven the playing field.

Only a single GP2/F2 team has "promoted" to F1 this millennium. That being Campos Racing. The last F3000 team to progress to F1 was (sorta) Paul Stewart Racing, but even that project was started quite from a clean plate. Purely speaking, it was Forti in 95.

[William Hunt]

they've created a system that encourages it and that makes it almost impossible to reach F2 or F1 if you don't come from a muli-millionaire family so what makes you believe that the FIA who created this sytem  now would suddenly change it?
That a new team now has to pay 200 million $ just to enter is not exactly a sign they want to change the situation, on the contrary.
Autosport and in particular F1 already had a very bad reputation with the general public as a sport meant for the ultra rich, that image only got worse over time and it's at it's lowet point right now.
The FIA doesn't care at all, neither do the team owners or Liberty. But they should care about their image and about it remainging a real sport and not a business where billionaires can buy participation or even buys success. But they don't care really as long as they can take a share of that wealth (in particular Liberty, you reallly shouldn't have a private company running a sport to gain profit from it, it should always only be a federation).

[William Hunt]

F1 is not a sport, it is more a pissing contest for people with $$$ to throw around.

 

It has always been this way.

 

This is just not true at all, in the '60s & '70s so many drivers of a not so rich background reached F1. Some build an F1 car with  very little funds and participated in F1, they were not poor but just middle class people. Jim Clark was the son of a sheep former. Many who reached F1 were just trained as a mechanic, that's not exactly an upper class job is it. Someone like Jan Lammers worked as a youngster at a slip school where he had to wet the track. Yet he managed to win an F3 title and reach F1 and there are countless examples of it. Rich kids like Didier Pironi (and he even made it without using his family's fortune, he convinced Elf to give him the budget) were not the norm at all in those days, Pironi was looked at as a spoiled rich kid by other drivers.

 

It started to change from the '90s in particular and from then on it started to run completely out of control.

[RA2]

For some it is not about winning but having fun in a fast car. You can have only so much fun in a lower category but if you have the means, want to drive the fastest car and you have the skill required why should anyone stop you?

Motorsport is a sport to some and an expensive hobbies for others. For some it is family money, for others it is connections that get them money to fulfill their hobby for a short while.

[HeadFirst]

It's almost the wrong end of the telescope.  It's not the megarich buying teams so their offspring can wank around at the back in F1.  It's that their presence automatically means someone else cannot get a drive.  And that's because of the 20 car closed-shop nature of F1.

 

At least when de Cesaris was buying a ride at Minardi back in the day, it meant Nannini could get a drive as well.  And it wasn't as if Minardi being there meant that Jordan couldn't be there as well.

 

Didn't Stroll buying Force India, essentially save the drive for Perez? Not that I am trying to justify Lance's presence in F1, with 3 podiums and a pole (in the rain) he has done that on his own.

[Garndell]

I do think they should stop crime bosses, kingpins, drug lords, corrupt businessmen etc from funding F1 but I have little problem with the stinking rich buying teams.  I do however think nepotism should be done away with.

[maximilian]

the sport is rotten the core.

 

This statement stands on its own.

[maximilian]

I do think they should stop crime bosses, kingpins, drug lords, corrupt businessmen etc from funding F1 

 

No more F1, then... 

[efuloni]

The budget cap will surely help. If you are financially healthy, you dont need to accept the billionaire kid whos trying to buy your seat.

[New Britain]

Never heard of Peter Revson then?

I'm not sure whether you're saying that Peter Revson's family bought his rides or rather that without money he wasn't good enough to race in the top tier, but neither would be correct.

His family was rich, and he inherited some money (by today's standards, enough to buy him a seat in say F3 for a few races), but when he chose to make racing his career they cut him off. As for his ability, in 30 F1 starts he had 8 podiums and 2 wins. He also won pole at Indy and finished 2nd, which took both a lot of skill and a lot of balls.

[billm99uk]

 And...other than the rather upsetting dropping of Perez....what harm has the Stroll family done?

Well TBH I think Papa Stroll might have been a bit less popular in this forum right now if Checho hadn't actually managed to 'fall upwards' so to speak ;)

Then again, given Perez's post-firing performances, maybe Christian should tell him that Albon will be back in 2022. It seems to motivate him pretty well...

[billm99uk]

Maldonado's reputation really plummeted towards the end. From GP2 champion and Pirelli-GP winner to getting listed along side Inoue and Rosset.

Poor Pastor. You can actually win an F1 race (not even by accident!) and still get rated with Inoue & Rosset ;)

[Imperial]

I'm not sure whether you're saying that Peter Revson's family bought his rides or rather that without money he wasn't good enough to race in the top tier, but neither would be correct.
His family was rich, and he inherited some money (by today's standards, enough to buy him a seat in say F3 for a few races), but when he chose to make racing his career they cut him off. As for his ability, in 30 F1 starts he had 8 podiums and 2 wins. He also won pole at Indy and finished 2nd, which took both a lot of skill and a lot of balls.

Peter was an excellent talent, who my understanding is used a decent chunk of his money (from the family) to, shall we say assist him on his way to F1, ultimately racing for a team being sponsored by his own family's business, Revlon. I don't think it is argued that he started off with a financial advantage over others when he embarked on a career in racing, though I am not suggesting he paid to contest each of his F1 races.

I understand there has been some debate behind what rides/tests he paid for on his way, and over how much the family had an issue with him driving at a Yardley sponsored team. This ain't the place to reignite that debate though, and I don't intend doing so, but rest assured my friend I am holding Peter up as an example of a good driver.


.

Edited by Imperial, 24 December 2020 - 14:38.

[shure]

I don't see the problem tbh.  I don't see much of a difference between Stroll having his dad pay for his seat or Perez having his backers pay for his.  There's a broader argument whether pay drivers as a whole are the right call but I don't see how the source of the money makes any difference (assuming nothing illegal).  

 

If I was a billionaire (fat chance) and my kid wanted a career in any particular sport, I'd fund him/ her.  What else is your money for if not to help your loved ones?

[William Hunt]

I don't see the problem tbh.  I don't see much of a difference between Stroll having his dad pay for his seat or Perez having his backers pay for his.

 

There is a difference since Sergio Perez deserves his F1 seat purely on merit, even if he initially managed to enter F1 because of his backers. But he also was a Ferrari junior driver in those days, so Ferrari believed in his talent, and in his second year of F1 Perez almost won the Malaysian GP in a Sauber (some believe Perez didn't win that race because he received some kind of team orders of Sauber not to overtake the leading Ferrari, that remains a mistery). 
So his talent already blossomed very early in his F1 carreer. 

Red Bull hired him only because of his driving talent (so did McLaren during the season he drove for them) and not because of his backers. Perez has also received an offer from Renault in the past and that also wasn't because of his backers.

 

I somehow doubt seeing team like Red Bull, Renault or McLaren considering Stroll because of his talent / driving skills. I'm not saying that Stroll has not talent, he is a pretty good driver and certainly has a considerable amount of talent.
Whether he deserves to be in one of those 20 seats in F1 on merit or whether there aren't better drivers as Stroll in F2 (or even in Formula E) is another matter. Whether Stroll would have won an F3 title and made it to F1 is also a different matter, personally I seriously doubt it.

Edited by William Hunt, 24 December 2020 - 15:37.