124 replies to this topic

[ARTGP]

If this was about some kind of income redistribution to the average employee, it's something you can get behind, but it's not.

 

How about instead of focusing on driver salary caps, we focus on how much funding certain drivers are allowed to bring to the sport. You should not be able to buy a seat in F1. This turns wealth inequality into opportunity inequality. 

Edited by ARTGP, 15 June 2022 - 17:35.

[Cacarella]

Is that what’s stopping them from signing a superstar?

I suppose the driver could still refuse the seat if the team isn't competitive.

[New Britain]

This doesn't have anything to do with driver salary caps which is the subject of the thread. Your valid point is an issue of rich teams having a built in advantage from the pre-cost cap era. Capping driver salary will have no effect on Williams ability to build a better car because guys like Verstappen and Hamilton are not going to drive for Williams because Williams might be willing to pay them more. Does that make sense? These guys will simply drive for the team with the fastest car. 

 

If the teams with the fastest cars are fast because they used to be "rich" then that is a separate legacy issue, which is unrelated to some idea that capping driver salaries will somehow make Williams better able to compete. 

 

I think what people have in mind is something different. If we were to assigned a fixed cost per race win and per WDC for each driver, and then force each team to eat the cost in their budget, then it would force teams like RB and Mercedes to spend much less on their car to maintain their drivers, or drop their drivers for lesser achieving ones.   Without such a "fixed cost" concept, you will find that Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton will simply stay at their teams (because they are the fastest cars) while taking a smaller paycheck.  How will this help Williams? As long as the driver is free to decide his value, he will eat the pay cut so that he can stay in the fastest car. 

 

The problem with your thesis is the presumption that, at the time that a top driver signs a new contract, he knows in advance which teams over the life of his contract will have the fastest cars. In the era of unlimited spending, that was almost always true: for starters, if a team was not amongst the biggest spenders it had no chance to win a title, and scant chance to win a race.

The point of the cost cap is to make for a competition that will be less dependent on the wealth of the team owner and instead be more meritocratic. The current cost cap is better than nothing, but there are tens of millions of dollars' worth of performance-related expenses that are excluded from it, hence its flawed nature.

Your example of Hamilton choosing to stay at Mercedes for a smaller paycheck rather than going to Williams illustrates the point perfectly. If as a result of a big differential in driver costs Williams is able to spend more on developing its car than Mercedes is able to spend developing its car, over time that should enable Williams to build a better car than Mercedes could do, and that would be fine - one team is spending more on drivers whilst the other is spending more on engineering, but they are spending the same in total. They would be starting from the same position, with 'X' to spend in whatever way each thinks best.

[MikeTekRacing]

I suppose the driver could still refuse the seat if the team isn't competitive.

He will for sure refuse it. So nothing changes but their pay

[ARTGP]

The problem with your thesis is the presumption that, at the time that a top driver signs a new contract, he knows in advance which teams over the life of his contract will have the fastest cars. In the era of unlimited spending, that was almost always true: for starters, if a team was not amongst the biggest spenders it had no chance to win a title, and scant chance to win a race.

The point of the cost cap is to make for a competition that will be less dependent on the wealth of the team owner and instead be more meritocratic. The current cost cap is better than nothing, but there are tens of millions of dollars' worth of performance-related expenses that are excluded from it, hence its flawed nature.

Your example of Hamilton choosing to stay at Mercedes for a smaller paycheck rather than going to Williams illustrates the point perfectly. If as a result of a big differential in driver costs Williams is able to spend more on developing its car than Mercedes is able to spend developing its car, over time that should enable Williams to build a better car than Mercedes could do, and that would be fine - one team is spending more on drivers whilst the other is spending more on engineering, but they are spending the same in total. They would be starting from the same position, with 'X' to spend in whatever way each thinks best.

 

I'm not sure I understand this. What ensures that Williams has more money to spend on development if the drivers are included in a cost cap?  Especially in the case that Hamilton takes a pay cut so his team has the same amount of money to spend as Williams? Winning is what matters. A driver can still earn a lot of money from external endorsement simply for being the WDC. Given the choice, someone like Hamilton will always choose the path that leads to the best car even if that leads to a pay cut. 

 

The only scenario where Williams can benefit relative to Mercedes under a driver cost cap is if the high achieving drivers are assigned a price based on their achievement. Only then are Mercedes penalized by their choice of driver. As it is, the driver is free to take a pay cut and all but erase any advantage that Williams may have gained in development money. 

 

This type of tiered system for drivers already exist. Look at the driver ratings in the F1 game. A system like this would make a team choose between the "best driver" and development money. But thus far, this direction does not seem to be what others are suggesting. As long as drivers are free to set their value, including drivers in the cost cap, or even a genereal driver cap will do little to affect the competition. It will just mean the leading drivers take pay cuts and earn lucrative endorsement deals directly from sponsors instead. 

Edited by ARTGP, 15 June 2022 - 22:44.

[New Britain]

I'm not sure I understand this. What ensures that Williams has more money to spend on development if the drivers are included in a cost cap?  Especially in the case that Hamilton takes a pay cut so his team has the same amount of money to spend as Williams? Winning is what matters. A driver can still earn a lot of money from external endorsement simply for being the WDC. Given the choice, someone like Hamilton will always choose the path that leads to the best car even if that leads to a pay cut. 

 

The only scenario where Williams can benefit relative to Mercedes under a driver cost cap is if the high achieving drivers are assigned a price based on their achievement. Only then are Mercedes penalized by their choice of driver. As it is, the driver is free to take a pay cut and all but erase any advantage that Williams may have gained in development money. 

 

This type of tiered system for drivers already exist. Look at the driver ratings in the F1 game. A system like this would make a team choose between the "best driver" and development money. But thus far, this direction does not seem to be what others are suggesting. As long as drivers are free to set their value, including drivers in the cost cap, or even a genereal driver cap will do little to affect the competition. It will just mean the leading drivers take pay cuts and earn lucrative endorsement deals directly from sponsors instead. 

 

Yes, but the point of the cost cap is to make it possible for any team, not only the richest ones, to win championships. If on a level playing field a team fails to do so, we would know that that would be down to the relative inadequacy of the team, rather than its being a function of exogenous factors such as the team owner's wealth.

 

The cost cap should be a level which all teams would reasonably be expected to be able to meet after collecting FOM money and sponsorship. Then, instead of hiring the highest paid drivers, a team could put almost all its resources into building the best car, if it chose to do so.

 

It is neither realistic nor fair to expect any driver or team to break an existing contract. I would like the FIA to take the expiration date of the current drivers' longest 'hard' contract (excluding options that might never be exercised) and say that, starting at that point, the drivers' (and all employees', including the three highest paid) salaries will be included within a comprehensive team cost cap that all teams could reach or at least approach. Then we would see what is the financial value of the driver relative to that of the rest of the team.

 

If a driver were to end up being paid a shedload, I would not mind, and I think we all want the engineers and mechanics to be paid fairly, whatever that is. What I want changed, however, is no longer to have a pseudo-competition in which the deck is heavily stacked in favour of three rich teams and against everyone else.

[ARTGP]

Yes, but the point of the cost cap is to make it possible for any team, not only the richest ones, to win championships. If on a level playing field a team fails to do so, we would know that that would be down to the relative inadequacy of the team, rather than its being a function of exogenous factors such as the team owner's wealth.

 

The cost cap should be a level which all teams would reasonably be expected to be able to meet after collecting FOM money and sponsorship. Then, instead of hiring the highest paid drivers, a team could put almost all its resources into building the best car, if it chose to do so.

 

It is neither realistic nor fair to expect any driver or team to break an existing contract. I would like the FIA to take the expiration date of the current drivers' longest 'hard' contract (excluding options that might never be exercised) and say that, starting at that point, the drivers' (and all employees', including the three highest paid) salaries will be included within a comprehensive team cost cap that all teams could reach or at least approach. Then we would see what is the financial value of the driver relative to that of the rest of the team.

 

If a driver were to end up being paid a shedload, I would not mind, and I think we all want the engineers and mechanics to be paid fairly, whatever that is. What I want changed, however, is no longer to have a pseudo-competition in which the deck is heavily stacked in favour of three rich teams and against everyone else.

 

To be clear again, because I think we have regressed back to an argument for or against "cost caps" in general and I don't think I have opposed you on that. A general cost cap for the teams is perfectly acceptable. As you say, it levels the playing field. I do not dispute this.

 

I simply question how including the driver in the cost cap will change the outlook for Williams, so long as a driver like Hamilton is free to choose his salary. I cannot for certain, but I suspect that Hamilton cares more about winning than the money so will happily eat the pay cut so his team can spend more money on development, and then simply look for more external endorsements to make up the salary gap. That's what any shrewd driver would do. So in the event that this occurs, how does including drivers in the cap help Williams? It will never cause Hamilton to drive for Williams, and it will not give Williams a development budget advantage.

 

The only system that can work whereby a team has to choose between "all star" drivers and "development budget", is to define a drivers value by his ability/achievements, so that someone like Hamilton or Verstappen cannot "undersell" themselves on the books. 

 

 

With that said, if there is an argument that you simply don't want bigger teams being able to "bribe" any driver they want, with a "big paycheck", then perhaps I see your point.  However, from what I have seen in F1, drivers have never chased paychecks. They've always sought out the fastest car. The rich teams often had the fastest car, and being able to also pay the driver well tended to be an after the fact kind of thing, not the sole for purpose the relationship. 

Edited by ARTGP, 16 June 2022 - 00:34.

[ThadGreen]

Have you heard of tax?

A company and an individual are 2 completely separate things. If you pay my company that I own £1m, you have paid me personally, £0, and I have no personal tax liability on that £1m paid to my company.

There are work arounds for whatever system. Assuming the FIA finds a way to police it (their trump card being a driver can’t race without a superlicense) then I think that salaries/any financial incentive to the driver, should be within the budget cap.

 

Yes I have heard of (income) tax, I have also heard that some (most?) drivers live in Monaco or other tax havens to avoid it.  

Edited by ThadGreen, 16 June 2022 - 01:19.

[MKSixer]

These threads pop up every once in a while.  How about we cap the OPs salary.  All in USD

 

Labor, no education: 12000 per year, 

Labor, 2 years college no degree:  15000

Labor, Degree, Management:  20000

 

Degree, Intellectual work such as marketing, engineering, etc:  25000

Management:  30000

 

Advanced Degree, +10000

Terminal Degree, +15000

 

All physicians, 100000

 

Corporate chieftain, 150000

 

Where do you fall, OP and those decrying how much people make.

[New Britain]

To be clear again, because I think we have regressed back to an argument for or against "cost caps" in general and I don't think I have opposed you on that. A general cost cap for the teams is perfectly acceptable. As you say, it levels the playing field. I do not dispute this.

 

I simply question how including the driver in the cost cap will change the outlook for Williams, so long as a driver like Hamilton is free to choose his salary. I cannot for certain, but I suspect that Hamilton cares more about winning than the money so will happily eat the pay cut so his team can spend more money on development, and then simply look for more external endorsements to make up the salary gap. That's what any shrewd driver would do. So in the event that this occurs, how does including drivers in the cap help Williams? It will never cause Hamilton to drive for Williams, and it will not give Williams a development budget advantage.

 

The only system that can work whereby a team has to choose between "all star" drivers and "development budget", is to define a drivers value by his ability/achievements, so that someone like Hamilton or Verstappen cannot "undersell" themselves on the books. 

 

 

With that said, if there is an argument that you simply don't want bigger teams being able to "bribe" any driver they want, with a "big paycheck", then perhaps I see your point.  However, from what I have seen in F1, drivers have never chased paychecks. They've always sought out the fastest car. The rich teams often had the fastest car, and being able to also pay the driver well tended to be an after the fact kind of thing, not the sole for purpose the relationship. 

Your final paragraph is where I'm at. Hamilton (for example) is going to be driving for someone; I just don't want that decision to be made because of how rich the team is.

You and I have different views on whether a driver's choice of team will be affected by the salary on offer. I'll agree that the driver's expectation of whether a certain team will produce a good car will have an influence - perhaps a big influence - on whether the driver will want to be on that team. In a sport in which it can be difficult if not impossible to predict how competitive a team's car will be 2 or 3 years in the future, choosing a 'winning' car cannot be a sure thing, however, and therefore other elements can come into play when choosing with which team to sign. When I look at the behaviour of world-class athletes in free agent markets (NFL, NBA, MLB, European football, et al.), it seems pretty clear that, at least some of the time, the player will follow the money, and I don't know why we should expect racing drivers to be different.

[ARTGP]

Your final paragraph is where I'm at. Hamilton (for example) is going to be driving for someone; I just don't want that decision to be made because of how rich the team is.
You and I have different views on whether a driver's choice of team will be affected by the salary on offer. I'll agree that the driver's expectation of whether a certain team will produce a good car will have an influence - perhaps a big influence - on whether the driver will want to be on that team. In a sport in which it can be difficult if not impossible to predict how competitive a team's car will be 2 or 3 years in the future, choosing a 'winning' car cannot be a sure thing, however, and therefore other elements can come into play when choosing with which team to sign. When I look at the behaviour of world-class athletes in free agent markets (NFL, NBA, MLB, European football, et al.), it seems pretty clear that, at least some of the time, the player will follow the money, and I don't know why we should expect racing drivers to be different.

Success in massive team sports like those American sports is a different beast entirely. Any of those teams can become winnings teams if all the best players are “bribed” to come to said team. The same does not apply in F1. Williams can hire Hamilton and Verstappen if they like, and all that talent will not bring the 2022 Williams to championship contention. F1 is far more car dependent.

I realize this is our big difference of opinion. I simply have not observed a culture in F1 of chasing the money amongst F1 elite drivers. Whereas the average American athlete is flippant and will play for the team with the best check, these F1 guys are loyal to their junior driver programs and relationships that have been built over years. Hamilton had been with Mercedes forever. Verstappen simply likes the culture of RB as well as them giving him his F1 break. Leclerc came through the Ferrari junior program and bleeds Ferrari. Driver-team relationships in F1 are so much more complex and deeply woven. The choice of who a driver drives for is based on many things that have nothing to do with salary. Salary is only one of many factors and I don’t feel it is even a primary or secondary factor in the movements we see in the driver market these days. Inability to pay driver salaries is certainly not the reason Williams don’t have better drivers….

Edited by ARTGP, 16 June 2022 - 04:22.

[New Britain]

Success in massive team sports like those American sports is a different beast entirely. Any of those teams can become winnings teams if all the best players are “bribed” to come to said team. The same does not apply in F1. Williams can hire Hamilton and Verstappen if they like, and all that talent will not bring the 2022 Williams to championship contention. F1 is far more car dependent.

I realize this is our big difference of opinion. I simply have not observed a culture in F1 of chasing the money amongst F1 elite drivers. Whereas the average American athlete is flippant and will play for the team with the best check, these F1 guys are loyal to their junior driver programs and relationships that have been built over years. Hamilton had been with Mercedes forever. Verstappen simply likes the culture of RB as well as them giving him his F1 break. Leclerc came through the Ferrari junior program and bleeds Ferrari. Driver-team relationships in F1 are so much more complex and deeply woven. The choice of who a driver drives for is based on many things that have nothing to do with salary. Salary is only one of many factors and I don’t feel it is even a primary or secondary factor in the movements we see in the driver market these days. Inability to pay driver salaries is certainly not the reason Williams don’t have better drivers….

Yes, that has been essentially (if not exclusively) the historical pattern, but that has been the pattern because in recent decades it has been largely predictable which cars would be the most competitive and there was a strong correlation between how successful a car was and how wealthy its team was.

 

What I am talking about is the (intended) future, in which all the teams should be spending roughly the same as each other on developing their cars, and consequently there should be less speed difference amongst the cars and less predictability what the best cars and 'best' teams will be. If it is more difficult for a driver to predict (or at least to be confident of) which will be a winning car, he will be more open to other considerations.

 

It is conceivable, indeed it may be likely, that within the next few years the speed difference across the grid will be quite small, in which case not only will it be more difficult for a driver to choose which would be the best team for him to join but furthermore the driver himself will be the crucial differentiating factor in the success of the team. In that case, would we want the best drivers to go to the highest bidders?

[Rinehart]

Yes I have heard of (income) tax, I have also heard that some (most?) drivers live in Monaco or other tax havens to avoid it.  

Well "avoid it" is only partly true. Let's say you are an F1 driver on a salary of $40m and your company invoices said $40m for "services"... those services (racing, testing, sponsorship activities, etc) rendered in about 30 international territories annually at various rates and percentages. It's more complex than the Daily Mail would like us to be angry about! 

[New Britain]

Well "avoid it" is only partly true. Let's say you are an F1 driver on a salary of $40m and your company invoices said $40m for "services"... those services (racing, testing, sponsorship activities, etc) rendered in about 30 international territories annually at various rates and percentages. It's more complex than the Daily Mail would like us to be angry about! 

Athletes who compete in multiple tax jurisdictions are usually liable to be taxed by a given jurisdiction on the portion of their income earned in that jurisdiction. In the case of an F1 driver whose team income is in the form of annual salary, do we know how, for example, HMRC calculate the tax owed? Would they use the number of days 'working' in the UK (maybe only 4 in the case of a Ferrari driver competing in the British GP) divided by total number of days working in all jurisdictions as the % of that driver's salary subject to UK tax?

[ThadGreen]

Well "avoid it" is only partly true. Let's say you are an F1 driver on a salary of $40m and your company invoices said $40m for "services"... those services (racing, testing, sponsorship activities, etc) rendered in about 30 international territories annually at various rates and percentages. It's more complex than the Daily Mail would like us to be angry about! 

 

I'm a little confused here, you see I don't buy into the notion that drivers have set up a holding company purely for tax purposes when they live in a tax haven which exempts them for paying income tax. I can understand a driver perhaps setting up a company for liability purposes when promoting products. 

 

I have no idea as to what the Daily Mail wants "us" to be angry about, if it concerns salaries of different individuals then my opinion is that the salary of others is between them and whoever is paying the salary and it is none of my business.. 

[Dolph]

True but Audi/VW have been a massive part of the conversation about costs.

 

Audi and VW are relevant when their cars actually start a race. So far they are all talk and no action. And this for a long time already.

[Dolph]

“Therefore it’s certainly clear it’s going to be one of the main areas because you can’t simply have a [driver] salary bill in some of the top teams that is $30/40/50million when the rest of the team has to be divided by $140million."

Basically 800 people have to split what's left from 140 million after materials, overheads etc and 2 prima donnas share 50 million when it's mostly about the car.

https://the-race.com...30m-inadequate/

 

Who's forcing him to pay Hamilton that much? Its his choice.

[Dolph]

No one is saying that 'the system' should pocket the money. If the drivers in their own right have marketing value, they should be able to sell that and keep the proceeds.

 

All people are asking for is fair competition in which who wins the championship is not dependent on how rich the team owner is. It's not a difficult concept!

 

This is nonsense.

 

 

 

There is a budget cap for the teams, so they all have a pretty good chance of doing well.

 

There are only 20 seats in F1.

 

Any team that builds a car capable of victories will have world class drivers knocking on their doors offering their services.

 

Yes, you might not be able to afford a Hamilton or a Verstappen, but you only need a car that is capable of outrunning their cars by 0.3-0.5 seconds a lap and you'll have your Bottases and Ricciardos stumbling over each other to get a seat in that team. And they are much cheaper than Hamilton or Verstappen and if your car is really good, they you might even get a discount. 

 

Take, for example, the Williams of 1992-1997. A World Championship worthy team that refused to pay their drivers the big bucks and had an attitude that drivers were interchangeable. During the period of 6 years they had 4 different drivers as world champions.

[Dolph]

Reduce the salaries of the drivers, which will reduce the costs to the teams, which will reduce the budgets of the teams, which will reduce the amount of money needed to run a team, which would allow the FIA and F1 to reduce the entry fees for a team, which would reduce the cost of running F1, which would reduce the cost of venues to hold an F1 race, which would reduce the price of an F1 ticket for a fan, which would reduce the impact of a cost of living crisis. 

To draw a weird parallel from football, I hate it when fans say: Well the the team can pay what they want for an exorbitant transfer fee, it's not my money.

Actually, it IS your money. YOU pay the ticket prices, YOU buy the products that the sponsors/owners sell, so yes, it is YOUR money that is being spent. 

 

 

Football is a bad parallel. F1 will always squeeze the race promotors for as much money as they can. The fact how much drivers earn does not play into it. Verstappen could earn 1 million or 30 million. That's not gonna affect how much Silverstone has to pay F1. F1 is in business to make money -  as much as they can.

[boomn]

A superstar driver won’t drive for Alfa Romeo because Alfa Romeo has done nothing to suggest they are a WDC caliber team….

 

This reminded me that in all these discussions we are all framing these discussions based on a current F1 environment that has just entered a team cost cap era.  We don't know yet how much effect this will have in 2 years or 5 years or 10 years.  If it works like some hope and it helps smaller teams be competitive more often, then that really could change the driver market

[New Britain]

This is nonsense.

 

 

 

There is a budget cap for the teams, so they all have a pretty good chance of doing well.

 

There are only 20 seats in F1.

 

Any team that builds a car capable of victories will have world class drivers knocking on their doors offering their services.

 

Yes, you might not be able to afford a Hamilton or a Verstappen, but you only need a car that is capable of outrunning their cars by 0.3-0.5 seconds a lap and you'll have your Bottases and Ricciardos stumbling over each other to get a seat in that team. And they are much cheaper than Hamilton or Verstappen and if your car is really good, they you might even get a discount. 

 

Take, for example, the Williams of 1992-1997. A World Championship worthy team that refused to pay their drivers the big bucks and had an attitude that drivers were interchangeable. During the period of 6 years they had 4 different drivers as world champions.

You seem to believe the fallacy that, in a formula in which the teams will have roughly the same budgets for designing and developing their cars, it will be easy for a driver to know in advance which team over the life of his proposed contract will have the fastest car.

In the past that sometimes used to be the case, but the whole point of the cost cap is to narrow if not eliminate the correlation between the wealth of a team owner and the racing success of that team. Already this season we have seen that the cost cap has begun to achieve its goal.

[Dolph]

You seem to believe the fallacy that, in a formula in which the teams will have roughly the same budgets for designing and developing their cars, it will be easy for a driver to know in advance which team over the life of his proposed contract will have the fastest car.

In the past that sometimes used to be the case, but the whole point of the cost cap is to narrow if not eliminate the correlation between the wealth of a team owner and the racing success of that team. Already this season we have seen that the cost cap has begun to achieve its goal.

 

You seem to believe the fallacy that any team can come up with a strong car any year now that we have a budget gap in place. You also seem to believe the fallacy that the recent shake up of the order is proof of that.

 

The reality is that some teams still have a bigger budget than others, competitive advantages are entrenched in fixed assets as well as human capital and culture. That's why Red Bull is still at the top and Williams still sucks. That is also why Toyota never made it with their F1 team in the naughties with their big budget or why Jordan/Force India/Racing Point/Aston Martin has almost always been a podium capable team despite a relatively low budget.

 

The recent jumbling of the order is not due to the cost cap, but because major rule changes have always jumbled the order. Proof of this is in 1998, 2009, 2014 and now 2022. But teams that have done well with previous rule changes will always have chances to do well with new rule changes. There are some who screw up their design in the first year and will need a few years to recover (Williams 1998-2000, Ferrari & McLaren in 2009, Ferrari in 2014, Mercedes in 2022). If there is no major rule change a team is unlikely to shoot up or down the grid in one or two years, but rather make slow progress forward or slowly sink backwards.

Edited by Dolph, 17 June 2022 - 18:58.

[ARTGP]

This reminded me that in all these discussions we are all framing these discussions based on a current F1 environment that has just entered a team cost cap era.  We don't know yet how much effect this will have in 2 years or 5 years or 10 years.  If it works like some hope and it helps smaller teams be competitive more often, then that really could change the driver market

 

I see the point that you and New Britain are making.

Edited by ARTGP, 17 June 2022 - 19:22.

[New Britain]

You seem to believe the fallacy that any team can come up with a strong car any year now that we have a budget gap in place. You also seem to believe the fallacy that the recent shake up of the order is proof of that.

 

The reality is that some teams still have a bigger budget than others, competitive advantages are entrenched in fixed assets as well as human capital and culture. That's why Red Bull is still at the top and Williams still sucks. That is also why Toyota never made it with their F1 team in the naughties with their big budget or why Jordan/Force India/Racing Point/Aston Martin has almost always been a podium capable team despite a relatively low budget.

 

The recent jumbling of the order is not due to the cost cap, but because major rule changes have always jumbled the order. Proof of this is in 1998, 2009, 2014 and now 2022. But teams that have done well with previous rule changes will always have chances to do well with new rule changes. There are some who screw up their design in the first year and will need a few years to recover (Williams 1998-2000, Ferrari & McLaren in 2009, Ferrari in 2014, Mercedes in 2022). If there is no major rule change a team is unlikely to shoot up or down the grid in one or two years, but rather make slow progress forward or slowly sink backwards.

Yes, there will be momentum and ongoing inherent advantages for the rich teams in the initial years of the cost cap, but to believe that the magnitude of the advantages will be permanent makes no sense.

 

Do you reckon that Ferrari and Mercedes were spending $450m a year (whilst some other teams were spending only a third of that) merely because they were in a battle over bragging rights for who was wasting the most money on their Formula One program? If the advantages of a huge, expensive program were self-perpetuating, as you suggest, surely Ferrari or Merc would have drastically cut back their expenditure after they had created their systematic, permanent advantage and they would have just coasted from there.

 

It is true that the regulation changes tend to reset the winners and losers, but that is not the only phenomenon happening. As I presume you are aware, unlike in previous seasons the rich teams can no longer spend huge sums on in-season development. In Montreal today, Alpines were faster than 7-time winner Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes in both sessions. This is the 9th GP of the year. If there were no financial constraints on in-season development, do you really think it likely that Hamilton would be languishing behind the Alpines?

 

You seem to share a couple of ideas that have been stated in this thread: 1), that drivers can confidently predict which car(s) will be fastest and 2), that they will always want to drive what they think will be the fastest whilst being indifferent to how much or little they might be paid for doing so. I submit that under the cost cap the first will become progressively less possible than it ever was, and that the second is a motivation that we see in only a minority of professional athletes. 

[Ruudbackus]

Like with all other sports, F1 is business and the drivers more then anything else determine the appeal of it. Maybe not for the hardcore race lovers but certainly for the main stream followers. And if we cap it we will get sponsors paying the salary. Ronaldo earns 60 million in salary yet doubles that in sponsorship deals, Messi gets 75 million in salary and raises that to 130 million with sponsorship deals and those you cannot limit otherwise we will see more teams in trouble because especially in the rear region we have drivers bringing money to the team instead of costing money to the team. Hell we even have a team that is owned by the father of the driver. It's all about the value of the sport and it's entertainment. I don't follow all amaerican sports but the salaries there are huge, and with all respect most sports are not as globally as Formule 1 is.

Look what's going on in the golf world, players being paid excess of 100 million dollar to join a rival tour (and apparently Woods was offered near to 1 BILLION to join). The guy winning the first event earned 4,75m dollar for 4 days of golf. The roughly 1.5m Hamilton is earning for a raceweekend is a mere fee compaired.

 

In general entertainment is getting more expensive (look at concert prizes or all the streaming services there are) but as long as the cosumer consumes it, it will only get more expensive. If everybody stopped watching and or visiting F1, those salaries would drop like the bitcoin did the past month. But as long as the numbers are growing the salaries (and ticket prizes for that matter) will only get higher. Not to mention that f1 still is racing and still is a dangerous sport (at least more dangerous then soccer or basketbal where really crazy amounts are paid). Looking at the tile of the thread, life is getting more expensive so people will have choices to make. And those choices could mean that the value of f1 drops, if thats the case, the salaries will drop as a consequence. So the correlation is wrong in my opinion. 

 

Capping the salaries would not bring more money to the team (as the rest is under budget cap) so it won't improve the teams ability to provide a decent car. And putting driver salaries udner a general budget cap won't change that either as it's not just drivers wanting to work for the best teams but also designers and engineers. 

 

I don't think drivers can predict which car will be fastest, they can only hope for it. Basically the only consistent team at the top is Ferrari and that's the only team I heard drivers saying they dream of driver for (regardless if they are competitive). Although winning titles seems quite hard to them. Alonso made the wrong choices quite a few times, and i remember how many thought it was a mistake when Hamilton left for Mercedes.