Paydriver

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Keeping Team HRT alive in 2010 with sponsorship money: Sakon Yamamoto
Paid £ 150,000 to Jordan for his first Formula 1 race in 1991 : seven-time Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher

A paydriver is a racing driver for a professional car racing team who brings money into the team through his own sponsors (contacts to industry or through the family) in order to keep the racing team running. In the narrower sense, it is often assumed that the addressed driver would not find a job with the addressed team without financial support.

backgrounds

The financing of a racing team is often based on several pillars. The best known is sponsoring , i.e. direct support and promotion by a company. Classic advertising, i.e. just placing a logo or product, forms a further basis. In the top racing series , such as Formula 1 , DTM or WRC , large corporations are often involved through their own works teams. Successful top teams can often buy top drivers and pay top salaries due to their level of awareness and the associated higher income.

For many teams, the paydrivers are part of the financing. Since many drivers have built up a relationship with a regular sponsor or perhaps even with a pure sponsor over the years, these drivers have the opportunity to “buy into” a team. As a rule, a share of the racing team is not acquired here, but the right to start for this team for a limited period of time.

In grassroots racing series such as the VLN it is quite common that professional teams to build vehicles in order Paydrivern to provide. This is even a separate business model here.

In Formula 1, too, the obligation of paydrivers is a common business model that has been practiced for decades. For Christian Horner , head of the Red Bull Racing team , choosing drivers “is always about finding the right balance between financial considerations and the talent of the driver”.

Niki Lauda is considered one of the first paydrivers . In 1972, Lauda bought a cockpit at March with a loan from Raiffeisenbank amounting to two million schillings .

The fact that a driver buys into a motorsport team with money does not automatically say something about missing or existing skills. Numerous paydrivers only came to individual missions, especially in Formula 1. Examples are Giovanni Lavaggi ( Pacific 1995 and Minardi 1996), Philippe Adams ( Team Lotus 1994) or Jean-Denis Delétraz ( Larrousse 1994). On the other hand, a number of drivers who began their Formula 1 careers as pay drivers managed to draw attention to themselves through convincing performances in technically inferior teams and to tie themselves to established racing teams in the long term. Some of them were later even able to win the Formula 1 World Championship. Examples of this are Michael Schumacher , Fernando Alonso or Damon Hill , who at the beginning of their Formula 1 careers bought themselves into new or unsuccessful teams such as the Jordan Grand Prix (Schumacher), Minardi (Alonso) or Brabham (Hill). However, Schumacher and Alonso received financial support from automobile manufacturers very early on. Pastor Maldonado bought Williams F1 in 2011 with financial support from Petróleos de Venezuela and was often referred to in the media as a “classic paydriver”.

According to Christian Danner , the term paydriver is a dirty word today. It is often pointed out that established drivers also move sponsors over when they switch to a new team and thus support their switch for the new team financially. Fernando Alonso is cited as an example : His move to Scuderia Ferrari in 2010 led to some Spanish sponsors such as Banco Santander now supporting the Italian team.

literature

  • Christian Eichberger: The heavy legacy of the modern donkey. Paydriver in Formula 1 . In: Motorsport Aktuell, issue 23/2013, pp. 6-8.
  • Helmut Zwickl: Niki Lauda. Reporting a career. Ueberreuter, 1992, ISBN 3-8000-3133-7

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horner: Paydriver has always been around. News from December 27, 2011 on the website www.motorsport-total.com
  2. ↑ Explicit references to the fact that Adams was chosen by Lotus solely because of his sponsors can be found in his biography on the website www.f1rejects.com (accessed on June 5, 2011).
  3. ↑ Schumacher's entry into Jordan involved a payment of £ 150,000. See Motorsport aktuell, issue 34/2011, p. 8.
  4. ↑ Frentzen is another topic for Jordan , motorsport-total.com from August 9, 2003, accessed on March 28, 2011.
  5. ↑ Auto Motor und Sport special edition Formula 1 season 2011, p. 54.
  6. ↑ Motorsport Aktuell, issue 23/2013, p. 6 ff