[Deemun]

Originally Posted by CATMAN

Peter Cammish - "I love the throw away lines like its £550K- £650k, lets have some perspective"

F3, Euro F3, F Renault or whatever. In F3 you have a few drivers in recent seasons with immense wealth behind them.
At the F1 end of Motorsport you have the ever present Bernie factor. Billions in the bank and billion $ or £ deals whilst the F1 teams are constantly pressured to reduce budgets whilst the paddocks are still full of bling and the car parks full of automotive exotica with private jets and helicopters and yachts in the back ground.
Bernie pockets billions and the glittering image of F1 has permeated the whole world of F3 and other formulae. A huge amount of F3 and other budgets is based on the UK team owners and team staffs demands for salaries and lifestyle. Many race teams are basically very small businesses, whereas the small local UK engineering business owner or builder with a dozen employees and similar annual turnover is driving a Mondeo or a 5 year old 5 series, look at the team cars and bling. The big "I AM" is one of the budget problems, quite often team management fancy hotel, restaurants, business class flights and more take a sizable chunk of the budgets. As they say, there is no "I" in team and God forbid that many race bosses travel within sound budgetry constraints with their team.
I don't quite buy into Edenrace's scenario about what drivers want. Team owners and management are often more concerned with trying to attain the same kind of glitz and glamour that F1 has rather than present sensible budgets that drivers and a series can handle realistically. Plus very few teams have professional business orientated managers who can make good business and budget plans.
Presenting a "Pro Look" with bling and team kit in the pit lane and on the grid is not the same as having a professionally run economically sound sensibly run business.
Find me a team boss who is really interested in the young skilled talented driver struggling and working his butt off to find a 100k per season, the Fantin and Petronas money is what runs an M5

What incentive is there in getting in a talented but under funded driver? Sure thay may help the team to win the championship but at the end of the season they will move on and the team hasn't made any real money out of them. Far better to have a wealthy under achiever who will likely stay for a 2nd season; maybe the first season the team will run them in the National class, they'll still make a very good profit and then in season two move up to the International class whether they are ready or not because that way they hang onto them.

F3 is made up entirely of very wealthy drivers or the fortunate few that sre supported by schemes such as Red Bull or RSF. Where is there a genuine under funded talent at the moment trying to compete? Probably haven't seen anything like that for 3 or 4 years now.