Drivers who make it on talent not Daddys money

[rossp1]

What you are referring to here is "The lucky sperm club" syndrome.
Yes you need money to compete at the top levels in this sport and yes I have been guilty of topping up my son Darren,s budget from time to time in 8 years of open wheel/gt racing in the US and Australia.
I don,t know of any other way.
I have always said that Motorsport has something for everyone at every budget level.
If your budget is $1000 per year you can go do motorkhanas.
If your budget is $100,000,000 go race F1.
And there is something in between for every budding aspirant.
This syndrome is not limited to V8 Supercars.Look at the history of CART. Over the last 10 years a lot of Brazilian wealth was tipped into CART teams to back up young well Brazilian heeled aspirants .
Remember Hiro Matsu****a as well ?
It is what it is. I am sure that a lot of young kids in karting are heavily funded by parents there is no other way.Even Jason Bright,s parents mortgaged everything in the early days to get their kid with obvious talent into the scene,and it payed off.

[Lyris]

Better example there Ross would have been one Mark Winterbottom, who's parents are greatly appreciative of the mob at SBR for giving their son a fair go with the Konica drive despite a shear lack of cash.

(Not-so-Bright is not so popular 'round here; not disliked, just no popular)

[rossp1]

Point taken!

[Evomike]

Originally posted by jetsetter
That was Fabian Coulthard who drove brilliantly all weekend.

David Coulthards cousin no less. Maybe there is something in the theory og genes.

[vatuloa]

Parents who have businesses can use that Business to sponsor and then it's the Tax department that is doing the sponsorship.

[Aarrgh8]

Nothing against the SORFs, but in Supercars, the better drivers seem to be those who you could call SOSPs - 'Sons Of Supporting Parents'. Mark Skaife, Jason Bright, Jason Bargwanna, Glenn Seton, Craig Lowndes - and Many More (of course). You could go back to Peter Brock, Larry Perkins, Bob Morris, etc for more examples. Then there's those I don't have an acronym for. (grammar) They're the drivers who did it without any overt support from their parents at all. Allan Moffat, Dick Johnson, Russell Ingall, Jim Richards, John Bowe and Many More (again). I could be wrong with a few here, but I admire the drivers who made it on their own. (Maybe that's why I enjoyed F1 so much when Nigel was beating his team-mate Nelson.) All these guys eventually earned support from the people this sport needs as much as it needs drivers.

I'm delighted that one such person joins in on 10Tenths.

[Evomike]

But even the ones who do make it on "Daddys money" must have some degree of talent, unless "Daddys money" extends to setting up the team and putting the kid in the car and running it no matter what the result then there may be someone out there who doesn't deserve to be there (I am not actually referring to anyone), even guys who have "paid" their way to success would more than likely got there anyway. To say that anyone is less of a driver because they paid to get their drive is unfair as most are good anyway.

[GTRMagic]

The worst case of this is obviously Roddler, where despite the resources, something didnt click. This is similar to some of the pay guys in CART in recent years as well, the budget is strong, the resources are fine, but the drivers arent disciplined, and end up crashing and bashing all over the place.

There are some bloody good steerers out there who can drive a car well, such as the Kelly Bros, Weel, Brighty etc etc but in some cases, there are suggestions they are not absolutely in possession of car setup skills to the manner of other drivers in similar cars (e.g. M.Skaife, G.Murphy)

Somehow, a driver having to learn from the ground up improves their level of technical ability because they are fighting for drives as opposed to knowing the next payment will get them thru...

[Mattracer]

Doesn't it also help that the more well-heeled teams can afford large numbers of technical staff who can decipher whatever amount of info comes from the driver and get something happening?

[GTRMagic]

Yes it does, but if you take a driver like C.Lowndes, who had access to all of HRT's technical wizardry when there for a number of seasons, doesnt seem to have absorbed it enough to translate the knowledge into his shift to big blue...

This isnt suggesting Lowndes is a SORF, more that unless the person works hard at the fullness of a responsibility, they dont actually learn things that can be used in later racing lives

[Mattracer]

I would have thought that his problem was three different teams in three years. Add to that te fact that Holden's VR-VS models he drove were very similar, and the VT-VX models were the same again. The transition between VS to VT was possibly IMO not as problematic either since nothing was fundamentally different except the overall silhouette body shape. Aero was the determining factor rather than mechanical grip.