Comments on: Drivers expose holes in FIA budget

By: Alastair

Alastair — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:38:04 +0000

These guys risk their lives and spend all their time travelling and racing, earning the FIA bazillions of dollars. Why should they not earn Top Whack, especially as they have a very short time to do it in?

By: GeorgeK

GeorgeK — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:56:28 +0000

Great info SKMDC, just the comparison I was looking for.

Now if someone could find out what WRC and Touring car drivers pay for their licenses, we’d have a broad comparison to assess.

By: SuperKarateMonkeyDeathCar

SuperKarateMonkeyDeathCar — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:29:44 +0000

After a couple minutes searching on Google I found that an FIA license to race in IMSA (American Le Mans Series) costs $200 http://www.imsaracing.net/2006/credentials/FIAEntrantsLicense.pdf
A license for Grand Am costs $225 http://admin.grand-am.com/assets/2009FIAEntrantLicense.pdf
A license to race in the Sports Car Club of American (SCCA) costs $225 http://www.scca.com/documents/Club%20Forms/form-fia-license.pdf
I don’t think the FIA raised the costs for licenses for any of these other series. If the FIA was really interested in paying for driver safety, they would have applied a licenses fee hike to every license holder.

By: staggington

staggington — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:20:53 +0000

i really think the teams and drivers should go on strike/boycott if it gets any worse. although im sure bernie would try to ‘sue the pants’ off every team if no1 was to show up at Melbourne. It wouldn’t be uncommon for that to happen in sports. off the top of my head i know the NBA went on strike in 1997 or round then which resulted in the teams playing only half the games that season…BUT negotiations did result in their favour.

By: DG

DG — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:15:23 +0000

It is interesting that Max has the drivers thinking about Safety Issues, when he has everyone else thinking about Green issues.
Wouldn’t it be more to the point if the FIA was paying Mercedes or another manufacturer to develop green/hybrid/zero emission FIA official cars and Safety Car? Wouldn’t it be more to the point if he was asking the teams to submit ideas for greener/cleaner motorhomes and lorries?
I think this is more Max spin, just wanting the money for money’s sake. Notice this is FIA money we are talking about, not FOM money!

By: chaostheory

chaostheory — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:15:53 +0000

The most … ugly in this whole story is Mosley’s way of thinking: “We spend a fortune on safety and most of it is for the benefit of the drivers” – they’ve spent that fortune a couple of decades too late; after all those deaths in F1 they should increase safety (which they did) and do not charge a cent – not from drivers. The sentence i cited sounds as bad as: thanks to us you wont die on the track – now pay us.
I don’t think F1 licence should be free, but Mosley’s argumentation of why drivers should pay as much as he wants is completely wrong.

By: patrickl

patrickl — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:10:31 +0000

Off the top of my head, I’m not even sure most sports have licensing costs for individual entrants.

Oh come on, doesn’t every sport where you enter a competition require licence fees?

I mean they have to register the players, set up a competition, supply referees and what not. At the very least the administrative costs will have to be paid when you enlist for some competition.

By: patrickl

patrickl — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:03:49 +0000

From what I understood they are still complaining about the 2008 hike. They were obviously forced to pay last year before the start of the season, but have been fighting all year to get the fees corrected.

sought to resolve the issue privately with the FIA throughout the 2008 season

and they simply want to go back to the 2007 fees after a realistic indexation:

Therefore, the drivers have offered to pay the 2007 Super Licence fees adjusted upwards by inflation for the 2008 season with a corresponding increase for the 2009 season.

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 21:58:56 +0000

According to the drivers:

The closest Licence Fee in the world is NASCAR in which each driver pays $4,000 per season

To put that into perspective, based on 20 drivers racing this year, F1 drivers will pay an average of €86,020 each, which is $111,344.

Do F1 drivers earn 27 times more than NASCAR drivers?

By: Fi

Fi — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 21:43:42 +0000

They are probably protesting the fees this year because they didnt find out about the price increase last year until after they had signed for their new licenses. The GPDA tried to talk to Max last year but that got no where so now they are making the issue public and holding back on signing their super licenses for this year.