Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris lower their salaries
While F1 teams are in a mandatory shutdown period, McLaren drivers have decided to stand in solidarity with their teammates by reducing their own salaries.
Over the days, the health crisis is increasingly turning into a major economic crisis, with companies forced to take protective measures to avoid insolvency due to a lack of liquidity.
Sport is not unfamiliar with the phenomenon, and teams across various disciplines are trying to organize themselves to face it. The first measure taken by F1 was to advance and extend the annual shutdown period, moving from two weeks in August to three weeks in March/April.
But with the first eight races of the season canceled or postponed and little respite on the Covid-19 front, teams are forced to take other measures, such as unpaid leave. This has just been confirmed by McLaren through a spokesperson: McLaren Group has placed a number of its employees on unpaid leave as part of broader cost-cutting measures due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on its activities. These measures have been taken to protect short-term jobs to ensure that our employees can return full-time when the economy recovers.
McLaren thus benefits from the UK government’s program to cover 80% of the salaries of affected employees if their positions are retained. The maximum limit for these earnings is set at 2,500 pounds (2,853 euros) per month. Obviously, the team’s drivers, Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris, are not affected by such a cap since their respective salaries reach 8 and 2 million dollars per season.
That said, they are contributing to the collective effort by accepting a reduction in their salaries, just as the entire management committee is. While this decision is a first in F1 until now, it is the case in more and more teams in other sports. The first among them is obviously football and its millionaire salaries. For instance, FC Barcelona players have reduced their pay by 70%, while those from Juventus have gone so far as to forgo any payment for four months in order to support the club.
To see if other teams and/or drivers will follow the same trend as a way out of the crisis and a start to the season seems increasingly remote. To the point of discussing a super-season, spanning 2020 and 2021 in order to still benefit from the crucial TV rights, which have become essential in the financial equation for teams.
With the participation of www.racingbusiness.fr
