DEREK BELL
The Legend
Much has been made of Lewis Hamilton’s new three-year contact with Mercedes, which is estimated to be worth an eye-watering £110,000 a day. My reaction on first hearing this was to swear profusely. When I made my Formula 1 debut with Scuderia Ferrari back in 1968, I was paid £500 per Grand Prix and £250 per F2 race. I doubt that my team-mate Chris Amon earned much more, and he was already an established star by then. As such, I must admit to feeling just a little jealous towards the reigning Formula 1 World Champion. That, and doubtful that he is worth the money.
By that, I should point out that I don’t begrudge Lewis for landing such a fat retainer, and applaud his management for having brokered it. I mean, Mercedes aren’t going to pay him tens of millions of pounds unless they feel they ’re going to recoup their investment several times over. He is the benchmark driver, after all. Hamilton is freakishly gifted and worth his weight in publicity value. My problem with his rumoured deal is more to do with the fact that TV audiences for F1 are in freefall, while several teams are haemorrhaging before the season even starts. How can any driver be worth the sort of money that equates to the annual operating budget for one of the smaller squads? It seems that a week doesn’t pass by without the minnows bemoaning how current running costs are unsustainable, so Lewis’s deal only adds fuel to their argument.
The thing is, stars from any era have earned big bucks, but it’s all relative. I have never hidden my admiration for Sir Stirling Moss, both for his on-track achievements and his role as a global ambassador for motor sport. He was the prototype for the professional wheelman as we know it in that he was paid to race. He didn’t pay for the privilege, and he topped up his income by becoming a commodity. He used his image to promote everything from Woodbines to airlines via all things in-between. However, the great man has said many times that, even in his best year, his earnings were on a par with a top London surgeon’s. And you must remember that he contested as many as 50 races in a single season and generally paid his own expenses. How times have changed.
Of course, some readers will be thinking: ‘Well, that’s all very well Derek, but that was then. What about footballers, tennis players and the like?’ True, the best performers in such sports also earn staggering sums, but it’s worth pointing out that Lionel Messi or Roger Federer mostly rely on their God-given talent in order to get results. They’re not reliant on an army of technicians. In Formula 1, teams employ hundreds of people to propel drivers around a track for an hourand-a-half every other weekend and, even then, there are only six cars, maybe a couple more, that are capable of winning unless something strange happens. As such, you might be the most naturally gifted driver in the world, but you will never reach the top unless you have the best equipment.
Formula 1 is meant to be motor sport’s premier category but, from my vantage point, it has lost the plot. Scroll back a decade, and manufacturers left in droves as the economy tanked. I think it’s about time that the current rights holders pressed the re-set button and came up with new rules that set out the maximum a team can spend in a year, drivers included. That might seem a little fanciful, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be implemented and, just as important, governed properly.
While I’m having a whinge, I must say that I do not like the new ‘Halo’ safety structure. I’m all for protecting drivers, though I accepted the risk when I was competing; motor sport was dangerous and that was part of the appeal. It should be entertaining for those paying to watch it, and Haloes mean you can see even less of the driver. I want to be able to identify a driver in an instant, and I want to see him working at the wheel.
But let’s not end on a negative. This column is being written a few weeks before this year’s F1 season gets underway. Despite my reservations as to where the category is heading, I know I will regress to being just an enthusiast the moment the cars blast off the line for the first time, and I doubt that will ever change.
As a confirmed Ferrari fan, I’m hoping that the Scuderia might finally come out on top after years of underachieving, but I wouldn’t bet against Lewis taking his fifth title. He has more than a hundred million incentives to do so, after all.
‘HOW CAN ONE DRIVER BE WORTH THE ANNUAL OPERATING BUDGET FOR ONE OF THE SMALLER SQUADS?’