"Cato Batista" 21/08/2015 20:55:16 ID #796

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The holidays are over, that’s the news we’d been waiting for. It’s time to get to work and be prepared for the second half of season starting this weekend at the great Spa Francorchamps circuit for the Belgian GP.

The very latest are that Ferrari is retaining the popular Kimi for another season, all that anticipation about BOT going to Maranello not being true after all. The rumor is that Ferrari didn’t want to pay Williams $14 million to release Bottas and instead prefers to wait for 2017 when the Finn finishes his contract with Frank.

Another interesting news in this last weeks was the publishing of the annual team’s budgets and the driver’s salaries. Gone are the days when Ferrari was the richest team, now Red Bull has the biggest budget with 468.7m (all figures is Euros for 2015), 1.3m more than Mercedes with McLaren third with 456m. Ferrari is now a distant 4th with 418m. Then comes a big drop to the midfield teams with Williams at 186.4m, Lotus 140m, Toro Rosso 137.4m and Force India 130m. The ‘poor’ teams are Sauber with 103m and as expected Manor is last with 83m.

We know now that teams spend collectively 2600 million euros for us to enjoy F1 racing…

The gap between driver’s salaries is even bigger, it’s actually huge! Alonso is the best paid of the lot, he’s worth 38.5 million US a year to McLaren-Honda, compare that to Manor’s Roberto Mehrl at $55,000!. Number 2 is Vettel at $30.8m and then HAM $27.5m, but the current World Champion has a new Mercedes contract that it’s said to be worth $100 for the next 3 years. Kimi is next, he is making $20m this year but I wonder how much he will get for 2016, for sure less that that. Rosberg follows with $15m and the last of the big earners is Button at $11m. Most of the ‘established’ drivers make $4.4m: Massa, Hulkenberg, Perez, Maldonado and Grosjean. The bargain of the year (for team owners) are Bottas $2.2m and Ricciardo at $1.6m - that’s a deal!. 

Kvyat makes $826,000 and then the Toro Rosso rookies Verstappen and Sainz have to make with about half a million.

More radio communication restrictions between pit-wall and driver had been issued, but the most important one is that related to clutch adjustments before the start, as we already know. We wonder how this will affect the starts, specially now that Mercedes has had really bad take-offs in the last 3 races. Can’t wait to see.

Mañana.

Cato