McLaren Racing CEO Calls For Driver Salary Cap Amid Hamilton Contract Saga

F1 teams will operate under a $145mn budget cap in 2021, but drivers’ salaries and a few other costs will be excluded from this cap.

McLaren racing CEO Zak Brown - Formula1news.co.uk

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has called on Formula One to agree a driver salary cap to help make “racing teams more sustainable”, in line with the other steps being taken to achieve this goal.

Speaking this week, Brown said: “I think all the team bosses supported putting in a driver salary cap.

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“I think you have that in the majority of other sports around the world. I think Formula 1 needed to, and is changing, its financial profile to make these racing teams sustainable.

“I thought that the drivers should have gone into the [budget] cap in the first place,” the McLaren CEO added.

Continuing, Brown said there are two ways to go about capping F1 drivers’ salaries.

“You can do what has now been proposed and have a $30m cap and decide how you want to spend that amongst your two drivers.

“Another area I would actually have liked to have seen was to have put the drivers into the initial salary cap, whatever that salary cap is I think you would raise it, and then give the team flexibility on how do you want to spend your money,” he added.

Brown’s latest comments on the matter come amid Sir Lewis Hamilton reportedly struggling to agree a contract with the Mercedes F1 Team due to him demanding a pay rise, in addition to a couple of other sticking points.

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Hamilton previously indicated that he wouldn’t be in favour of a driver salary cap as he believes some drivers in particular add a lot of vale to Formula One and deserve to be paid considerably more than the rest of the field.

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