Pay driver situation ‘out of control’ claims Sutil

Formula 1’s pay driver situation is getting “out of control” according to Adrian Sutil, who recently lost his seat to a driver with more financial backing.

Sauber has replaced both its drivers, Sutil and Esteban Gutierrez, with Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr because they bring with them more money.

Sutil, whilst recognising that pay drivers have always been part of the sport, says it’s now getting out of control to the point where money is far more important than talent to some teams.

“The budgets some drivers are paying for a year are out of control,” he told Autosport. “This is not the way it should be.

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“There were small teams 20 or 30 years ago where you could buy yourself a cockpit. Now there are less of them [small teams] and maybe it’s more obvious now.

“This is something that may never change in Formula 1, but we can make it a little more balanced.”

The rising costs in F1 has meant teams are struggling to survive on sponsorship and prize money alone, therefore they need to find other sources of funding to compete.

The German believes the teams and sport must react because pay drivers aren’t the right way to go if F1 wants to continue being a sport.

“First of all I think a few teams maybe have to do their job a little bit better to make things profitable,” he added. “Or on the other side, maybe there’s something wrong in the system.

“It would be good to have [the old times] back, and then maybe you could call it a sport again. Right now, it’s hard to say what it is.”