The salaries of Formula 1 drivers should not have been exempt from the new-for-2021 budget cap, according to McLaren boss Zak Brown.
Formula 1 will introduce financial regulations for the first time in 2021, with each team prohibited from spending more than $175m per season.
But the respective salaries of the race drivers, along with other aspects such as marketing, heritage costs and power unit development, will not be included.
“I think drivers should have been included in the budget cap, whatever that budget cap is,” said Brown.
“I think what that would do is it would force teams to make decisions on where they want to spend money.
“It wouldn’t necessarily, if you felt driver made the biggest difference, keep paying your drivers what you’re paying them today, but I think it would have put pressure on the teams to figure out where do you get your biggest value.
“It wouldn’t have automatically reduced their salaries, but it would have forced teams to make more decisions on where to spend their money.”
Brown added that a lower budget cap would be more beneficial for the entire championship, but reckons a decent compromise has been found.
“[The ideal figure] was $150m plus fewer exclusions. Now it’s $175m plus more exclusions.
“I think what was presented in Bahrain [in 2018] was a better financial model that would have produced the same race results, maybe even arguably better race results because it would concertina the field that much more.
“For your shareholders, you like to provide them a return, and because we will run at the budget cap, had the budget been less, that would have provided a better return.
“But there’s compromise, the guys spending a lot more obviously wanted it to be higher.”
Discussion about this post