Car Racing without Money-Chapter 402 - 165: The Elite Team I Want

F1 Driver, synonymous with the top drivers on Blue Planet.

The lifelong dream of countless professional drivers is to sit in the cockpit of a single-seater Formula car and experience the ultimate speed and passion.

In his past life, Chen Xiangbei stood at the threshold of the hall, but ultimately never managed to knock open this closed door.

Whether it was skill, sponsorship, or even identity documents, the world doesn’t listen to the reasons of a failure.

In this life, he has made a comeback through step-by-step effort and management.

The official driver contract before him is the key to unlocking the F1 door.

By signing his name, Chen Xiangbei will become the top driver on Blue Planet, looking down on everyone completely!

Taking a deep breath to calm his slightly excited emotions, Chen Xiangbei took the driver contract from Kalanbant’s hand and quickly glanced through the detailed terms.

The HRT Team offered a three-year long-term contract, which frankly isn’t a common signing period for newcomers. Chen Xiangbei hadn’t won any lower-level Formula championships, coupled with his exaggerated leapfrogging.

Under normal circumstances, the team would only offer a one-year rookie contract to test whether Chen Xiangbei can adapt to the rhythm and intensity of the F1 Paddock.

After all, there have been too many talented drivers in F1 history who start high and then drop or deviate, and no one can guarantee that Chen Xiangbei wouldn’t become the next one.

Unless the driver’s sponsorship is so vast that the team cannot refuse.

Obviously, "United Capital," which controls the absolute shares of the HRT Team, had a leading role in Chen Xiangbei’s driver contract, resulting in this long-term agreement.

Next was Chen Xiangbei’s annual salary, which didn’t have the advantages of a long-term contract, being only two hundred thousand US dollars.

You must know that during this era, F1 drivers don’t have guaranteed base salaries, meaning that regardless of whether you are a pay driver or not, there’s still a possibility of having an annual salary of zero, unlike later when there was a minimum of a million US dollars.

In 2009, within the F1 Paddock, the highest salary was Ferrari Team’s Raikkonen, with an annual salary of 45 million US dollars.

At the bottom were the pay drivers from Indian Force, Toyota, and Renault, with an annual salary of zero.

More accurately, when counting the pay, the annual salary should be negative.

Some racing fans might not understand, having no annual salary and still needing to pay to race, how is this different from paying to work?

In fact, F1 driver’s compensation consists of two parts: team payment and personal sponsorship.

To put it simply, once you become an F1 driver, you’re essentially standing at the pinnacle of this field, with a high probability of becoming the first racer of your country.

At this moment, fame, influence, and commercial value will soar!

Take the Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu as an example; when he entered, the sponsorship funds were 30 million US dollars, with an annual salary of only the base 1 million US dollars.

Theoretically, driving F1 would cost an extra 29 million US dollars.

However, this theoretical cost doesn’t account for shared endorsements between Zhou Guanyu and the team, merely his personal endorsements include over a dozen brands like ROG, Hublot, HSBC, Hennessy, Dior, Zeekr, and so on.

The income from these personal endorsements purely belongs to Zhou Guanyu himself, enough to recoup the 30 million US dollars.

If Zhou Guanyu’s performance improves slightly, such as winning a race, his personal endorsement value could increase tenfold!

Think about Miss Gu, a Winter Olympics champion, who, under the short-term promotional heat, earned over 20 million US dollars in endorsement income within a few months.

The exposure and global influence of F1, compared to the unpopular Winter Olympics sports, is more than a hundred times greater, with the only difference being the lack of championship titles.

And this isn’t even considering the salary, sponsorship, and endorsement income.

Although during this era Liberty Media hadn’t taken over operations, teams and FIA still had bonus distribution based on rankings and points.

This money ranges from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of US dollars, purely depending on the final ranking of the team and driver.

Therefore, paying to be an F1 driver isn’t called incurring a loss; accurately speaking, it should be called an investment.

If you perform well, you can easily earn back your investment within a year, and after that, it’s profitable every year.

Moreover, within Chen Xiangbei’s contract terms, there was a clear clause allowing him to take on advertisement endorsements independently.

Often, teams, although unable to participate in the personal division of drivers, can indirectly limit the driver’s advertisement endorsements through the "image rights" clause, thereby negotiating it into the team’s sponsorship, taking a share indirectly.

Top drivers may face more restrictive clauses, not only concerning revenue but even security aspects are contractually bound.

For example, Red Bull Racing Team prohibits Verstappen from riding motorcycles or rally driving, and forbids going on the track randomly as it’s deemed unsafe by management.

Rights and obligations are often equal; Chen Xiangbei earned the exemption of independent advertisement endorsements at the cost of giving up the team’s controlling rights.

Chen Xiangbei considered this trade worth it.

After all, controlling the team is merely a means, not an end.

Once the goal can be achieved from other means, then the means become unimportant.

Moreover, to be honest, if Chen Xiangbei were to manage the team, it might be a complete mess.

Just building the Lifield Technology Center and organizing nearly five hundred research engineers would be enough to overwhelm him to the brink of collapse.

Professional matters are best left to professionals; this is something Chen Xiangbei has always understood well!

The main clauses of the driver contract were fine; Chen Xiangbei didn’t care much about the detailed supplements and was about to sign his name after a rough read.