Many questions about F1 salary cap: 'How does Marko fit in?

From 2021 there is a budget cap of $145 million (USD) in Formula 1, but salaries are not yet covered by this amount. This seems to be happening in the future, but there are a lot of problems. Zak Brown explains why.

According to McLaren's director, all team bosses are in favour of introducing a salary cap for the drivers. The German Motorsport-Total.com reports that the idea is to allow a race team to spend a total of $30 million on both drivers. This 30 million dollars will be added on top of the already existing cap of 145 million dollars.

Budget cap and salary cap combined

Brown would prefer the budget cap and salary cap to be merged. The total budget would then be 175 million, with the big advantage that teams themselves would be a lot more flexible in how they wanted to spend the money. The American cites the example of Frank Williams in the 1980s and 1990s.

"Williams always opted for the approach of spending the money on the car itself instead of on the drivers. Other teams preferred to spend the money on drivers because they thought they could make a bigger difference that way," says Brown, who is in favour of the same scenario.

How to introduce it?

The salary cap is expected to be introduced within a few years, but what about someone like Charles Leclerc? The Monegasque has a contract until 2024 with Ferrari which states in black and white how much money he gets credited to his bank account each year. At some point, therefore, a salary cap must be announced to prevent teams from handing out contracts to drivers whom they cannot afford at all. So there are still some question marks in this area.

Moreover, there is a danger that, in future, it will no longer be the teams, but sponsors, who will then pay the drivers' salaries. The same scenario already threatens to happen to Lewis Hamilton concerning his contract extension with Mercedes.

Who else will fall under the salary cap?

It is also suggested that the three best-paid employees of the teams should fall under the salary cap. This would mean, for example, that at Mercedes, purely hypothetically, the salaries of Toto Wolff, Andrew Shovlin and James Vowles would also fall below the USD 30 million mark. "That has also been discussed, and I think the teams agree that the top three should also be included," says Brown.

But that immediately creates another problem. "I spend a lot more time working on the commercial side, which is not part of the budget cap," Brown explains about his role at McLaren. The cap only applies to things that are directly related and have an impact on Formula 1 performance.

Another example is Helmut Marko at Red Bull Racing. The 77-year-old former F1 driver is an advisor to the Austrian formation. "He takes care of the junior programmes and also AlphaTauri. So how does he fit in?". It will be some time before the salary cap is reached.