F1 Gossip: Hamilton took pay cut in one-year Mercedes deal
- Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton reportedly took a pay cut to his salary in his one-year extension to stay at Mercedes this season (RaceFans)
- The report stated: ‘Hamilton was thought to be on around $40 million (£29.08m) per year under his previous deal – well over $2 million per race last year when the pandemic shortened the schedule from 22 races to 17. Reports elsewhere say he was seeking as much as $50 million for 2021 prompted a dismissive response from Hamilton on social media. RaceFans understands he accepted a reduction in his fee to $30 million.’
- Former Ferrari team boss Marco Mattiacci is being linked with a return to F1 in a consultancy role for the rebranded Aston Martin team (Gazzetta dello Sport)
- Liberty Media’s hopes of adding a Miami Grand Prix to the F1 calendar appear closer to have been boosted, with a crunch city council meeting over a race around the Hard Rock Stadium planned for Wednesday this week (Motorsport Week)
- F1 CEO and president Stefano Domenicali says the sport is aiming to finalise new engine regulations from 2025 onwards by the summer (Auto motor und Sport)
- Key members of the Brawn squad - who have continued to work at the team after it morphed into Mercedes - have admitted they though they had got its 2009 F1 car wrong ahead of what turned out to be a fairly season (Formula1.com)
- Mercedes current trackside engineer and Jenson Button’s then race engineer, Andrew Shovlin, recalled: “The only time we started to think this was properly quick was when we didn’t go testing and everyone else was at a test… in Portimao. There was a [2008] Toro Rosso there and it… was the quickest thing by miles, and… we had pretty much recovered all the performance and [were estimating that we] would be as fast with our car.
- “So you were sort of going… ‘Well hang on a minute, this means that we’re nearly two seconds quicker than anyone else’ – and then you think that we must have got our sums wrong… But nothing prepared you for when you started running it in Barcelona, and you were like, ‘Oh my God, this looks properly fast.’”
- Mercedes Toto Wolff admits that James Allison will act as an important “sparring partner” for him when he takes on his new role as Mercedes chief technical officer in July (Racer)
