Forum topic: Driver Salaries

That would make a lot of sense. Ridiculous wage demands should stop drivers being contracted too far into the future.

That may be true Adam as his power position will be superb, however from what i have seen a member of staffs power position doesnt seem to drop as their contract gets shorter. Not sure if thats the case for all?

I have seen it drop. However, I think that power position is actually a number and it continually drops. We only see it when it changes into another bracket like everything else in this game.

The trouble with the inflation in the bonuses comes from teams that don't expect to win. Why not pay a driver a half decent salary and exorbitant bonuses if there is no expectation to finish on the podium?

Artificial carrot on a stick incentive.

Also - I do wonder how the change of mind calculations are done for when an offer is CLOSE to being good, ie, they want just a season less before all is acceptable.

Lowering the term by one season, for example just now, then messes up all other ticked areas, and suddenly the bonus demands are higher than 3 seconds ago.

This follows absolutely no sense and adds to the randomness of contracts; and I suspect also adds to the inflated wages/bonuses.

Hi Frank I was having a bit more of a think about the current set up and im sure you have this in mind but i wanted to point out something about this system.

I am assuming that as per you first comment being aware of this set up you were hoping that due to the price being inflated people simply wouldnt want to hire these drivers and the price would stagnate?

If this is the case I assume that the Market value is set based on hired drivers? That way those who arent hired and are getting $0 wouldnt be bringing down the costs?

Based on my first example the price would get to a point that no one will want to hire drivers expecting this kind of money. (Assuming this is a superb driver for this example)
Now if my assumption of the average being calculated based on hired drivers only is right this would mean as long as there is a single driver hired by someone getting a large amount of money no one will hire drivers of this caliber. Not until there are no superb drivers contracted will the average drop.This could be several years until all contracts are gone.

Now if the "superb" drivers suddenly become locked out due to the cost suddenly we will have a lot of people searching for "Good"drivers.
We then get to the same point where the price will inflate to a point where no one can afford "Good"drivers.
Again the market would be locked out until all "Good"driver contracts have cleared.

We then have everyone looking to hire "average" drivers and the issues compounds itself.

Eventually we will get to a point where all drivers will be inflated to a similar price and people cant afford them and the only option will be to hire Youth drivers on really long contracts and promote them as soon as they are old enough. We will then just have to put up with low moral and loosing them as soon as their contracts need to be renewed.

I hope im way off with this, but thought i would raise it as a possible issue in the near future. (The things you think of at 3am when you can't sleep)

@Tim: We have way to many drivers on the market and way to few teams to make this an issues as I think we could sign 20-30 drivers each before we would even come close to running out of drivers.

The system is meant to be market value for such Superb & Good drivers but this doesn't mean that all drivers will look for full market value and the greatest aspect is "we; the managers establish the Market Value for these drivers" So if we don't want to spend Market value for Superb drivers then we don't!!

I think everyone is still thinking about the game the wrong way in the fact that everyone wants "the best" but do you really need the best at a huge price when average is good enough?

Think about it this way does Manor need Alonso or Vettel in their cars to win the championship or to win races? Think hard about it before you answer!!

Alonso & Vettel would still be racing around at the back of the field since the car isn't developed enough so where should Manor spend their money?

Superb Designer? Nope Since they cannot afford a superb designer yet and they still have terrible car so an Good or less designer can still improve their cars to a certain level at a fraction of the cost of an Superb designer.

People need to think about this game in steps from Commercial to design to Winning races to winning championships. Stop expecting to have it all in one season or two as it now takes time to build a winning team.

I would agree in case of Manor, Minardi or any other new team, but after managing a team in Williams area I disagree Sure it would have been lovely to re-hire Newey but I was not in a financial situation to do so, even with less talented designers AND no-name youngsters the financial situation was not in an area to keep anything close to a balance between need to stay (not actually get better)

Finding new talents is possible, but time consuming and takes a long breath. And once you found the gems you are in danger to loose them to Team Destroyer, Lotus and so on cause you can not afford them when the wages are continuously increasing exponentially.

edit: on the bright side, enormous wages/bonus might ensure that the overall balance of talented staff is not bundled into one, or a handful of teams - so finding the correct key persons to ensure success + upcoming and cheap staff is the option to go for

To be honest Phil, I think your old team had more money than mine before you left it.