How much for that USF1 seat? About $5 million
January 20, 2010 by SJ Skid
Filed under Prime & Option
Add former Formula 1 driver Robert Doornbos to the list of drivers who have spoken to USF1, and Campos for that matter. And while it doesn’t sound like we’ll be seeing him back on an F1 grid soon, he does reveal USF1′s asking price: $5 million.
Doornbos spoke to Dutch paper nusport.nl on a host of topics; F1 was only one. Here’s what he said, via translation:
Despite his contract with HVM Doornbos Formula 1 has not yet put out his head. “There comes a number of teams, so we examined whether there were opportunities.”
“There were some conversations with USF1 and Meta Campos was interested, they just ask around five million U.S. dollars in sponsorship money. If I would have already, I went riding in the front rather than back in the IndyCar Series Formula 1.”
A pretty messy bit of translation; I’d unpack it and say he chose to be up front in IndyCar rather than at the back of Formula 1. But there is no missing the price that USF1 apparently is requiring of its “pay” drivers.
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5 million, is that all? Sounds like a deal considering that Juan Lopez guy had to get 8 million.
What Doornbos said was that if he had that kind of money he would get a front running car ride in Indycar rather than a back of grid car he would get to drive in F1.
Which makes Doornbos a worse culprit that Jr Jr in case of PR disaster. Jr.Jr in his latest tweet/press release, has tried to convey he had F1 ride but he consciously decided to move to NASCAR. Instead of stopping here he had verbal diorrahea and goes on to say, driving in NASCAR is downgrade from technology front, Not a good thing to say Jr. if you want to make friends in your new workplace.
Could be, W4E. Yep. Didn’t realize Dutch was among your many talents!
I’m so glad USF1 stuck to their guns and didn’t offer up their cars for rent (not!).
$5 mill does sound a little cheap, but maybe you get what you pay for.
So when Davidson was saying that he could have a drive if he had 5 million he was referring to USF1? Probably the cheapest guys that want a pay driver since Campos seems to be looking for 8 million or more.
Sadly for Ant it was 5 million pounds so I guess it depend on who you are. If USF1 and Campos have two pay drivers they will remain in the four last spots – there is no way for them to develop the cars when you lack driver experience (STR even with a Newey design and Buemi how is not that bad could not do well). It would be better to get a very high paying driver (read Vitaly Petrov) with which to subsidise a really good development driver (Wurz, Heidfeld etc).