|
|
The news revealed by
CART team owner Gerald Forsythe that Jacques Villeneuve has turned
down a $50m offer from him to race in CART in 2003 and then return
to F1 for two more years with BAR is an indication that the top
drivers are going to have to pay more attention to the real world.
There is a major recession taking place and if the dirvers fail to
take note of this, there are going to be some careers broken and
some egos dented.
Gone are the days when a driver could
demand whatever he wanted from a team. Only one man - Michael
Schumacher - has that kind of clout in a world where money is
increasingly hard to find. The fact that Forsythe and BAR were
willing to offer Jacques $50m is extraordinary in itself, one might
even say generous. His current deal for 2003 is worth around $20m
but this was agreed in the days before the stock markets took to
tumbling and before shareholders began to look more closely at where
money was going. Admittedly in times of recession, tobacco companies
traditionally do better, but clearly there is a limit to how far
they will be pushed - and whether he likes it or not Villeneuve does
not have the clout to push them beyond that.
The problem now for
Jacques is that he has nothing beyond the end of 2003 and the
indications are that he will not be offered another deal by BAR. One
never knows in F1 whether an announcement is part of the negotiating
process and it is possible that this very public rebuff has been
designed to bring him back to the negotiating table with a little
more realism. But perhaps the door has been slammed shut.
We will see in the weeks
ahead if BAR goes out looking for someone to sign in 2003 and
beyond. Looking around the F1 scene at the moment one would pick out
Mark Webber as the obvious man to fit the BAR bill - which requires
both speed and a certain devil-may-care image. Webber and Jenson
Button would give BAR a formidable team in the future.
The big question now is
whether or not Villeneuve, who is 30, is an attractive enough
package for one of the top teams to take interest in the future. He
is a former CART champion and Indianapolis 500 winner and the World
Champion of 1997 but since making the decision to join BAR his
career has drifted without any major results. His performances when
compared to those of Olivier Panis have not really been value for
money and his attitude towards promotional work is, at best,
unrealistic. This was fine as long as his manager and mentor Craig
Pollock was running BAR, but Pollock has been ousted and things have
changed. The top teams are all seemingly filled until the end of
2004, and the rest cannot even consider paying the kind of money
that Villeneuve is asking. The message is simple: salaries are
coming down.
|
|
