Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Driver salaries 'absurd' - Mosley

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Former FIA president Max Mosley has labelled driver salaries in Formula One as "absurd".

Lewis Hamilton's new three-year contract at Mercedes has seen much speculation about the double world champion's salary, with Hamilton reportedly earning up to £100million over the period of the deal. Mosley, who was FIA president from 1993 to 2009, says teams should be given equal funding which would reduce the amounts earned by drivers.

"It is absurd," Mosley told GQ. "If I was a dictator in the sport, each team would have the same money and you could spend more on the driver or less on the car or vice versa. All the driver worries about is what he earns compared with the other guy."

With F1 drivers risking their lives when out on track, Mosley says safety needs to continue to be improved but is pleased with the work done by the sport so far.

"The conventional wisdom was if you made it safe fewer people would watch. The opposite has happened. The reason I care about the safety is because I have seen the consequences. A terrorist incident that kills 10 people is a massive story. Until recently, 10 people were killed on roads every day. America turned the world upside down after 9/11, but more are killed on the road."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.