Lewis Hamilton will have to pay 228,000 euros (US$335,700) for
his license to race in Formula One this year after forking out just
1,725 euros in his 2007 rookie season.
McLaren driver Lewis
Hamilton smiles before a test run in Mahon, on the Spanish Balearic
Island of Menorca, on Monday.
Only Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, the Finn who beat the McLaren
driver to the title by a single point in the final race, will pay
more.
FIA president Max Mosley confirmed that the governing body had
decided to make Formula One superlicenses far more expensive than
in the past.
"We spend a fortune on safety and most of it is for the benefit
of the drivers," Mosley said.
"A lot of the people who have otherwise been meeting the bill
said 'Hang on a minute, these drivers are all earning megabucks and
we are spending a fortune to try and make sure they are safe.'
"So hence the increase."
The FIA said the mandatory superlicense, which cost a basic fee
of 1,725 euros last year with 456 added on for each point scored in
the previous year's championship, would go up to 10,000 euros with
2,000 extra per point scored.
Hamilton won four races and scored 109 points last season to
Raikkonen's 110. The cost of his superlicense is likely to be less
than a week's wages however for the 23-year-old Briton who this
month agreed a revised five-year contract keeping him at McLaren to
the end of 2012.
Newspapers have estimated that Formula One's first black driver,
who recently moved to Switzerland for tax reasons, will earn at
least 10 million pounds a year with significant additional sums in
bonuses and from sponsorship.
Mosley said some drivers had written to him pointing out that
they, and not the teams, paid for their licenses. His response was
that he had never imagined anyone else had picked up the tab.
"The thing is, if someone is earning 30 million or whatever some
of them earn, it's not so bad," he said. "If you are down the back
end, if you haven't got a point, it's 10,000 euros.
"To people earning their kind of money, it's not a drama. I'd
settle for that, if someone said you can have 20 million if you pay
250,000 for a license."
Mosley said the extra money raised would go "into the FIA
coffers" but the governing body would also be spending far more on
safety than in the past.
He also moved to reassure Hamilton after the youngster suggested
last year, when he was chasing the title with a team already fined
US$100 million for a spying controversy, that he might be driven
out of the sport by all of the 'politics.'
"I think Lewis and everybody else has to recognize that it is a
complex sport," he said.
"We do our best but...there's probably between 50 and 100
modifications to each car between each pair of races and we are
trying to keep on top of this and make sure nobody does something
unfair."
(Agencies via Shanghai Daily January 30, 2008)
