Driver Contracts

[Hondo]

By and large, a contract is a legal agreement between two or more parties for the benefit and protection of the involved parties that usually involve the exchange of goods and/or services for some form of valuable consideration. Although legally binding, unbreached contracts can be easily dissolved if all parties involved agree to do so. Ultimately, a contract forces a party to continue in an agreement that is no longer to their liking or benefit.

I have never seen a Formula 1 driver's contract. As far as I know, I don't know anybody that has actually seen or read a Formula 1 driver's contract. Are they direct employees of the team, sub-contractors, individuals under personal services contracts, or are they employees of a desk drawer corporation that lives in Switzerland or Monaco?

People talk about the driver contracted to be number 1 or number 2 driver on a team. Has anybody actually seen this? Everybody from the Ferrari dream team days says there was nothing in the contracts making Michael #1 and Rubens #2 drivers. The same for Alonso and Hamilton at McLaren. I can understand various performance standards being used to determine which of the drivers the team would consider to be their #1 driver but that is specific to ability, not the driver per se.

How do all you people know whats in the contract that allows you to speak so assuredly of a driver's status and the team's expectations? Where are they posted? I'd like to read one. I'd like to see a contract that specifies a driver must always support the other driver, in all areas, including the distribution of new and improved parts. I could easily see something in the contract that requires a driver to abide by team decisions for the benefit of the team but thats not an outright designation of #1 or #2.

Who has a copy of a contract?

[GridGirl]

Ive only ever seen one F1 driver contract although I have seen quite a few contracts for F1 testing and other formula.

I don't know who else has a copy of the contract for definate but the one I saw was at the drivers solicitors. I was picking pot luck client numbers at random out of my head when I picked the driver in question's client number. He is still in F1 although the contact I saw is now some years out of date and the driver is with a different team.

The contrcts aren't that huge in length and payments are disclosed in US dollars. This was a bid odd because the driver or the team in question you would assume wouldn't use the dollar as a functional currency ordinarily. I suppose it's just a common denominator.

You would actually be suprised how much contract related stuff is conducted through email. I've seen informal f1 driver agreement on emails in the past too.