🏆🏆Alonso Retirement Rumors, McLaren Drivers, and Prize Money

Good morning. It’s been a fairly quiet week as we wait for Summer breaks to be over and teams to start ramping up to the next GP.

In the meantime, make sure to go follow Recap on Instagram and TikTok. We are ramping up content production, especially, video that I think you guys are really going to enjoy.

See you there team!

-Jake Williamson

🌎 Fernando Alonso Retirement Date…For now

Since his debut in 2001, Fernando Alonso has racked up 391 Grand Prix starts, which is the current record. A record that has been hard fought by the disciplined Spanish driver. He has hung around the grid since his debut with the noted exception of a 2 year sabbatical that ended in 2021. 

However, after turning 43, Alonso may be eyeing permanent retirement from Formula 1 according to his manager, and new executive advisor to Alpine, Flavio Briatore. 

Aston Martin have made a clear show of support for Alonso by signing him through the end of the 2026 season which will be the first season under the new regulations and the beginning of Aston’s works partnership with Honda. The question is what will Alonso do after the multi-year contract is up?

Briatore definitely states, “If you ask me if Fernando wants to continue after we finish in the contract, our last year will be 2026 for the moment.

“What he wants to do after, I don’t know. Does he want to continue for one more year?

He continues by saying, “The performance is there. You see the performance of Fernando, it’s there. It’s not a question of him losing concentration, during the race he’s always there.”

Flavio may be biased as Alonso’s manager of 22 years but he has a point. You can’t start that many races, race as intelligently as he has, and win the races he has won without an immense amount of talent. Talent that doesn’t seem to be fading even a bit. 

A great example of this awesome experience is his one stop run at Spa (2024). The Belgian GP was overwhelmed with the shock decision by Georg Russell (in the Merc) to pursue a one-stop strategy instead of the hugely favored two-stop strat. The headlines after that race were a wash with admiration for Russell and his brave run with very old tyres. However, what people failed to notice was Fernando Alonso making the same decision and successfully completing that race on that admirable one-stop strat. 

Spa is only one instance of Fernancdo Alonso’s quiet expertise and if you watch team Aston more closely for the final 10 races, you are sure to be impressed.

With all of that said, however, everyone has to retire from the F1 grid at some point. A decision that Alonso won’t take lightly. One key factor in making his decision will be his ability to see forward progression. The 2 time world champion wants to climb the ladder back to the top. That’s what you do as a top level competitor and if he won’t be given that chance any longer, then he may choose to leave the F1 life behind to go dominate in another racing series. World Endurance Championship perhaps?

🚀Headline Sprint

😥Haas doesn’t match F1’s criteria: This is purely a fun mental exercise but it can’t be helped. With all of the talk around Andretti, Hitech, and a mystery U.S. team with Otmar still trying to enter the F1 lineup, it is interesting to think about the Haas team’s bid to enter before F1’s recent popularity. According to Benjamin Durand, Haas wouldn’t meet the high standards of entering F1 today.

⚠️Who is close to a race ban: F1’s penalty points system is in place to keep driver behavior in check similar to how some road drivers can collect points on their license, so can F1 drivers. These points are issued for various transgressions and stay on your license for a year. If you get 12 in a year, you suffer a one race ban. So who is closest now? Kevin Magnussen has 10 points. Fernando Alonso, Sergio Perez, and Logan Sargeant all have 8 points.

🛞 Can a team have 2 #1’s?

Senna/Prost, Hamilton/Rosberg, and Webber/Vettel. These driver pairing should evoke a feeling of tension, jealousy, and pure testosterone fueled competition. These pairs all exemplify the intra-team rivalry that can come on from building a duo around two drivers who should be at the top of the heap. 

We know each F1 team has two drivers fielding two cars. Most of the time, the teams employ the services of a “lead driver” and a secondary driver. Although these are unofficial titles, it is clear this is how most teams work. A great example of this is Lewis Hamilton and George Russell in the current Mercedes lineup. Lewis will always be a lead driver due to his years of experience and awesome talent. 

This is all well and good, but some teams choose to employ two “lead drivers” to stack the deck in their favor. This can work extremely well, but history is littered with failed team rivalries. One that springs to mind is McLaren losing the championship partially due to  Alonso and Hamilton not getting on well.

Even though history doesn’t favor the two number one driver strategy, McLaren could be at it again with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris. 

After we saw some controversial team orders swap Lando Norris (in P1) for Oscar Piastri to take the win in Hungary, one can start to wonder if the team could start to see a familiar intra-team rivalry form again at team Papaya. 

According to team principal Zak brown, the culture at McLaren will survive a two lead driver team.

"But they race for the team. They're the types of individuals I think can race each other hard and be number one in their own mind and respect the fact that we run two number one cars. And we always have and always will."

Brown went on to acknowledge that the team order decision could be more complicated if the points gap decreases. 

"Obviously, if you get later into the championship and one driver has more of a shot than another, then you might start looking at things that you do strategically differently,"

In truth, we most likely won’t see the culture shift at McLaren anytime this year. They trail in the driver championship by too many points and the team is focused on clinching the constructor title. However, as the historic team continues to make improvements to their cars and develop their drivers, one could imagine 2025 shaping up to be a true test of their culture.

🏎 Money, Money, Money

So how do the teams in the F1 lineup make money?

In short, the teams make money through sponsorships, commercial arrangements, and merchandise. In addition to these revenue sources, the F1 commercial success gets split with the 10 teams on the grid. 

Although this doesn’t directly affect race results, this prize split can add a bit of drama to your otherwise normal race weekends. By understanding that teams have a sh*t load of money on the line when racing, you can come to appreciate the consequences of it all. 

So how much prize money are we talking?

The exact details of the prize split are well hidden, but we can make some inferences. 

According to the Concorde Agreement, the contract that governs the series, the team’s prize pool makes up 50% of the F1 commercial rights profit. The only caveat to this is if F1 revenue reaches a certain level, the management share of the profit goes up. Meaning, if F1 is more successful than expected, management takes a bigger cut. 

2022 example: The prize money came to $1.157 Billion after F1 generated profits of $2.57 Billion. This prize pot came to about 45% - meaning F1 must have beat original revenue expectations.

Bonus Payments

To add to the complexity, Ferrari gets a special “longevity” bonus for being in F1 since 1950. This bonus is estimated at 5% extra. Furthermore, teams who have had significant past successes like winning the championship also receive bonus payments. In all, the estimate for bonus payments comes to 25%.

From best evidence, the prize money left after bonuses goes roughly like this:

1st - 14%

2nd - 13%

3rd - 12%

4th - 11%

5th - 10%

6th - 9%

7th - 8%

8th - 7%

9th - 6%

10th - 5%

2023 profit share was apparently close to $1.3B. If we expect that profit to rise 10% (conservatively) then we could infer 2024 profits to be somewhere between $1.4B - $1.5B which would be split into the 10 teams the following way.

1st - $154M

2nd - $143M

3rd - $132M

4th - $121M

5th - $110M

6th - $99M

7th - $88M

8th - $77M

9th - $66M

10th - $55M

Although this prize money doesn’t make up the entirety of the commercial interests of the F1 teams, it is a meaningful amount of money. This should make the constructor fight going on right now a bit more interesting for you!

💨 Hot Laps

Mick Schumacher returning? The ex-Haas driver’s name seems to be cropping up in the 2025 driver lineup conversations more and more.

Charles Leclerc handicapping himself - This pundit thinks Leclerc is his own worst enemy by not rallying the team around him.

James Vowles is overrated? A former F1 driver gives the Williams performance a terrible review and claims Vowles is overseeing the team’s deterioration not success.

Porsche closes the door on F1: After the failed project with Red Bull, Porsche says F1 is no longer a priority.

🛞Marbles

Random links from the authors not always car related

✅ Underground water on Mars could change how we think about exploring the red planet.

✅ New Toyota Mr2 sticks with internal combustion and boasts 320 Hp.

✅ Is it more expensive to book flights through a credit card portal?

✅Google violates monopoly laws in the U.S. and could face a major breakup of the tech giant.

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