Drivers’ salaries should have been included in the budget cap which will be introduced for the 2021 F1 season, says McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown.

Teams will be limited to a maximum spend of $175 million per season after next year. However certain costs will be excluded including drivers’ salaries, which can range from around half a million dollars per year to more than seven times that

“I think drivers should have been included in the budget cap, whatever that budget cap is,” said Brown. “What that would do would be [to] force teams to make decisions on where they want to spend money.

“If you felt the driver made the biggest difference, keep paying your drivers what you’re paying them today. But I think it would have put pressure on the team to figure out where do you get your biggest value. So it wouldn’t have automatically reduced their salaries but it would have forced team teams to make more decisions on where they spend their money.”

The budget cap regulations have been relaxed since they were first proposed last year. Brown said he preferred the original plan.

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“It would have been nice, I think you can put on just as good of a show for the race fans spending less and then be in a position to be able to provide a little bit of a better return for your shareholders.

“But there’s compromise. The guys spending a lot more obviously wanted it to be higher. But I think it could have been [lower]. I liked what was initially proposed from the economics in Bahrain [last year].”

That was “150 [with] fewer exclusions,” said Brown. “Now it’s 175 with more exclusions.

“I think what was presented in Bahrain was a better financial model, that would have produced the same race results, maybe arguably better race results because it would concertina the field that much more. And then for your shareholders, you’d like to provide them a return, and because we will run at the budget cap, had the budget been less, that would have provided a better return.”

McLaren will spend something close to the budget cap level in 2021, said Brown. “I don’t think we’ll be outspent much by the top three spenders. They’ve got some bigger driver salaries.”

“But don’t give Carlos and Lando any ideas,” he joked.

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2019 F1 season