Low salaries driving engineers from F1 – Newey

Feb.4 (GMM) Formula 1 may be the pinnacle of motorsport, but it risks no longer attracting all of the brightest engineering sparks.

One former Red Bull engineer, Blake Hinsey, thinks it is the budget cap that “f*cked” the situation in F1.

“Just had a loose conversation with a recruiter about a F1 race engineer gig,” he said on social media. “Their maximum salary was less than I was making last year as a part-time performance engineer in WEC on a LMDh team.”

Hinsey, who also says he has “no interest” in Formula 1’s incredibly intense 24-race schedule, thinks he knows why the teams aren’t pushing harder for a higher cap so that salaries can return to normal.

“Because the teams that are profitable, it’s likely the bosses and shareholders can pocket a chunk of whatever they don’t spend,” he charged.

“It infuriates me that FOM, FIA and the teams themselves are f*cking over the sport, including a large number of my friends.”

Interestingly, F1’s highest paid engineer, Adrian Newey, fully agrees.

“One of the consequences of the budget cap is that F1 is no longer the highest paying branch of the industry,” he told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.

“At Red Bull, when we lost an employee, they would go to another F1 team. Today, if you lose an employee, they will most likely go to a technology company because they pay better.”