Bernie paying money for nothing?

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WhiteBlue
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Bernie paying money for nothing?

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Branson aims for £17m cash windfall for top-10 finish
BBC wrote:Virgin Racing owner Sir Richard Branson has set his sights on a top-10 finish - worth £17m - for his team in the 2010 world championship.
Virgin are battling for 10th place with Lotus and Hispania Racing, the other two new teams in Formula 1 this season.
"The more times we can get the two cars finishing then that would be great," said Branson. "If we can get a point or two, then even better."
Teams finishing in the bottom two of the table will not get the windfall.
After eight races this season, Virgin are holding the wooden spoon in the points table.
Points are scored down to 10th place in each race, and neither Virgin, Lotus nor Hispania Racing have achieved such a result this season.
In the event of a tie, a team's best result - and the number of times that result has been achieved - takes precedence.

Lotus, therefore, hold 10th place due to Heikki Kovalainen's 13th position in the Australian Grand Prix, while Hispania Racing are 11th by the virtue of Karun Chandhok's two 14th places in Australia and Monaco, and Virgin are bottom thanks to Lucas di Grassi's single 14th in Malaysia.
The three teams are therefore extremely close, and a 12th-place finish for either Virgin driver - di Grassi or Timo Glock - would vault the team into the top 10.
There is a strong chance that the destiny of the money for 10th place could rest on one of the teams picking up an unexpectedly good finish in a race with a high number of retirements.
When informed of the potential prize money on offer by team chief executive officer Graeme Lowdon, Sir Richard Branson said: "There's some money? You never told me that. It does make a difference.
"Whereas I said I wouldn't mind about 10th place, I've suddenly taken a big interest."
Lowdon added: "It [the prize-money formula] is an innovative structure, and if you do well on the track then you get very well rewarded."
I used to think that you only got money from FOM when you got points, but this must have changed or was a misconception. It would be interesting to know how they split the money. Everything Bernie does is secret. :lol:

So he can screw them all. A bit like Sauron and the rings really.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best .............................. organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)

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WhiteBlue
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Re: Bernie paying money for nothing?

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Why finishing 11th may be better than 10th
joesaward wrote:June 16, 2010 by joesaward
There are some stories kicking around today about Sir Richard Branson having realised that there is money to be made by getting his Virgin Racing operation to finish 10th in the Constructors’ World Championship (nice to see a team owner who is closely following the business!). It is true that this will bring money, but it is also true that for the new teams it might be wiser not to finish 10th because 11th might end up paying more money. Eh? Yes, it is true, weird but true. The financial situation for the teams is a complicated business. It is covered by something called Schedule 10 of the Concorde Agreement which, I am told, is considerably longer than the Agreement itself. This allocates the money amongst the team on the basis of their heritage and their results. There are three different categories of team: the first if called a Column 1 team. To become one of these a team must be eligible (which the new teams are now until they have been in F1 for a certain amount of time). They must also have finished in the top 10 in the Constructors’ Championship in two of the previous three years. The team receives a set percentage of the revenues for finishing 10th. Category 2 teams are those which have finished in the top 10 in the previous season, while Category 3 teams are those who started in 2010. They share a pot of $30 million. In addition they have some travel benefits including the free transportation of two chassis and 10,000 kgs of freight to the fly-away races and 20 Economy Class tickets.

The interesting scenario is that it might be that the 11th team could end up earning more than the 10th team this year. Obviously in the longer term it is better to finish 10th and thus become a Column 2 team, but in pure financial terms if the Column 3 pot is divided up between surviving teams (not all will necessarily make it to the end of the season) so that there is a possibility that a new team could earn the majority of the pot, if the others cease to compete. At the same time the revenues of F1 could reduce (that was not the case in 2009) as a result of the recession and the 10th place share might be smaller than in previous years. Thus finishing 11th may be more profitable than finishing 10th.
More details emerging. We can always rely on Joe Saward to dig out some cool stuff. 8)
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best .............................. organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)

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