The Marussia F1 Team and its race driver Timo Glock have agreed to part company with immediate effect, by mutual consent. The 30 year old German has been with the team since the start in 2009 and has played an important role in the development of the team.
“Our Team was founded on the principle of benefiting from proven experience whilst also providing opportunities for young emerging talent to progress to the pinnacle of motorsport,” said John Booth. “Thus far, this philosophy has also been reflected in our commercial model. The ongoing challenges facing the industry mean that we have had to take steps to secure our long-term future. Tough economic conditions prevail and the commercial landscape is difficult for everyone, Formula 1 teams included.”
In other words, Glock – a paid driver – has been asked to stand down to make way for a pay-driver.
“I would like to wish the team good luck in navigating this next period and thank everyone for the great times we shared and the support I have received,” said Timo. “Although it is not the path I expected to be taking, I am in fact very excited about what the future holds in terms of my own career and I hope to comment on that very soon.”
Glock will test a Mercedes DTM car later this week in Spain.
So, the team says he’s leaving “by mutual consent”, but Timo says “It is not the path I expected to be taking.”
So Marussia needs to find a pay-driver, but that rarely saves a team in financial difficulty. Could we see three teams leaving the sport before the end of the year?
There are subtleties in this business that people do not always understand. Timo had a contract and was happy. The team was happy. Sadly there is no TV money for the team this year because the Formula One group wants only 10 teams. Thus the team needed to find an extra $10 million. The best option given that sponsorship is hard to find was to ask Timo to take a pay-off and employ someone with a large sum of money. There are several drivers out there with big wads of cash available. The list is well known. Timo is a team player and understands that this is the best thing for the team. He knows that they will pay him off at a sensible level and that he can get a sensible wage in DTM and get himself into a winning car as well. Thus he is looking at a much more comfortable future than trying to go on climbing the greasy pole in F1. At 30, with nearly 100 races behind him, it is unlikely that he would get higher on the grid now, particularly after Charles Pic did a rather good job against him last year. Thus this is a good career for Glock and it is good for the team’s finances. Thus it is a win-win situation to avoid losing.
Would Marussia have any legal redress against the TV money situation? It seems more than a little unfair that they have been put in this situation. I can understand not getting prize money, but surely TV money should be given to all teams.
Personally, I think Bernie is making a mistake trying to get down to 10 teams. You need the backmarkers to bring new drivers on. The fewer teams there are the fewer driver openings and the harder it is for new talent to get in to the sport. The situation is made harder by Red Bull sewing up one backmarker and it looking likely that Ferrari may tie up another.
If FOG only wants ten teams, then what was the purpose of adding the extra teams a few years ago?
I always assumed that was to counter the manufacturer-owned teams that were proliferating at that time. Remember when they kept threatening to form a breakaway championship?
Joe was the TV money always restricted to 10 teams? My memory seems this wasn’t so, payout extended a little further but was cut back only very late last season?
Yes, it was pretty much always like that.
Joe, presumably Marussia will have Petrov in their sights, especially since his talks with Caterham seem to have stalled? Could this mean we’ll see Heikki back after all?
Not unless he has a large fortune to spend.
01/02/2013 Robert Kubica spent on fun in driftowanie together with several other racing driver, Alex Wurz and Toto Wolff. Now Wolff goes to Mercedes and Kubica will test the Mercedes DTM. in Valencia. Do you think Robert Kubica will Mercedes DTM driver in 2013. What do you think about it.
He will test and we will see if he can race.
Sadly that’s Formula One today, teams need money firstly to survive and then to progress, Williams did that very well in 2012 with two pay drivers.
It makes perfect sense for Marussia to obtain as much money as possible to build and develop the team, by taking two pay drivers that’s the best way to achieving this.
This is becoming familiar, Jarno Trulli was signed and retained by Caterham in September 2011 only to be replaced by a paydriver (Petrov) in mid February 2012.
Was Glock not driving for Toyota in 2009?
Yes, but he drove for Marussia in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Timo may look back in years to come and wonder ‘what if Toyota had stayed around’
Along with Kobayashi.
I always liked Glock and rated him highly but his pace against Pic wasn’t exceptional, lets be honest.
He’ll find employment elsewhere, but Marussia need to pull something out the bag this season if they’re going to survive.
This is a stupid question.
How does a pay driver (such as Petrov or Chilton) get paid? By which I mean where do they get their salary from, or do they just get living expenses?
They usually take some of the sponsorship money as a salary.
Marussia’s situation set me thinking about the way F1 is now with the four top teams far and away outstripping the rest. I say four but it is often one or two. If the grids were reversed I wonder what sort of racing we would see? For example, the BTCC mix up the grid the last race enabling ‘private’ teams the possibility of a win. This keeps the teams and their sponsors happy, unlike in F1 where, I would have thought, many sponsors are dissuaded entering due to the astronomical cost of being associated with a top team and conversely lack of exposure on a failing team. The way things are, the best drivers sometimes never get to the top and keeping the status quo we may never see, as fans, the racing we should with the likes of Daniel Ricciardo (for a random example) stuck in the Red Bull ‘B’ team. I read with interest Alonso’s comments on testing, which for the average fan are a complete waste of time as we never get to see live or recorded testing even if we wanted to. The bottom teams can’t even afford it. I would prefer more racing, less testing, and more drivers with the chance of winning. CVC’s approach will kill interest in F1. NASCAR listings show quite clearly how attractive a more even approach the competition is good for the sport.
Which is the fourth team you’re thinking of? Mercedes?
A private team -did- finish in the WCC top 4 in 2012, although I don’t expect that to be repeated this year…
Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Lotus were effectively the top teams last year. Merc were the next up. Raikkonen did Lotus proud. When you say private…..? Definition of private – only Ferrari and Merc made their own engines and chassis, the rest are ‘garagistes’……according to Enzo Ferrari!
>when you say ‘private’
I’m trying to follow -your- intention. You seemed to approve of the BTCC for creating a series in which private teams could be competitive. As you say here, almost all the F1 teams are technically garagistes anyway.
I assumed by ‘private’ for F1 purposes you meant ‘less well funded’, which I thought was a reasonable and meaningful distinction. But on that basis, Lotus like Williams and Sauber qualify as a private team and Merc don’t. Lotus outperformed their budget last year & Merc under performed theirs; I don’t expect that to be repeated in 2013 necessarily.
Different era, but some of the things going on at Caterham and Marussia are starting to looka bit Larrousse/Simtek-esque.
As long as they don’t get Andrea Moda-esque…
Hi Joe,,Any chances Timo will end up at Force India??
No, I cannot imagine that will happen.
It’s easy to forget that Glock finished second in his last race for Toyota, behind Hamilton and ahead of Alonso and Vettel. And then in the next GP, Trulli finished second behind Vettel and ahead of Hamilton and Raikkonen. Now apparently neither of them is good enough to be paid as an F1 driver. If that is so, one can only conclude that the Toyota must have been a far better car than anyone thought at the time.
Having said that, one does wonder whether the current funding model is fit for purpose. Coming from the university world, I am used to a format in which anybody who wants to do research has to find an external sponsor to fund it. The system works reasonably well, because finding sponsors is seen as a fundamental part of being a professional researcher, and those who are considered the best researchers, and who have the brightest ideas, are the best placed to get themselves grants. No researcher would ever take the Kovalainen line that looking for sponsorship is beneath them, and their employer must do it for them. Or if they did, then like Heikki, they would soon become an ex.
I wonder whether F1 is headed the same way, and soon only three or four drivers might be in a strong enough position to get away with demanding that the team must pay them and they won’t bring sponsors to the team?
Tangentially related – does anyone remember the episode of Dragons’ Den when a young driver attempted to get career funding from the Dragons? The look on their faces when they realised that there would be absolutely no return from their cash unless the poor guy got all the way to Formula One, and into a mid-to-top level seat at that, suggested that the current motorsport pyramid didn’t strike them as a great area for investment…
The best (or worst) example to counter Heikki Kovalainen’s claims (namely, that it’s nearly impossible to find sponsorhip in Finland these days) is that Valtteri Bottas is coming from Finland with some sponsorship in his wallet. Obviously not that much, but would Williams have even considered signing Bottas without the money? I don’t think so. There you go, Heikki.
Yes, the team was willing to sign him without money. The money helped.
The entire F1 business model is flawed if not completely broken. The myth being sold of the worlds best drivers, in the best cars at the worlds best tracks is a lie that at some point will have to be corrected or come crashing down. Younger and smarter audiences are not going to be convinced forever.
Would you care to add some facts to this mini-rant?
See various thoughts by my favorite F1 reporter such as this example
“Business models in F1
January 9, 2013 by Joe Saward”
I would think Glock might enjoy racing a winning car in DTM rather more than tootling around at the back in F1, essentially wasting his talents. Shame he didn’t move to another competitive team after Toyota bailed out, really. If he does sign up with BMW, he could have a very lucrative career as a works driver.
Did his team-mates really call him Tim O’Glock, or is that urban legend?
They did in Jordan days