F1 driver contracts: What is the contract status of every driver on the F1 2025 grid? <\/a><\/p>\nAccording to the German, Mercedes asks from its drivers for as many as \u201c60\u201d, sometimes even \u201c80\u201d, days.<\/p>\n
\u201cNowadays,\u201d he said, \u201cthese teams have so many sponsors, asking so much, paying so much money, and the only way for a team to give back to a sponsor is, of course, logo space, which is limited. And they want driver time. They want their customers to be able to meet George Russell, and so they\u2019re using the drivers so much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell confirmed that, along with other commitments outside of grand prix weekends, was something he was negotiating with Wolff about.<\/p>\n
Asked after his victory in Singapore why he didn\u2019t yet have a contract in place, he quipped Channel 4: \u201cWell, I think you\u2019re asking the wrong person here.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, he then went on to explain that details are still being ironed out, details that would allow him to have a \u201csliver of a life\u201d outside of Formula 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis,\u201d he continued, \u201cas with every new contract you sign, it\u2019s the most important one of your career. I\u2019ll be 28 next year. I\u2019ve been with the team for so long, but there\u2019s so many factors that I want to be right.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you sort of learn as you grow older what\u2019s important to you. And you know, race weekends is just the iceberg of our job, and we spend so much time on the road with sponsorship days, days on the simulator, seeing the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the details, just finding you know that right compromise that you can still have a sliver of a life outside of a sport to be able to see my young nieces and nephews, who I see once a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s things like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wolff also made it clear that the hold-up was about the details, and that they weren\u2019t any huge sticking points.<\/p>\n
\u201cContract-wise, good things take a while,\u201d he told the media after\u00a0Russell\u2019s Singapore Grand Prix win. \u201cIt\u2019s about the detail, and it\u2019s not about the big topics.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team principal was full of praise for Russell, who he says has \u201cbeen formidable this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t seen mistakes. There were weekends that he himself said, \u2018I could have done more, and I wasn\u2019t a good race\u2019. But this happens with any driver.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see when it just merges, the car being in a perfect space, and the driver being on top of things, that becomes a dominant formula, and that is what we\u2019ve seen here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read next: Russell to stay? Predicting the next move for every out-of-contract F1 driver<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Still without a contract for next season, George Russell has confirmed speculation that it\u2019s the fine details that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,3875,818,945,44,85,4703],"class_list":["post-197603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-george-russell","tag-home-page","tag-mercedes","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-toto-wolff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}