According to a report from British newspaper The Daily Mirror, Mercedes GP are allegedly ready to take no less than £20 million out of their pockets as an annual retainer for the 7-time Formula One champion. We have to remind you that the initial reports regarding Schu's future salary at Mercedes suggested a sum between 3.5M and 7M euro.
Maybe just to pick up more readers for their daily editions, the aforementioned newspaper now launched the £20 million bait. Why do we think it's funny? Needless to say, in a time when Formula One costs are dropping to the level reached by the series in the early '90s and all teams are continuously cutting down on their F1 budgets, the amount of money we're talking about could very well support an entire F1 team.
A few weeks ago, after confirming their complete backing of the Virgin Racing team, Richard Branson's Virgin Group announced an overall £30 million budget for the entire 2010 season.
If we look back no less than 3 years ago, however, we'd notice that Schumacher's retainer in his last season with Ferrari would still top the Daily Mirror projection, as the German racer was paid a huge £30 million per year contract. However, those days are well gone, as the economic crisis worldwide had the immediate effect of dropping F1 expenditures to less than half of what used to be spent back in 2006 or 2007.
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