The financial aspect of Formula One racing may not be the most exciting, but something interesting came up when Williams released its financial statement for the first half of this season.
The team registered a profit of over £10.4 million (nearly $14m at current exchange rates), which isn't bad at all for an independent F1 team. But the source of that profit is what's caught our attention.
According to Autosport, about £10 million ($13.4m) is believed to have come from Mercedes – not as part of its engine deal with the team, for which Williams undoubtedly pays a fair sum, but for Valtteri Bottas.
F1 fans will recall that, until the end of last season, Bottas raced for Williams, and performed pretty respectably. He didn't win any races in the four seasons he drove for the team, but then Williams hasn't won a race outright since Pastor Maldonado took the checkered flag at the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix (and before that since Montoya's 2004 win in Brazil).
He did, however, score a series of impressive podium finishes, regularly outscoring his more experienced teammate Felipe Massa in the standings.
Bottas' performance evidently caught Mercedes' eye, so when Nico Rosberg announced his shocking withdrawal from the sport, Bottas was a shoe-in for the champ's seat. Since he was already contracted to Williams, though, Mercedes had to pay for his early release... and pay dearly it did.
Though neither party disclosed exactly how much, Williams CEO Mike O'Driscoll hinted strongly to Autosport that the team's financial performance was due largely to that payment. "The primary performance between 2016 and 2017 was driven by a one-off non-recurring item which we had to recognise in the first half of 2017," said O'Driscoll.
If Autosport's estimates are correct, that made Bottas' contract a very expensive acquisition for Mercedes, on top of which it's had to pay the Finnish driver's salary. But he seems to be proving his worth so far, winning two races and a further eight podiums thus far this season to help put Mercedes well ahead in the constructors' championship.
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