Mercedes team boss says three-year deal shows that "it's a long-term relationship and stability is important for us"
Saturday 23 May 2015 07:52, UK
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has described some of the figures estimating the worth of Lewis Hamilton’s new contract as “nonsense”.
Wolff was speaking after Wednesday’s long-awaited announcement that the world champion will extend his stay at the Silver Arrows beyond the end of the current season.
What Mercedes did reveal was the length of Hamilton’s contract – three years. When team-mate and rival Nico Rosberg extended his stay last July, they only said he had signed a “multi-year” deal.
Estimates of its value have tended towards the £100m mark, which would make Hamilton Britain’s highest-paid sportsman.
However, other figures - that the 30-year-old would be earning £1m per week, with some quoted even higher than that - had been mentioned.
Given that Hamilton negotiated the deal himself after leaving XIX Entertainment last November, there will be no management cut, meaning he will take home a bigger slice of the pie - home in his case being tax-haven Monaco, venue for this weekend’s grand prix.
It is also widely reported that his earnings will be topped up by potential bonuses, with Hamilton said to retain control of his image rights aside from endorsing the Mercedes brand.
“You know the discussions around the contract have been out there for quite a while,” Wolff said on Thursday. “We had the terms already a couple of weeks ago and declaring that it was a three-year term seemed reasonable to us, in order to show that it's a long-term relationship and stability is important for us.
“On the figures out there, I can't really comment. The only thing I can say is that there has been lots of nonsense out there as well.”
Furthermore, it has been said that Hamilton will earn around five times as much as Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler AG and effectively his boss.
“This is a market and in that market you have a value or you don't,” was Wolff’s response.
“Lewis is one of the best racing drivers out there, maybe the best at the moment and he has a huge value for the brand and fundamentally this is what drives his value and this is a classical win-win situation for the team and for himself.”
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