Pay driver
A pay driver is a driver for a professional auto racing team who, instead of being paid by their car owner, drives for free and brings with him either personal sponsorship or personal or family funding to finance the team's operations. This may be done to gain on-track experience or to live the lifestyle of a driver in a particular series when one's talent or credentials do not merit a paying ride. It is sometimes called a "ride buyer" or in sports car series a "gentleman driver".
Pay drivers are common in many of the feeder series of motorsport, particularly in the GP2 Series, Formula Three the NASCAR Nationwide Series, and the Firestone Indy Lights Series. However, there have been many pay drivers in top level series like Formula One, Champ Car, the Indy Car Series, and the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
At one time F1 regulations regarding the changing of drivers during the course of a season were extremely liberal, which encouraged some teams to recruit a string of pay drivers to drive their cars, sometimes only for one or two races. Frank Williams Racing Cars (the predecessor to Frank Williams and Patrick Head's highly successful WilliamsF1 outfit) were particularly prolific with regard to the number of drivers they would use in a season - ten drivers drove for the team in both 1975 and 1976. Because of this the rules on driver changes were subsequently tightened.
Teams willing to accept pay drivers are often at the back of the grid and struggling financially. While a pay driver often brings an infusion of much needed funding, their terms often require share ownership and/or influence in the team's operations. This dependence can also be harmful, should a pay driver threaten to depart and pull funding after an acrimonious relationship. This could leave the team worse off than before, as previous poor results could make finding a sponsor difficult.
Former Formula One drivers Ricardo Rosset and Alex Yoong were notorious for how much money their families spent to finance their F1 racing careers. They or other pay drivers like Giovanni Lavaggi and Jean-Denis Délétraz are usually associated with poorer performances compared to those with paid drives. Another notoriously family-backed driver was Pedro Diniz, but throughout his career he managed to score some decent results compared to the other pay drivers of the age, scoring 10 championship points over six years, when many other pay drivers did not score any.
However, many successful drivers, such as multiple F1 world champions Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso[1], also started their careers as pay drivers but gradually worked their way up the racing ladder. It is to be noted that they were regarded as highly talented and promising drivers before their F1 careers commenced, and were funded by manufacturers rather than family money or companies with no racing interest. For example, winning lower-level series in the Indy Racing League's "Road to Indy" system will result in a pay driver situation for the winner, who will be offered a ride at the next tier, fully funded by Mazda. A driver who wins the IRL U.S. F2000 National Championship will win $300,000 to be used for a "pay ride" in the Star Mazda series, and two sets of tires per race. A $150,000 and tires package is available to a Skip Barber Racing school champion for F2000, while the National Class champion of the F2000 will receive an engine at no charge for the overall class.
