Low wages pushing engineers away from F1 - Newey

      While Formula 1 is regarded as the pinnacle of motorsport, it may struggle to retain the sharpest engineering talent. Blake Hinsey, a former engineer for Red Bull, believes the budget cap has negatively impacted the situation in F1. He shared on social media, "I recently had an informal chat with a recruiter about a position as a race engineer in F1, and their highest salary was less than what I earned last year working part-time as a performance engineer on a LMDh team in WEC." Hinsey, who expresses "no interest" in the demanding 24-race calendar of Formula 1, speculates that teams are reluctant to advocate for a higher budget cap, which would allow salaries to return to previous levels. "For the profitable teams, it’s likely that the bosses and shareholders are pocketing a portion of the unspent funds," he claimed. "It frustrates me that FOM, FIA, and the teams are undermining the sport, affecting many of my friends." Interestingly, Adrian Newey, F1’s highest-paid engineer, shares this view. He told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport, "One of the outcomes of the budget cap is that F1 is no longer the most lucrative sector of the industry. In the past at Red Bull, if we lost an employee, they would typically join another F1 team. Nowadays, if you lose an employee, they are more likely to move to a tech company because they offer better salaries."