V8 Supercars could introduce driver salary cap

Superstar driver salaries as high as $1 million a year have triggered talk of a salary cap in V8 Supercars racing.

With the top four drivers — James Courtney, Mark Winterbottom, Will Davison and Garth Tander — all pocketing more than $800,000 this year there is widespread talk of a need to cap costs for the 2016 season and beyond.

But it does not stop at salaries, with talk of everything from two-day race weekends to more compulsory components on cars and fewer Dunlop racing tyres.

The subject was raised earlier this week at a team owners' meeting ahead of the Phillip Island Super Sprint earlier this month.

"I'm in favour of it. I think there is a salary cap in a lot of other professional sports, so if it can be policed properly it would be a good thing for us," says team boss Brad Jones, who fields a three-car Commodore operation and has just signed Tim Slade as his lead driver for next year.

But Roland Dane, who runs the most successful team over the past decade, is not in favour.

"In my opinion, a salary cap in this sport is unworkable. No team is being forced to pay more than they want," says the head of Red Bull Racing.

His drivers, six-time champion Jamie Whincup and this year's Bathurst winner Craig Lowndes, are not in the top end of the salary scale but are well rewarded for their on-track success with bonus payments for pointscoring, finishes and wins.

"No driver has got a gun to anyone's head," Dane says bluntly.

I won't even entertain the idea of a salary cap until someone proves that it can work

Ironically, the best-paid driver in the history of touring car racing in Australia is still the late-and-great Peter Brock.

He admitted he earned $1.2 million in 1997 with driving fees alone as he split his season between the Holden Racing Team and a Volvo Dealer Team in the 2-litre Super Touring championship.

But costs have risen steadily in a tightly-controlled V8 Supercars series where tiny gains can bring big gains on the track.

Most frontrunning teams do extensive research-and-development work, with costly engineering staff and computer programs, and the DJR-Penske team even built an extra car early this year — although the existence of 'The Ghost' has never been confirmed — with a plan to ship it to the USA for extensive test work. The American angle was quickly shut down by rival team bosses who were concerned about a potential development war.

For Ryan Walkinshaw, current owner of the Holden Racing Team, there are still more questions than answers on a salary cap.

"I won't even entertain the idea of a salary cap until someone proves that it can work. And, at this point, no-one has yet been able to do that," Walkinshaw says.

But Rod Nash, one of the owners of the Prodrive operation that runs the frontline Ford team of Winterbottom, the decision is clear.

"I'm in favour. But not so much a salary cap as a broader range of things on cost reduction," Nash says.

"A salary cap would be one item of many that we're talking about. It would be cheaper to bump-in on Fridays than Thursday nights, for example."