How F1's team cost cap triggered a football-style driver transfer market

OPINION: This year’s Formula 1 driver market has generated a rare dynamic of big money chopping and changing more akin to the world of football transfers. But with the cost cap now in play, could this year’s events become the norm in the future?

Jake Boxall-Legge Sep 7, 2022, 11:40 AM

Upd: Sep 7, 2022, 11:43 AM

Daniel Ricciardo is now a free agent after agreeing a mutual termination of his McLaren contract. Alpine is in for Pierre Gasly, and due to table a bid to bring him to the Enstone outfit. Oscar Piastri did not have an Alpine contract in place for 2023 and moves to McLaren on a free transfer.

Formula 1’s 2023 silly season has a tonal similarity to a transfer window in football. Replace any of the nouns in the above three sentences and replace them with the names of clubs and players, and you’ll have something resembling the transfer gossip column in all good newspapers and ballsports-fancying media outlets around the world.

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Author Jake Boxall-Legge

Jake studied engineering at university, as his original ambition was to design racing cars. He was bad at that, and thus decided to write about them instead with an equally limited skillset. The above article is a demonstration of that. In his spare time, Jake enjoys people, places, and things.