David Coulthard lifts lid on soaring junior racing costs with £8million claim

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Schiff added: "When you say those numbers, it just blows my mind. No matter which way you slice it, motorsport will forever be an expensive sport, right? Someone's got to pay for the rubber, someone's got to pay for the fuel, someone's got to pay for those brilliant minds, right? You go to a lawyer, you pay top dollar for that hour. Same thing goes for engineers.

"But it's wild to me that in karting, you'd be spending as much money as some people are spending in this day and age. Why do we have a cost cap at the pinnacle of the sport and we don't have a cost cap in the grassroots? Because I remember when I was karting, my dad was spending every penny he had left over to send me racing.

"We were by no means well off. I think we were what we would call middle class. But the other drivers would have a softer chassis, but they would change their chassis every race, or they would be overhauling their engines after every race weekend, and they'd have 13 of them lined up in their trucks.

"Where do we draw the line on how far drivers can go with that? Because at the end of the day, it becomes more about money and less about talent. And I know we can't get fully away from that, but maybe there's a way that that can be limited to weed out some talented drivers that just don't have the same access as richer drivers.

"It's sad to me that today on the grid, these are incredible drivers, but the majority of them are sons of millionaires and billionaires, and the others are all sons of ex-F1 racers. There are a few, like Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, Lewis, of course, Fernando, who come from a different generation, who have had a different path up.

"But it's not like football, where you can just put a pair of boots on and go kick a ball. I remember when I was racing in the W Series, a day of testing and in a similar kind of car was 15 grand for a day of testing. Therefore, I never went testing, and therefore I was sh**e.

"It's like you're rocking up to a gun wall with a spoon. You can't compete when that's the way things are managed. But it is what it is. But I think that there's still a way to optimise it."

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