The numbers game

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The numbers game

Sir,

I have been lucky enough to get hold of a copy of the 1994 NASCAR Year Book. It’s full of facts, figures, driver and track profiles, not to mention entertaining adverts for stuff I’d never heard of before.

What’s really interesting however is the run down on the 1993 season’s prize fund and its payout. Listed are the first 25 drivers and the amounts they won, and from where.

Dale Earnhardt, for example, won a total of $3,353,789 with a high of $181,825 for second place in the Daytona 500 and a low of ‘just’ $10,525 for a lowly 29th place finish in the Goodys 500 at Bristol. lust goes to show that you can’t win them all .

Now, if NASCAR can give such an open breakdown on who wins what, and the golf, tennis, show jumping and snooker fraternities can do likewise with their prize funds, what’s the big secret about FI?

Are their winnings so large as to be obscene? Are they hiding something from their respective tax men? Will the long-suffering fans finally cry “enough” (I did) at the ticket office, if they discover just how much is being paid out to assorted drivers?

I’d love to know why F1’s powers-that-be are so tightlipped on the subject. John Mon,

Plymouth.