INSANE sponsorship amount quoted for Narain's F1 drive..

[Hatari]

Karthikeyan's three main sponsors - the Tata Group, India's second largest business conglomerate, state-run refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp and JK Tyres - reportedly coughed up close to 30 million dollars to get Jordan to hire him.

THIS IS UTTER RUBBISH !
for that amount, they wud give a taxi driver an F1 drive !

its nothing but bad journalism, irresponsible too i might add
here's the full article..
http://f1.racing-live.com/en/headlin...09082309.shtml

[Tom]

30 million USD = 130crores?
whats the real amount?

[Rtech]

whats the real amount?

i believe I overheard something in the region of 20 crores.

[Tom]

hey culd it have been 30million rupees=3crores??

[gkrishn]

I think its 30 crores rs...

Indian Express...

Narain will pay Jordan between Rs 20 to 30 crore to race in 2005

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_st...ntent_id=64118

[vinsanity]

Ouch, Rs 30 cr..... Oh mai god!!!!!!

[GTO]

Absolute hogwash. 30 Million would work out to more than 20% of the Jordan teams annual expenses.

I did read somewhere that this drive cost Narain in the range of 5 million dollars (or Rupees 20 odd crores).

GTO

[X-Machine]

Cant be $30m.Totally outta question.
30m Rs is a much believable amount.Though on Ndtv they said he coughed up 5cr Rs.
Dunno wots the true figure.

X

[Hatari]

A more realistic figure wud be 10-12 crores..
Jordan annual F1 budget is around $80 million..

now i wonder if the article meant $3 million

[ported_head]

We will probably have to wait a little longer till somebody confirms the actual amount, till then we could probably only speculate. I was just wondering, what if the only way Narain could secure a drive was a huge lump of money? Before I am pounced upon by the fans, there were others who did much better in the Nissan Superfund Series, namely Franck Montagny, who decided to stay away from F1. I'm also aware of the fact that money does buy you an F1 seat, but an under performer would probably have to shell out more. Though 30 million dollars does sound like an aweful lot.

[Deeps]

haha, JK Tyre having $30M to spare? In that much money we could get half the grid to be of indian origin...lol.

[Shan2nu]

Narain will pay Jordan between Rs 20 to 30 crore to race in 2005. This is the kind of money that finances one-tenth of India’s sports budget including year-long training, foreign trips for the entire sporting contingent and infrastructure maintenance around the country. But this isn’t a capitation fee racket but a normal pay-and-drive policy common in F1 where more than half of the 22 drivers first show the greenbucks and then get on the starting grid.



Shan2nu

[vinsanity]

Woah,
20-0Cr..... Man, and there is fear that he wont last more than a season, that'l be really bad... Hope he comes out good... With so much money and prayers f millions hre, he'l do good(he better!!).....

[ajmat]

This sounds a bitworse than a government job - where you get to pay to get a posting

[rahulmd]

But if you look at the commerical angle, There HAS to be an indian in F1. With India Inc.'s proportion in the world Inc. increasing, F1 just cannot afford to lose out missing out on the india story. (im sure a similar reasoning went behind the introduction of the Shanghai GP).

It is not too way off before we have a Mumbai/ Hyderabad GP. What better way to get more indians hooked into F1 than have an Indian on the Grid. All of a suddent the TV Ratings of F1 in India shoot up. More sponsors, more ad revenue, higher TV rights.....

I would not be surprised if Mr. Bernie Eccelstone himself pulled a few strings to get our Narain on the grid....

I always have a conspiracy theory angle to everything ;-)