QUESTION TIME There are lots of things I don’t know anything about F1 and one of them is this: Why does a driver who qualifies to take part in the F1 need sponsorship? He is skilful, he gets hired and the team should pay him, no?

If he pays a team RM63 million to drive, that must mean that there is something wrong. It implies that he has not made the grade to drive but he has to pay a huge sum to the sponsors so that his lack of driving skills can be overlooked because of the huge payment he makes.

That’s much like a person obtaining a place in an Ivy League university because his father makes a huge endowment to the institution.

But before our corporate sector rushes out to dish that RM63 million out to Jazeman Jaafar, let them consider seriously whether it will be money well spent. If they do there won’t be any rush.

In fact, they will find that it is a waste of money to make such a donation.

But before we explain that, let us say there has been a precedent here. More than a dozen years back, a listed company, Magnum, blew away RM25 million on Alex Yoong and Minardi in the now infamous sponsorship where a Malaysian company had to pay to get Yoong into Formula 1 racing and create a record, if dubious, of sorts.

Yoong is now a regular commentator on F1 programmes on TV but he made no mark on F1 as a driver coming at the bottom of the list on the races he took part it in and being in the worst team on F1 at that time.

What would a sponsorship like that have given Magnum or Malaysia? Basically nothing at all.

Magnum, according to the story then, had its arm twisted to make that donation after the lobby to get Yoong into F1 approached top politicians then.

Enamoured of F1

Malaysians seem in general to be very enamoured of F1. Our national oil corporation Petronas invests a tonne of money on it, seems like much more than the major ones among the oil majors. By now sponsorship costs from Petronas alone must be in the billions of ringgit.

And then we have Proton taking part in the F1 championships through Lotus and Tony Fernandes ( photo ) of AirAsia fame via Caterham, investing jointly perhaps a few hundred million ringgit more and having little to show for it.

In fact so intense was the desire of Malaysians to be in F1 that Fernandes and Proton famously or infamously fought each other for the right to use the Lotus name in motor racing. Fernandes’ 1Malaysia racing team actually took Proton to court.

Petronas seems to have backed the right horse and among Malaysian sponsors for teams was the only one to gain podium finishes, including the top position several times. But one wonders how much benefit that brings Petronas, a relatively small oil and gas player by world standards whose branded products probably have an insignificant share of the world market.

So all in all it looks like Malaysian companies are very keen to blow their money away on F1 sponsorships even if the benefit for them is rather dubious. It is all about false glamour, really, and eventually we all know about how pride goeth before a fall.

Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin has politely turned down the request from Jazeman, saying the annual budget is too much for the ministry. But neither he nor anyone else should pay that kind of money to sponsor a driver into F1.

The best way to get a Malaysian driver into F1 is to produce a driver so good that the F1 teams will fight to offer him a place and pay him well to get him. Anything else is cheating and brings dishonour rather than honour.

P GUNASEGARAM is founding editor of KINIBIZ which produces an online business news portal and a fortnightly print magazine.