F1: Last in the Race, Last to the Bank

According to a study by business information company Dun & Bradstreet, in terms of an F1 team’s payment performance, there’s no correlation with its on-track performance.

The American analytics company put forward an interesting ranking of teams based on their timely – or untimely – settling of invoices.

One exception is the Williams Martini F1 team. The British outfit has been slow on the track and now, laggard when it comes to its outstanding accounts. They have settled invoices on an average of 20 days past their due date.

As mentioned before, an outfit with a small budget is no real indication of its payment performance.

Interestingly, the following slowest teams to settle their bills are Mercedes and Renault. The former is at the sharp end of the grid while the latter is a midfield runner. Both teams have ensured payment just one day quicker than Williams.

Behind them is a big gap to McLaren (8 days), with Toro Rosso and Red Bull Racing paying bills only 1 day late.

Low-budget teams like Force India and Sauber were the only teams to pay their bills on time.

There was no data available for Ferrari and Haas.

In comparison with 2017, Force India’s payment performance improved by 16 per cent. On the other end of the scale, Williams moved in the opposite direction, with a 14pc bill-paying blowout.

The Grove-based outfit may have a few excuses with regard to their tardy payment reaction time. Their title sponsor Martini will be departing at the end of the year.

“We haven’t done a good enough job and we need to really dig deep if we’re going to make progress this year,” said Claire Williams.

“It’s going to be a really tough year which is great for the fans, just not so great for us at Williams.”