McLaren on Wednesday became the first Formula One team to furlough staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with drivers Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz joining senior management in taking a pay cut.
The automaker said in a statement that the temporary three-month wage reduction was part of wider cost-cutting measures due to the effects of the pandemic on its business.
“These measures are focused on protecting jobs in the short term to ensure our employees return to full-time work as the economy recovers,” McLaren said.
A team spokesman said that 100 to 150 staff from across the group who were working on a project to make ventilators were not included in the measure.
The group, including the luxury automaker and applied technology arm, employs about 3,700 people, with about 850 working for the F1 team.
McLaren is part of a consortium of leading aerospace, engineering and Formula One racing companies that have joined forces to ramp up production of a ventilator made by Smiths Group, which supports those with complications from the virus.
Britain has ordered 10,000 of the breathing machines.
The majority of the Formula One team, who are on a three-week factory shutdown brought forward from August due to the season being on hold, are to be furloughed from next week, with McLaren making up some of the difference.
Those not furloughed, including McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, would work on reduced pay.
With racing unlikely to start until the European summer at the earliest, F1 sources have said that the teams — a majority based in Britain — are discussing extending the shutdown.
Formula One teams, unless owned by manufacturers, derive much of their budget from the sport’s revenues, prize money and sponsorships, and face a major financial hit if races do not happen.
They have already agreed to defer major rule changes from next year to 2022 to cut costs and to race with the same cars next season.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier