Michael Schumacher has been pipped at the post in the race to be the world’s richest sportsman.

According to the Sunday Times’ annual listings, the seven time world champion’s (US) $823 million in career earnings is beaten only by golf legend Tiger Woods.

American Woods has earned $869 million in his own ultra-successful career, the newspaper found.

And the Sunday Times said the pair have each earned hundreds of millions of dollars more than other high-earning sportsmen, including Michael Jordan ($516m), Roger Federer ($316m) and David Beckham ($258m).

F1′s two other representatives, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen, were way down the top-twenty list, with their respective earnings at about $161 million apiece.

McLaren’s world champions Lewis Hamilton ($89m) and Jenson Button ($85m), meanwhile, appear only on the list for British sportsmen, and they are both outpaced by the $129m earned by former Ferrari driver Eddie Irvine mainly through property investment.

However, Hamilton and Button have each earned more in their careers than David Coulthard, Nigel Mansell, former BAR boss David Richards (all $80m) and Sir Jackie Stewart ($67m).

Those earnings, however, are all dwarfed by Bernie Ecclestone’s estimated $4 billion, although the 81-year-old F1 chief executive does not appear at all on the list of the world’s richest overall.

That list is headed by mega-earners like Sauber sponsor Carlos Slim, who according to the Sunday Times is worth $71 billion.

 Jenson Button’s push to prominence at McLaren has been a deliberate attempt to build the famous team around him.
Many commentators viewed the 2009 world champion’s arrival last year to be the highly rated Lewis Hamilton’s new teammate as akin to walking into “the lion’s den”.

But less than two seasons later, Button is poised to beat the beleaguered Hamilton in the drivers’ standings and has signed a new multiple year contract.

The 31-year-old has also driven for Williams, Renault and Honda/Brawn, but it is his tenure at McLaren that is arguably attracting the highest plaudits.

Asked what the secret is, Button revealed: “It’s a lesson I learned many years ago.

“If you look back at F1 there are certain drivers that would always try and build a team around them and it helped them,” he is quoted by The Sun.

“Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost did that, but I suppose Michael Schumacher was the first one of our generation to really do that.

“It was not something I thought about myself when I was younger. But it’s one thing I remember about David Richards when he was team principal at BAR.

“He said ‘Jenson, you have very good speed, but other drivers out there do a much better job of surrounding themselves with the right people and really working at it with the team’. That definitely did stick with me,” he explained.

Bernie Ecclestone has revealed he was “very tempted” to buy Renault’s formula one team when the French carmaker pulled out as an owner.
Actually, the Enstone based team was bought by its current owners Genii Capital, but there are reports of financial trouble and rumours a group involving David Richards might step up to take over.

F1 chief executive Ecclestone told the Daily Telegraph he was interested in buying Renault two years ago but was talked out of it by Donald Mackenzie.

Mackenzie, the CVC director in charge of the F1 ownership, is the newly appointed chairman of the formula one holding company.

Referring to his interest in buying Renault, Ecclestone said: “Donald said to me, we just can’t. If we owned a team it would cause us trouble.

“Every time that team was on TV people would say we were favouring it.”

Renault is still in “big” financial trouble and David Richards has expressed interest in buying into the Enstone based team.

That is the claim of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, adding that one of the richest Dutch entrepreneurs Marcel Boekhoorn has been asked to support Prodrive chief Richards’ interest.

“I’ve heard about it but I do not know what to think of it,” said Jan Paul ten Hoopen, who is Dutch GP2 driver Giedo van der Garde’s manager.

The link with van der Garde is that the 26-year-old driver is married to Boekhoorn’s daughter.

Ten Hoopen continued: “I think it is pretty much a mess within that team (Renault). Put it this way, it is clear in terms of Lotus-Renault that many things remain unclear.

“Certainly if there is any more to it, we should see if there are any opportunities for Giedo,” ten Hoopen is quoted by NUsport.

Richards, also the former BAR boss, was the team principal at Enstone based Renault when the team was known as Benetton in the late 90s.

Eddie Irvine has outpaced F1′s current British stars on the Sunday Times’ sporting rich list for 2011.
The former Ferrari and Jaguar driver and 1999 championship runner-up has made a US $128 million fortune in property development since retiring from formula one in 2002.

1979 world champion Jody Scheckter, now a successful organic farmer, has $96 million, with Prodrive boss David Richards and David Coulthard coming next.

2008 title winner Lewis Hamilton’s $80m fortune matches Scottish veteran Coulthard’s, which is more than McLaren’s other driver Jenson Button at $77m.

1992 world champion Nigel Mansell’s fortune is the same as Button’s, according to the list.

Peter Windsor has admitted USF1 should have considered racing Toyota’s 2010 package this season rather than close its doors.

A principal of the ill-fated American outfit, British journalist Windsor has resurfaced as a new writer for the online F1 magazine GP Week.

He was asked in an interview if he regretted not pursuing the Toyota option more seriously once the Charlotte-based team’s plans for its own chassis began to founder.

“Yes, it would have been better than doing nothing at all, in retrospect,” said the former Williams and Ferrari team manager.

“One of the problems was that it wasn’t just the chassis on offer; the Toyota engine deal was an integral part of the package,” explained Windsor. “And by that stage, of course, we were contracted to Cosworth.”

The USF1 debacle has been heavily criticised, particularly for damaging F1′s chances of prospering within the US, an important but difficult market for the sport to penetrate.

And Prodrive’s David Richards this week said all of F1′s struggling new teams have “prejudiced” other hopeful outfits’ efforts to enter the sport.

Windsor responded on his Twitter page: “David Richards harmed fund-raising prospects for F1 in general when he walked away from his franchise (in 2008) with hardly a word”.

Bidding to form a team in 2011 was too great a risk for  Prodrive, the famous motor racing brand’s boss David Richards has admitted.

The Briton and Aston Martin chief had attempted to form a team in previous years, but said in April that Prodrive will instead concentrate on world rallying and sports car racing.

On Sunday, he is quoted as saying the decision was driven by his concern for his 579 staff.

“I wasn’t prepared to risk everyone’s livelihoods,” he told the Independent, adding: “It was quite interesting to watch the reaction of everybody when I told them.

“The biggest fear people at Prodrive had is that we were going to risk everything on one throw of the dice by entering F1.”

Now, Prodrive is expected to team up for a world rallying bid in 2011 with formula one refugee Toyota.

“We want to be prepared if and when we get a call from Japan to go and compete,” a spokesman for Cologne based Toyota Motorsport confirmed.

(GMM)