Money for nothing 💶

In F1, sometimes you get paid a huge amount to do nothing. This seems particularly true if you're at Red Bull.

They're effectively paying him his (astronomical) salary for the next 5 years to make him go away. Another option would have been to decide that the allegations against him were justified. Then he could have been dismissed immediately. But he would have contested that, so they've paid him a shit-ton of cash to go quietly. If someone offered me my next 5 years pay to go quietly, I'd take it, even though that would be a little bit less than €60m.

Red Bull have form for this. Sergio Perez didn't get close enough to Max Verstappen's performance, so they did the same thing: paid him the remaining millions on his contract to go quietly. Of course no one has got close to Verstappen for years, so they paid off one problem and got another one - presumably cheaper to get rid of, but no better on the race track.