"If it's okay, we can go to the previous lounge and negotiate a contract."

Junko Takeda felt Zhang Yifei's excitement, and she had seen this kind of performance of young drivers more than once, so she could understand Zhang Yifei very well.

"No problem, you can sign at any time."

Zhang Yifei agreed without hesitation, this is his choice.

got up and went to the reception room before, and after waiting for a while, Junko Takeda took out the youth driver contract of the Toyota team and handed it to Zhang Yifei.

The contract is available in Japanese and English, because even the formula teams of Japanese manufacturers are mainly European drivers. That's why, the entire Toyota training camp is basically based on English conversations, because that's the general environment.

Zhang Yifei took the contract and looked at it alone, and did not hand it over to Uncle Lu next to him, because although Lu Ningping had been on Hong Kong Island for five or six years, his English was limited to the level of barely understanding a few sentences.

At this level, it is still because of being a karting coach, and I need to better refer to the European experience and learn from it. Therefore, the text of the contract can only be read by Zhang Yifei himself, and finally the key points of the contract are relayed to Lu Ningping.

Zhang Yifei had signed a lot of racing contracts in his previous life, so unlike those completely inexperienced kart drivers, he quickly scanned the contract text and got some of the key information.

"Uncle Lu, this is a one-year contract, if I sign the contract, I will become a driver of the Toyota youth team, they will bear all the expenses of my Toyota youth academy, and even go to foreign competitions, I can also get technical support from the Toyota team."

"There is no basic salary and sponsorship for the duration of the contract, but there is a share of the prize money and an additional bonus if you get a good result in Formula Renault or higher, such as F3. Other than that, the rest is the usual part of some driver contracts, and there's not much to say. ”

Zhang Yifei only talked about the main point, because Lu Ningping also used to be a professional driver, and the team contract is not new to him.

Moreover, the content of the youth training contract is much simpler than the official driver contract, after all, it does not involve commercial profit sharing.

Lu Ningping listened carefully to what Zhang Yifei said about the content of the contract, he was very satisfied, to be honest, the terms of this contract were much better than he expected before.

At first, Lu Ningping's psychological expectation was that as long as Zhang Yifei could pass the trial and enter Toyota's academy, it didn't matter if he needed to pay for it in the end.

After all, most driver academies, including the top ones in Europe, are recruited to this standard. Drivers can only enter the Driver Academy after a trial, but the cost of racing is still paid by themselves, which is similar to the mode of entering the school and paying tuition.

Also like in school, the best drivers will receive a "scholarship", which is a huge amount of scholarship that can offset the cost of studying at the driver academy and can be regarded as the team's training of potential drivers.

In fact, seriously speaking, the backwardness of China's professional racing is not only due to the backward development of its own automobile industry, but also the lack of sponsorship for the driver training system.

As we all know, racing is a money-burning industry, and it is actually very difficult to rely entirely on the driver's family to support it at their own expense. The developed countries in Europe have very high subsidies in this regard, taking the United Kingdom as an example, as long as it runs in the top three of the British Formula Renault, then the government will give a subsidy of 30 to 40 percent of the cost of racing.

If you add team and sponsor subsidies, drivers can run their careers almost without worries, which is why European motorsport is so developed.

Even the "developing countries" of motorsport, such as Russia and Mexico, have strong sponsorship systems.

Russia's SMP Bank, Mexican Telecom and other industry giants, they directly tap potential young drivers, fully sponsor the race to Italy, in this regard, few industry giants in China are willing to sponsor the development of young drivers.

In fact, the training of drivers and the development of motorsports, if it is operated properly, burns money, but in fact, it does not lose money, and if it only loses money, the F1 team will have closed down a long time ago.

After all, there are people who do the things that lose their heads in this world, and no one does the business at a loss.

On the small side, there are so many global audiences, and the effect of spending money on sponsored advertising is obvious, otherwise those "small advertisements" on drivers' uniforms and racing cars would not be staggering.

In the big picture, motorsport is very helpful in improving the development of the country's automobile industry, allowing car manufacturers to develop more cutting-edge technologies, and also improving the status of domestic car companies in the world.

The rise of Japanese cars in the 80s is related to various international competitions, which gives the world the impression of being strong, and thus becomes a three-legged posture with German and American cars, which is also a brand effect.

"I think this contract is very sincere, there is nothing wrong with it."

Lu Ningping is not a business genius, he said it directly when he thought it was appropriate. Judging by his professional experience, Toyota's conditions are good enough for a rookie kart driver with no results.

Zhang Yifei also thinks this way, to be honest, he didn't expect the contract of the Toyota team to be so generous, and it is generally very good to be able to train for free, so that he can save himself a lot of money.

But what attracted Zhang Yifei the most was Toyota's promise to provide technical support for future professional events.

That is to say, Zhang Yifei will be able to get the help of the Toyota racing team in the future, which is not only a monetary saving, but also an intangible wealth brought by the technical advantages brought by the professional team.

It can also be seen from this that the Toyota team is now eager for potential drivers, and the conditions offered make it impossible for newcomer potential drivers like Zhang Yifei to refuse. The more they invest so much, the more they can see Toyota's ambitions in F1, and do they intend to replicate Honda's six-in-a-row glory in the 80s?

So Zhang Yifei did not raise any objections, and directly signed a contract with the Toyota team, and in the next year, he will train in the name of Toyota youth drivers, as well as compete in the world arena.

After the contract was signed, the Toyota youth training team also held a welcome ceremony for Zhang Yifei that night.

At the welcome ceremony, there were also three drivers who had passed the trial before Zhang Yifei's arrival.

Two of these three are local kart drivers in Japan, not every Japanese kart driver has the strength of Takuma Sato, their strength is very average, they only get the status of youth trainees, and future training will be at their own expense.

The other is Hank, a karting driver from Australia, who was runner-up in the Australian Karting Championship. He was the best driver in the previous trial, only a few milliseconds slower than Zhang Yifei's lap time, his time was 1:34.57, and he also won the youth driver contract of Toyota.

The men were all between 15 and 17 years old, with the youngest being the Australian kart runner-up at 15 years old. But it may be that white people are older, and Zhang Yifei feels that he is 25 years old.

And compared to the congratulations of others, this white guy felt an indescribable arrogance, as if he was superior.

This attitude made Zhang Yifei a little unhappy in his heart, your lap speed is not as good as mine, what are you pretending to be?