FFfan makes a very, very good point. The F1 dream is impossible even for A LOT better funded drivers than Scott.
You know, if you're a super rich, you're quite probably not very stupid at the first place.
Right now F1 teams behave like junior teams, they give the rides to the highest bidder. They can't be bothered to find sponsorship or properly cut their costs, but they just find it easy to get another Maldonado, Senna, Perez, Petrov or Pic.
So, when Joe Rich gets the proposal for F3, GP3 or GP2, he looks at it also from the parent's perspective and the perspective of a very good businessman. He's asked to pay a huge sum of money for junior to race and even if he's successful, he'll still have to pay in F1 for many years. So, you spend some 8-10mln until junior gets prepared for F1 and then you need to spend at least that much for every year in F1! In other words he would need to spend at least 20-25mln EU(if you put interests it's like 30+) for junior until he goes properly professional and earns 2-3mln salary! Then you read the papers with Ferrari laughing out claims for Alonso's salary, McLaren trying to lower down Hamilton's salary and you start realizing that unless your kid is not only capable of being in F1, but also capable of being a freaking F1 legend superstar, you got no chance of ever returning this huge investment! Moreover, if your kid fails to stay in F1, he'll need to pay to race almost everything else or being lowly paid to race LMP/GT and you will still need to support him to have the life he's used to have.
I can tell you, this reasoning is behind the sporadic appearances or even all together pulling out of racing for quite a few kids with the funding to go all the way to GP2 and even F1.
Basically right now, you need a father or supporter who is just happy for you to be in F1, no matter what is the cost and more importantly - no matter if you'll ever return anything of this huge investment and start living w/o needing his support. There aren't many such rich ppl
Compare the situation with 15-20 years ago and it's the total contrast. I remember Berger was paid $20mln to race for Ferrari, then Schumacher $25mln and others know much, much better how much was spend on their careers up to F1. Even Alesi was paid $8mln at the end of his career by Sauber. Just put together top karting + FFord + F3 + F3000 in the late 80's and I bet it's less than $2mln. Back then you could run a mid grid team with the amount of sponsorship brought by guys like Senna, Petrov or Pic. With Maldonado you'll be a title contender!
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