Max Verstappen already passed Lewis Hamilton on the track, winning last season’s Formula 1 drivers’ championship in a nail biter of a finale. Now, with a second straight title sewn up weeks ago, Red Bull Racing’s 25-year-old star is outpacing his Mercedes rival in the financial race, too.
Verstappen is F1’s highest-paid driver for 2022 with a pretax total of $60 million from his salary and bonuses, according to Forbes estimates. Hamilton, who has been the series’ top-earning driver in Forbes’ athlete rankings every year since 2013, sinks to second with an estimated $55 million.
Alpine’s Fernando Alonso, the last driver to finish above Hamilton on the earnings leaderboard, comes in at No. 3 this year with an estimated $30 million, followed by Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate Sergio Pérez ($26 million) and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc ($23 million).
In all, Formula 1’s ten highest-paid drivers are collecting an estimated $264 million, a 25% increase from 2021’s projections, which were generated during the season.
Endorsement earnings are excluded from this ranking, in part because Formula 1 offers few marketing opportunities relative to, say, tennis or the NBA. Most drivers devote little attention to deals outside of the appearances they’re required to make for their teams and their teams’ sponsors, and only a handful are believed to rake in more than $1 million, with Hamilton’s income off the track pegged at $8 million and Verstappen’s at $2 million for Forbes’ 2022 list of the world’s highest-paid athletes.
Even so, Formula 1’s star drivers have reason to believe their paydays will keep rising, and it’s not just that the series is growing. F1’s new budget cap, introduced last season, is set to limit teams’ spending in key areas to $135 million next year, forcing Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull to contort their budgets from the days when they could spend $300 million or even $400 million unchecked. But while they have had to reduce their design and research expenditures, driver pay is excluded from the cost-cap calculation, giving deep-pocketed team owners one line item they can continue to throw cash at. Industry insiders expect the search for a competitive advantage within the new model will send driver pay soaring over the next few years.
So while Verstappen is finally in the earnings driver seat, this is no time to take his foot off the gas.
