Max Verstappen rules Formula 1 on the track and at the bank as the sport’s 10 top earners collected an estimated $317 million in salary and bonus this year.
After racing to the most dominant season in Formula 1 history in 2023, with 19 wins in 22 Grand Prix races, Max Verstappen faced a much stiffer challenge this year, capturing the drivers’ championship by a relatively meager 63 points in the standings. When it comes to his paychecks, however, Red Bull Racing’s 27-year-old star is extending his lead on the field.
For the third straight year, Verstappen is F1’s highest-paid driver on the track, with estimated 2024 earnings of $75 million, including a series-record $60 million in salary to go with $15 million in performance bonuses. That puts him $18 million ahead of his longtime rival Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes—who made an estimated $55 million in salary and $2 million in bonuses at age 39—and widens the gap from $15 million in 2023 and $5 million in 2022.
McLaren’s Lando Norris, who claimed the first four Grand Prix victories of his career this year and threatened Verstappen for the championship, sprinted to third in the earnings race with an estimated $35 million, up from sixth (and $15 million) last year. The 25-year-old Brit signed a contract extension in January that is believed to have boosted his salary—to $12 million, according to Forbes estimates, more than double his number from 2023—but the big difference was his roughly $23 million in bonuses this year.
F1 driver compensation figures are rarely made publicly available, but contracts are typically understood to link pay directly to on-track performance. An established driver at a top team will generally receive a large guaranteed salary plus bonuses for race victories or a championship; drivers who have less experience or race for smaller teams tend to receive smaller salaries but can get significant bonuses for winning races or securing points in the standings.
Unlike Forbes’ lists of the highest-paid players in, say, soccer or the NBA, the F1 earnings ranking excludes endorsement income, focusing solely on the sport’s salaries and bonuses, in large part because drivers’ obligations to their teams and their teams’ sponsors leave them little room to chase many personal deals. Verstappen, for instance, made an estimated $5 million from his business endeavors over the 12 months ending in May, nowhere near what some other global sports stars hauled in on Forbes’ 2024 list of the world’s highest-paid athletes.
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The drivers aren’t exactly hurting, though. Combined, Formula 1’s top 10 earners raked in $317 million on the track in 2024, according to Forbes estimates, a 23% increase over 2023’s $258 million and the best mark in the four-year history of Forbes’ F1 earnings ranking.
Two main factors are driving up salaries. First, F1 has never been bigger, with the series’ central revenue hitting $3.2 billion in 2023, up 25% from the previous year, according to owner Liberty Media’s annual earnings release. That means more prize money for the 10 teams on the grid, which are also seeing improved sponsorship opportunities. The influx of cash is pushing up the value of the teams, to an average of $1.88 billion in Forbes’ most recent ranking, while also giving them more to spend on their drivers.
Meanwhile, drivers are getting a lift from the series’ cost cap, which was introduced in 2021. The system limits how much teams can devote to designing and building their cars, but driver compensation is omitted from the budget calculation, giving the wealthiest teams one area where they can still spend extravagantly to differentiate themselves from their rivals.
Expect next year’s F1 ranking to continue the upward trend after a flurry of signings and extensions around the paddock. That includes Charles Leclerc, who inked a new deal with Ferrari in January that is believed to come with a big raise for 2025. It also includes his new teammate, Hamilton, who shocked the racing world when he announced in February that he would leave Mercedes for the Prancing Horse next year.
Hamilton wrote on Instagram that driving in Ferrari red would “fulfill another childhood dream,” but don’t entirely rule out the financial component to the move: Forbes estimates the contract will catapult him back ahead of Verstappen to set an F1 salary record.
Formula 1’s Highest-Paid Drivers 2024
#1 • $75M
Max Verstappen
Team: Red Bull Racing | Nationality: Netherlands | Age: 27
Salary: $60M | Bonuses: $15M
Verstappen had to wait until the season’s third-to-last Grand Prix, in Las Vegas last month, to lock up the drivers’ championship, four races later than when he clinched in 2023, but he remains the sport’s most dominant driver, with four straight titles. At just 27, he has already raised the possibility of retirement several times publicly. “I have a contract until [2028],” Verstappen, the youngest driver ever to reach 200 career Formula 1 races, recently told Road & Track. “I’ll be 31 years old at the end of it. Of course that is still very young, but of course I started when I was 17—that’s a long time in Formula 1.” Verstappen added that his longevity would depend on how much fun he has driving an F1 car under new technical specifications that begin in 2026, saying, “I don’t have this desire to win eight or nine titles.” That doesn’t mean he will give up racing entirely: Verstappen has expressed interest in competing in 24-hour races at Le Mans and Daytona, among other auto-racing formats.
#2 • $57M
Lewis Hamilton
Team: Mercedes | Nationality: United Kingdom | Age: 39
Salary: $55M | Bonuses: $2M
Hamilton scored a turn-back-the-clock victory at Silverstone in the British Grand Prix in July and was promoted to first at the Belgian Grand Prix because of a disqualification—his first wins since 2021—but he had few other bright spots in a frustrating final season with Mercedes that saw him sink to seventh in the standings. Still, the seven-time Formula 1 champion, who turns 40 next month, recently told reporters that he “massively underestimated how difficult it would be” to leave the Silver Arrows, his home for the last 12 years. His move to Ferrari unites the sport’s most accomplished driver with its most revered team, and brands are taking notice. Speculation has already begun that Hamilton—who has long-standing relationships with sponsors including Tommy Hilfiger—could attract new marketing dollars to the Prancing Horse.
#3 • $35M
Lando Norris
Team: McLaren | Nationality: United Kingdom | Age: 25
Salary: $12M | Bonuses: $23M
Norris wasn’t quite able to overtake Max Verstappen for the drivers’ title, but with 13 podium finishes this year, he had a big hand in leading McLaren to an unexpected constructors’ championship, the team’s first since 1998. “I probably wasn’t outright ready to go up against Red Bull and Max,” he told reporters last month. “But I think what I’ve done since the summer break is closer to what I need to be, and I think that is close to being good enough to fighting for it next year.” He will have plenty of supporters. Norris partnered with Silverstone in September to create a “Landostand,” a dedicated grandstand at Turn 15 for the British Grand Prix in July 2025. Fans snapped up all 10,000 tickets—priced at roughly $600 for three days’ admission—in less than two hours.
#4 • $27.5M
Fernando Alonso
Team: Aston Martin | Nationality: Spain | Age: 43
Salary: $24M | Bonuses: $3.5M
After a strong 2023, when he finished fourth in the driver standings, Alonso struggled for much of this season, dropping to ninth as Aston Martin compiled roughly a third as many points as a constructor. During a particularly rough two-race stretch in the fall, he had a throat infection and injured his shoulder on Brazil’s bumpy track. But while the popular Spaniard—the first Formula 1 driver ever to enter more than 400 Grand Prix races—acknowledged thinking long and hard about his future, he ultimately decided in April to sign an extension with Aston Martin through 2026, when he will turn 45.
#5 • $27M
Charles Leclerc
Team: Ferrari | Nationality: Monaco | Age: 27
Salary: $15M | Bonuses: $12M
Leclerc, who finished third in the driver standings this year, just 18 points behind runner-up Lando Norris, is drawing plenty of attention as he slots into a pairing with Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari next year, but he was part of another memorable tandem at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The 27-year-old took part in Friday’s practice session alongside his 24-year-old brother, Arthur—a Ferrari development driver—making them the first siblings ever to drive in F1 as teammates.
#6 • $23M
George Russell
Team: Mercedes | Nationality: United Kingdom | Age: 26
Salary: $15M | Bonuses: $8M
Russell is under contract with Mercedes through next season after signing an extension in August 2023, and with Lewis Hamilton being replaced in the team’s driver lineup by 18-year-old Andrea Kimi Antonelli, the 26-year-old Brit now looks like the Silver Arrows’ clear No. 1. “I think it’s going to be a positive change for everyone,” Russell, who finished sixth in the standings and won two races, missing a third victory only because of a disqualification at Spa, recently told ESPN. “These last three years, it just hasn’t been working for any of us.”
#7 • $22M
Oscar Piastri
Team: McLaren | Nationality: Australia | Age: 23
Salary: $5M | Bonuses: $17M
After a strong rookie season in 2023, Piastri was even better this year, claiming the first two Grand Prix victories of his career in Hungary and Azerbaijan and finishing fourth in the driver standings. He is set to race at least two more years for McLaren after signing a contract extension in September 2023, just days before he secured his first podium finish.
#8 • $19.5M
Sergio Pérez
Team: Red Bull Racing | Nationality: Mexico | Age: 34
Salary: $12M | Bonuses: $7.5M
Pérez signed a two-year contract extension in June, but he was nowhere near competitive for the rest of the season, slipping to eighth in the standings just a year after he finished as the runner-up to his teammate Max Verstappen. That poor performance has prompted plenty of speculation that he will not be back with Red Bull next season, including a shot across the bow from the team’s longtime advisor Helmut Marko, who told F1-Insider in October: “If the performance is not right, even contracts are useless. At the end of the season, we will sit down together and decide who is the best teammate for Verstappen.” After the season finale in Abu Dhabi, Pérez acknowledged for the first time that he might not return in 2025, saying, “We’ll see what happens in the coming days.”
#9 • $19M
Carlos Sainz
Team: Ferrari | Nationality: Spain | Age: 30
Salary: $10M | Bonuses: $9M
Sainz, fifth in the driver standings this year, was the odd man out with Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari, and he will now jump to Williams after four seasons in red. “I have a driver ego, and I couldn’t understand it at the time,” he told Sky Sports in November, four months after signing with Williams. “At the same time, it creates even more of a challenge for me; it even makes me more excited for Williams. Williams is the one that has invested in me, that have backed me up from the beginning, the ones that came to me a full year ago.”
#10 • $12M
Pierre Gasly
Team: Alpine | Nationality: France | Age: 28
Salary: $10M | Bonuses: $2M
Points were hard to come by for Gasly and Alpine for most of the season, but over the season’s final few weeks, he surged to a third-place finish in Brazil and fifth in Qatar, crediting the improvement in part to a change in his differential settings. A contract extension he signed in June is set to keep him with the team through 2026.
METHODOLOGY
With few Formula 1 driver salaries publicly available, Forbes generated its on-track compensation estimates in collaboration with Forbes.com contributor Caroline Reid of the data firm Formula Money. The estimates are based on financial documents, legal filings and press reports, as well as conversations with industry insiders. All pay figures are rounded to the nearest half-million.
Drivers typically receive a base salary plus bonuses for points scored or for race or championship wins, with the bonus amount depending on the size of the team and the experience of the driver. Off-track compensation, including endorsements, is not included in this ranking. Forbes does not deduct for taxes or agents’ fees.
