The first million-dollar drivers 1977–1985
Niki Lauda taught F1's paddock that a champion could name his own price.
Through the 1970s, F1 salaries lagged well behind the sport's growing TV audience. Lauda, backed by personal sponsor Parmalat, forced Bernie Ecclestone's hand at Brabham by threatening to take his sponsor elsewhere — becoming the first driver paid seven figures a year. His 1982 McLaren comeback, financed partly to fund his airline business, pushed the number to three million dollars, a sum no team had ever offered a driver before.
Prost-Senna title money 1988–1993
McLaren and Williams' championship rivalry turned driver retainers into front-page business news.
Forbes' newly launched athlete-earnings list captured Senna, Prost and Mansell among the ten best-paid athletes on the planet, motor racing alongside boxing and basketball for the first time. Senna's unsigned 1993 season, played race-by-race for a reported $1 million a paycheck, became paddock legend — and a precedent Lewis Hamilton's own contract standoffs would later echo.
Schumacher's Ferrari empire 1996–2006
One driver's salary approached, then matched, the world's best-paid golfer.
Ferrari's revival under Jean Todt and Ross Brawn was built around a single asset: Michael Schumacher, whose contract grew each title into the tens of millions. By 2004 Forbes ranked his $80 million total level with Tiger Woods for the world's best-paid athlete — the first time a Formula 1 driver had reached the very top of any global sports-earnings list.
The post-Schumacher market 2007–2016
Without Schumacher setting the ceiling, teams recalibrated around Alonso's title-winning retainer.
Fernando Alonso's Ferrari contract, reported at roughly €30 million a year excluding sponsors, made him F1's best-paid driver for most of this decade even without matching Schumacher's peak. Hybrid-era turbo rules and budget pressure kept most other salaries well below that line, widening the gap between the grid's single superstar and everyone else.
Hamilton's decade at the top 2014–2022
Mercedes' hybrid-era dominance made Lewis Hamilton F1's benchmark earner for the better part of ten years.
Hamilton's seven titles and Mercedes' near-decade of car superiority let him negotiate salaries that dwarfed the rest of the grid, topping $60 million in his best contract years once bonuses were included. Forbes began publishing an annual F1 driver-pay ranking in this period, giving the sport the same kind of transparent, comparable earnings data other leagues had carried for decades.
Verstappen's dominance premium 2021–present
Red Bull's championship run pushed a single driver's bonus payouts past anything Hamilton earned in his prime.
Max Verstappen's three-peat and Red Bull's 2023 record season triggered bonus clauses on top of an already market-leading salary, briefly making him F1's best-paid driver on salary and bonuses alone — before his separate endorsement portfolio with EA Sports, Heineken and other personal sponsors is even added.