F1 is booming but salaries are being squeezed and 'people are complaining'

F1 may be past the initial popularity boom brought on by Netflix sensation Drive to Survive, but the sport's commercial rights owners are still thriving.

Liberty Media acquired F1 in 2017 and even with the latest set of regulations proving unpopular, the company saw F1 revenue soar to $617million during the first quarter of 2026, a 53 per cent increase compared to this stage in 2025.

But despite the success and financial opportunities growing within the pinnacle of motorsport, those working hard to keep it running aren't always appropriately compensated, and some insiders of the sport have put that down to the introduction of the cost cap.

F1 saw a cost cap come into play in 2021, with all teams required to operate under it in order to, 'help deliver a more competitive championship and ensure the long-term financial stability of all teams.'

Prior to the implementation of this regulation, spending was unregulated, meaning the richest teams could afford to snap up the best talent.

Though the driver salaries are exempt from the cost cap, Formula 1 is a team sport and this often gave some constructors' a significant advantage over others, but apparently that has all changed in recent years.

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Rob Smedley reveals F1 cost-cap 'dichotomy'

In a recent episode of the High Performance Racing podcast, former team principal Otmar Szafnauer, ex-Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley and co-host Jake Humphrey discussed the current state of remuneration in the sport, noting how the cost-cap had shaken up the paddock financially.

Asked by a fan of the podcast what top engineers, team principles, and mechanics can actually expect to earn in F1, Smedley earnestly replied: "Very little."

Delving into the topic on a deeper level, Felipe Massa's ex-engineer continued: "I don't know is the answer, because I don't know what everybody in the pit lane gets paid, because why would I? But that's probably dodging the question a little bit. What we can say, is that the compensation in Formula 1 is very high and it used to be even higher and then the cost cap came in."

Former Alpine team principal Szafnauer then weighed in, saying: "The cost cap came in. So now the top three, really high because they're exempt, and everyone else is complaining."

Smedley replied: "Exactly right. So, you went from period pre-cost cap where most people and certainly your top technical people, management people, they were remunerated very well like very highly relative to the same position. So if you took say a mechanical engineer in the outside world to a mechanical engineer in Formula 1 that was able to bring something to the team, you would be remunerated very, very highly, multiples of what you would get in the outside world.

"Then, as Otmar said, the cost cap came in and that meant that everybody got squeezed. Now, there's a certain number of people, it's two drivers and then top three people in the team, they're exempt. Now, what's happened is there's a really funny dichotomy... you've got this these exempt people.

"And the teams, not all of them, but a lot of the teams are now actually profitable because of the cost cap. So you can only spend a certain amount of money on your technical area, but the teams are now commercially worth a lot of money because of the sponsorship, the TV money...so the bottom line is positive which means that your top three, plus the drivers, that's going up all the time.

"So you can get your top three who are now remunerated higher than they would have been even five years ago."

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Written by

Kerry Violet - F1 News Editor

Having graduated from the University of Sheffield with a 2:1 in Journalism in 2022, Kerry continued her pursuit of finding a full-time position in motorsport through work with the F1 Arcade in London, where she got to meet true fans of the sport and make a live grand prix watch party memorable for them. It was here that she confirmed her dream of combining her background in journalism and love of motorsport, going on to volunteer with the female-led platform Empoword Journalism. Having completed stints as a screen editor and sports editor, Kerry landed her first F1-specific editorial role with GPFans and has thoroughly enjoyed continuing to work closely with the sport ever since. The access GPFans offers Kerry has allowed her to interview big names such as Naomi Schiff and David Coulthard and given her experiences she could only have dreamt of as a young F1 fan.

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