F1’s 2025 rich list: Verstappen’s $76m haul tops Hamilton and Norris

Under the desert floodlights in Abu Dhabi, as papaya-orange smoke drifted across the main straight and the crowd roared for a new world champion, another race was being decided on spreadsheets and contracts. When the lights went out on the 2025 season, Forbes’ rich list crowned a familiar winner: Max Verstappen, banking a staggering $76m on-track.

For the fourth year running, Verstappen sits atop Formula 1’s earnings podium. Forbes estimates his Red Bull deal at $65m in salary plus $11m in bonuses for a total of $76m, a figure echoed by RacingNews365 and GiveMeSport. He may have lost the title to Lando Norris by just two points after 24 grands prix, but with eight victories and a season-ending win in Abu Dhabi, the Dutchman wrote another chapter in his own financial masterclass.

Second on the money grid is Lewis Hamilton, whose first season in Ferrari red was more heartbreak than hero’s return. According to Forbes, Hamilton earned an F1-record $70m salary and around $500,000 in bonuses, for total on-track pay of $70.5m. That towering contract arrived in a year when he failed to stand on a Grand Prix podium for the first time in his career, salvaging only a sprint win in China. “It’s been the worst season ever,” he told Sky Sports, describing his debut Ferrari campaign as a “nightmare” in comments later quoted by Forbes – proof that in modern F1, the biggest paycheque doesn’t always buy the sweetest Sunday.

Then comes the new king of the drivers’ standings. Norris’ calm aggression and late-season surge delivered seven wins and 18 podiums in 24 races, and with third place in Abu Dhabi he finally turned promise into a world championship. Financially, though, he only finishes third. Forbes pegs his 2025 haul at $18m in base salary, a $10m title bonus and $29.5m in performance incentives, for $57.5m in total – a blockbuster payday, yet still shy of the giants he beat on track.

Behind the headline trio, the rich list tells the story of a grid transformed by a booming sport and a rigid cost cap. McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who led the championship for much of the year before slipping to third overall, comes in at $37.5m (a $10m salary plus $27.5m in bonuses) according to RacingNews365 and GiveMeSport. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc rounds out the top five on $30m, all salary with no race-result bonuses, while Fernando Alonso and George Russell each clear the $25m mark on the back of hefty incentive packages. Even rookie Mercedes star Kimi Antonelli breaks into the top ten at $12.5m, per Forbes and RacingNews365, a teenager paid like a proven winner.

Collectively, Forbes calculates that the ten highest-paid drivers pulled in $363m on-track this year, up 15% from 2024 and 72% since it began publishing the ranking in 2021. That surge runs in parallel with the business side of F1: team revenues averaged about $430m last season and average team valuations have rocketed to $3.6bn. With the sport’s cost cap holding car spending around $170m but leaving driver salaries outside the budget police, the richest teams have discovered the cleanest bit of financial clean air left to chase performance.

"It has been a long year, but we did it, and I’m so proud of everyone."

— Lando Norris, speaking after clinching the 2025 title, as quoted by Forbes

That emotion is the flip side of the balance sheet. Sportskeeda notes that Norris will carry the number 1 in 2026, while Verstappen returns to chasing, not defending, a crown he lost by the narrowest of margins. Hamilton, meanwhile, must justify his record Ferrari deal after what he himself called a nightmare year. In this cost-capped era, the 2025 rich list is more than a table of numbers – it’s the opening salvo in the next chapter of F1’s arms race, where reputations, legacies and bank balances will all be on the line when the lights go out again.