F1 driver salaries 2023: Who are the highest and lowest earners? The latter may shock you

Max Verstappen had a perfect 2022 season, retaining his title with ease and still having time for races. The Red Bull driver ultimately slipped into another gear as he won the drivers’ title by a massive 146 points from the Monegasque, with Sergio Perez back in third. Charles Leclerc’s challenge in his Ferrari initially appeared serious, but in the end it was the Red Bull driver who slipped into another gear. Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time champion, had a disappointing season, finishing sixth in the standings without a Grand Prix victory and being overshadowed by his teammate George Russell as both drivers battled reliability issues.

Despite the setback, Hamilton spent the year 2022 as the highest-paid Formula One driver. However, that has changed ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix on March 5, the first race of 2023. Verstappen will receive a salary of $55 million in 2023 as compensation for winning the F1 world championship for the previous two seasons, according to spotrac.com, moving him past Hamilton for the first time.

Read More – McLaren news: Papaya’s brand new MCL60 makes its debut on the tracks

Salary chart for 2023

McLaren’s MCL60 takes to the tracks

After experiencing serious brake overheating issues that led to a disastrous test and disappointing opening race in Bahrain one year ago, the McLaren team has made efforts to prevent a repeat of that issue this time. McLaren scheduled one of its two filming days for Bahrain on Tuesday in order to make sure that its new F1 challenger could run without issues. McLaren is well aware that there is only one test left before the first race of 2023 at Sakhir. The team was only allowed to run a maximum of 100 kilometres on the day, which was also used for filming, but that was enough to provide a critical indication of any issues that needed to be resolved before Thursday’s start of the actual running.

Lando Norris felt the day had been crucial for McLaren to avoid starting the test on the back foot like it did the previous year after his run. “I think it was a super important day for us, especially because we need to start this season off better than we did last year,” explained the Brit. “So far we’ve done exactly that, so I’m happy the team are happy. There’s a lot of hard work to make sure we start smoothly, and we start with the reliability, and get everything on top of where it should be. They’ve done exactly that, so yeah, super important.”