F1 expediture

Team budget

All the way through the 1990's and 2000's, teams have grown from sometimes only 100 people to more than 1000 people envolved in F1 per team. While these may be located at a centralised location, some teams and manufacturers split resources over different countries. For some major car companies, that is often the home country of the company and the United Kingdom from where the operations are managed.

Together with the growing number of personnel, the total budget of every team has increased exponentially. While the FIA make effort to reduce costs by several regulations (including material limitations on engines, limits on testing), the teams have especially invested huge amounts of money into their aerodynamics departments.

At the dawn of the 2006 season, Business F1 magazine contends that McLaren is the biggest spender in Formula One with an expense of $400 million (US) a year. The team just tops Toyota as they are thought to spend $393 million. Third and fourth are Honda ($382m) and BMW Sauber F1 ($378m), leaving Ferrari just fifth in the ranking with an estimated annual spend of $329m.

The world champions of 2005, Renault F1 ranked a distant sixth by spending around $300m, followed perhaps surprisingly by Red Bull Racing ($201m). Williams F1 ($134m) leads the remaining privateers, but Super Aguri ($95m) outpace both Midland F1 ($76m) and Red Bull's junior team Scuderia Toro Rosso, at $66m.

Team spending priorities

With all this money available from sponsors and profits every team has the sole aim to make its car faster or increase the admiration of competitors and fans. For a team in 1999 with an income of € 75.000.000 , the money is spent according to the following table. Note that these also are estimates and that they should be treated with care.

The car expenses

Obviously a lot is spent on the car. How the car's components relate in terms of production costs is displayed in the next table. Again these are estimated numbers for the same 1999 team and do not reflect the amount of money that is invested in developing such a part.