F1 Prize Money: Ferrari Gets Paid for Existing

Formula 1’s prize money is not a prize. It is a revenue share, paid to constructors rather than drivers, and one team receives a slice of it purely for having always been there.

The pool was around $1.25 billion in 2025, drawn from total F1 revenue of roughly $3.7 billion. It splits three ways.

The three pillars

Pillar	Share	2025 value	Basis
Constructors’ Championship	~75%	~$949.5m	Finishing position, ~$9m per place
Historical success	~20%	~$253m	Past championships and results
Ferrari heritage payment	5%	~$63.3m	Ferrari alone

The 20% historical pillar went to Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari and Williams — the teams with the deepest competitive records, not the best current form.

Two of those five are now held by investment funds rather than manufacturers, and Red Bull GmbH collects on two of the eleven entries — see our guide to who owns Formula 1.

Attending the sport’s most expensive round costs a spectator anything from €45 on Le Rocher to €4,500 for a yacht terrace — set out in our guide to Monaco Grand Prix tickets.

Winning the title does not mean the biggest cheque

This is the consequence people find hardest to believe, and it is documented: Ferrari topped the 2025 payout table even though McLaren won the Constructors’ Championship.

The arithmetic makes it inevitable. Ferrari collects its 5% heritage payment regardless of results, plus a share of the 20% historical pillar, plus its position-based payment. A newer team that finishes ahead of Ferrari on track can still finish behind it on money, because two of the three pillars are not about this season at all.

That is a deliberate design choice, not a flaw. It rewards the teams that have underwritten the sport’s history — and it entrenches them.

Ferrari’s payment, now capped

Ferrari is the only team to have competed in every season since the championship began, and every Concorde Agreement has carried a payment recognising that. In 2025 it was worth about $63 million.

The 2026 agreement changed the mechanism. Previously an escalator meant that as the prize pot grew, Ferrari’s share of each incremental increase grew too, potentially rising towards 10%. Under the new deal the bonus is capped at 5% regardless of how large the pool becomes.

So Ferrari keeps the privilege but loses the upside. As F1’s revenue continues climbing, that cap will matter more each year.

Cadillac paid $450 million to dilute the pool

From 2026 the grid has eleven constructors, and the same pool divides eleven ways instead of ten.

The incumbents were compensated. Cadillac paid a reported $450 million anti-dilution fee — roughly $45 million to each of the ten existing teams. It is the clearest price ever put on a place on the F1 grid, and it explains why entry is so tightly controlled: an extra team costs every existing team money, permanently.

Despite the dilution, payments were expected to exceed 2025 levels in 2026, because the pool itself keeps growing.

The 2026–2030 Concorde Agreement

The framework governing all of this was signed in two parts: the Commercial Agreement in March 2025 and the Governance Agreement in December 2025, running to 2030.

Splitting commercial terms from governance is itself notable — it separates the question of who gets paid what from the question of who writes the rules, at a moment when the sport is absorbing both a new team and the 2026 technical regulations.

Drivers receive none of it

Worth stating plainly, because the phrase “prize money” implies otherwise. F1 prize money goes to the teams. A driver’s income is salary, personal sponsorship and contractual bonuses negotiated with the team.

It is the same model as the WNBA, where pay is a capped share of league revenue rather than a prize — see our guide to the highest paid WNBA players. That is a structural difference from most sports this site covers. A golfer at the Masters receives the cheque directly; an F1 driver’s employer receives it and pays a salary. Our guide to Masters prize money sets out the direct-payment model for comparison.

How it compares

Competition	Annual distribution
Champions League 2026/27, to clubs	€2.437bn
Formula 1 2025, to teams	~$1.25bn
Royal Ascot 2026, whole meeting	£10.65m
The Masters 2026	$22.5m

F1 distributes roughly half what the Champions League pays its clubs, across eleven teams rather than thirty-six. Per recipient it is far the more generous of the two. See our guides to Champions League prize money and horse racing prize money, or the full set in our prize money hub.

How we checked these numbers

The three-pillar structure, the ~75/20/5 split, the ~$9 million gap between championship positions and the ~$63 million Ferrari payment are from RacingNews365, PlanetF1 and Motor Sport Magazine’s reporting of the 2025 distribution. The Concorde Agreement dates and the capping of Ferrari’s bonus are from Motorsport.com. The Cadillac anti-dilution figure is a reported number, not a disclosed one.

The pool size is genuinely disputed. We use around $1.25 billion for 2025 because it is the figure most consistently reported alongside F1’s $3.7 billion revenue, but some sources put the pool nearer $1.4 billion. F1’s commercial terms are confidential, so every figure on this page reaches the public through reporting rather than disclosure, and none should be treated as audited.

Review class: seasonal. Distributions are reported after each season concludes — recheck when the 2026 payouts are published, and on any Concorde Agreement amendment.