The highest paid driver of 2023 – who is he?

Forbes has pub­lished a rank­ing of the high­est paid For­mu­la 1 dri­vers in 2023. At the top of the podi­um is Max Ver­stap­pen.

Dutch dri­ver Max Ver­stap­pen has been named For­mu­la 1’s top dri­ver for 2023. Accord­ing to Forbes mag­a­zine, the Red Bull team dri­ver earned $70 mil­lion in one year. In Octo­ber, Ver­stap­pen won the Qatar Grand Prix and became the world cham­pi­on ahead of sched­ule. He also won this title in 2021 and 2022.

Sec­ond place in the Forbes rank­ing of the high­est paid rac­ers was tak­en by Lewis Hamil­ton, who com­petes for the Mer­cedes team. At the end of the sea­son, the British dri­ver earned $55 mil­lion. Also in the top five in terms of earn­ings were Fer­nan­do Alon­so, Ser­gio Perez and Charles Leclerc.

The actu­al income of For­mu­la 1 stars may be high­er, since income from adver­tis­ing con­tracts was not tak­en into account when com­pil­ing the rat­ing.

In 2014, Max Ver­stap­pen joined the Red Bull youth pro­gram, and at the age of 17 he became the youngest dri­ver to take part in a For­mu­la 1 round. By age 18, he became the youngest Grand Prix win­ner in league his­to­ry.

In the 2023 sea­son, Ver­stap­pen’s Red Bull team beat Mer­cedes and Fer­rari to vic­to­ry in the Con­struc­tors’ Cham­pi­onship.

In the 2023 sea­son, Max Ver­stap­pen was espe­cial­ly lucky. From May to Sep­tem­ber, he set a record num­ber of vic­to­ries in a row for For­mu­la 1 — 10. Over the entire year, the dri­ver won 19 races. In total, Ver­stap­pen won 54 races dur­ing his career, which allows him to occu­py third place in the his­tor­i­cal rank­ing.

Only Michael Schu­mach­er (91 wins) and Lewis Hamil­ton (103 wins) have fin­ished first more often than him.