How Much Prize Money Do F1 Teams Earn?

F1 Prize Money by the Numbers

• $1.4 billion: total 2025 F1 prize pool paid out across the 10 teams, per Formula 1's own financial disclosures reported by planetf1.com.
• 45%: the share of F1's roughly $3.87 billion in annual revenue that gets paid to teams as prize money and bonuses.
• 14% / 6%: the championship-position share of the pool for 1st place versus 10th place on the current-year sliding scale.
• 5% ($63m/year): Ferrari's exclusive heritage bonus, paid regardless of where the team finishes.
• $277.7m vs $165.8m: Ferrari's 2025 payout (4th place) versus champions McLaren's payout — a $112 million gap, and it runs the wrong way for the team that actually won.
• $450 million: the anti-dilution fee Cadillac paid to join as F1's 11th team for 2026, split among the 10 existing teams.

How the Prize Pool Actually Splits

F1's prize money isn't one number divided by finishing position — it's three separate payments stacked on top of each other. The largest slice, worth about 75% of the pool (roughly $949.5 million in 2025), is what most fans picture: a sliding-scale payment based on where a team finished in that year's Constructors' Championship, with the champion collecting around 14% of the pool and 10th place collecting around 6%.

The second slice, worth about 20% of the pool (roughly $253.2 million in 2025), is a historical-performance bonus calculated from top-three Constructors' finishes over the previous decade. This is the part that rewards sustained success rather than a single good season — it's why Mercedes, despite a rougher few years on track, still collected around $112 million in historical bonuses in 2025, more than most teams' entire payout.

The 2025 F1 Prize Money Table

Why Ferrari Out-Earned the Champions

Ferrari's $277.7 million payout — nearly $112 million more than title-winning McLaren — comes down to a single clause buried in F1's Concorde Agreement: a 5% "long-standing team" bonus worth roughly $63 million a year, paid to Ferrari alone, regardless of results. It exists because Ferrari is the only team that has competed in every Formula 1 World Championship season since the sport began in 1950, and F1's commercial rights holders have kept the payment in place through multiple contract renewals as recognition of that history. Layer that $63 million on top of Ferrari's own historical-performance bonus (reportedly around $70 million from the past decade's results) and its current-season payment for finishing 4th, and Ferrari's total clears every other team's — even a team that just won both championships.

McLaren's $165.8 million, by contrast, is almost entirely earned on the track: roughly $147 million from its 14% championship-position share plus about $18.7 million in historical bonus. McLaren simply hasn't had the decade of sustained top-three finishes that built Mercedes' and Ferrari's bonus totals, so its 2025 title, worth more than any other team's current-year result, still wasn't enough to out-earn Ferrari's combination of heritage payment and history.

What Changes in 2026

The prize pool gets a new complication in 2026 with Cadillac joining as F1's 11th team. Adding a team means slicing the same pool one way further, so Cadillac paid a $450 million anti-dilution fee as the price of entry — money split among the 10 existing teams specifically to offset the impact of a smaller individual share going forward. Combined with F1's continued revenue growth, the 10 pre-existing teams' payouts are expected to hold steady or grow even with an 11th team now at the table, while Cadillac itself starts building its own historical-performance bonus from zero.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much prize money did F1 teams earn in 2025?

F1 distributed roughly $1.4 billion in prize money across its 10 teams for 2025. Ferrari topped the table at $277.7 million despite finishing 4th in the Constructors' Championship, ahead of Mercedes ($230.8m) and Red Bull ($202.9m) — while champions McLaren earned $165.8 million.

How is F1 prize money split between teams?

Around 75% of the pool is paid out on a sliding scale tied to current-year Constructors' Championship position, where the champion gets roughly 14% and 10th place gets about 6%. Another 20% goes to a historical-performance bonus based on top-three finishes over the previous 10 seasons, and the remaining 5% is a payment reserved exclusively for Ferrari.

Why does Ferrari get a special prize money bonus?

Ferrari's Concorde Agreement includes a unique 5% bonus payment, worth roughly $63 million a year, paid regardless of where the team finishes. It recognizes Ferrari's status as the only team that has competed in every Formula 1 World Championship season since the sport began in 1950.

How much extra did Cadillac have to pay to join F1 in 2026?

Cadillac paid a $450 million anti-dilution fee to join the grid as F1's 11th team for 2026. The fee is split among the 10 existing teams to compensate them for the prize pool now being shared one way further.

The Bottom Line

F1's prize money system rewards three different things at once — this year's results, the last decade's results, and in Ferrari's case, simply having been there since 1950 — which is exactly how a team can finish 4th and still out-earn the champions. Ferrari's $277.7 million in 2025 wasn't a fluke or an accounting error; it's what happens when a heritage bonus and a strong historical-performance track record stack on top of a merely-good season. For the spending side of that same money, our F1 budget cap guide covers what teams are actually allowed to do with it, and our F1 team principal guide covers who signs off on how it gets spent. Cadillac's $450 million entry fee is just the latest example of how much it now costs to even join that conversation — see our 2026 F1 calendar for every round the newest team on the grid will race to start earning its own share.