Formula 1 driver salaries defended as Otmar Szafnauer raises cost cap call

Former Ferrari and Williams figure Rob Smedley does believe that Formula 1 drivers deserve to be paid the eye-watering salaries that exist in the sport.

Ex-Aston Martin and Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer argues that these big pay packets should be counted against a team’s cost cap expenditure. Szafnauer pointed to both car upgrades and driver ability as performance differentiators, proposing that teams should be forced to make a trade-off.

Rob Smedley defends Formula 1 driver salaries amid cost cap debate

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Formula 1 drivers are among the highest-paid athletes in the world.

Seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton is thought to have the highest base salary on the F1 2026 grid at $70 million, followed by Max Verstappen on $65m. Drivers can further increase their earnings significantly through bonuses.

During the High Performance Racing podcast, Smedley and Szafnauer were asked whether they believe the F1 drivers are worth their huge salaries.

“Well, yes, if you look at other sports,” said Smedley.

“It’s all relative, right. I mean, if we’re not going to get into the moral question, but if you look at other sports, of what the elite level athletes in NBA or NFL or Premier League football [earn], all of those top guys command massive salaries and packages and bonuses and all the rest of it.

“Now, there is a thing with Formula 1, which has changed quite drastically in the recent past, the cost cap.

“So you’ve got the cost cap where almost everything now this year, is inside the cost cap, even the marketing and all that stuff that used to be out. So they’ve increased the cost cap and they’ve brought all that stuff in.”

However, the drivers’ salaries are not counted in the cost cap.

“I think they should be,” argues Szafnauer, “because one of the reasons the drivers get paid so much is the value of winning is high, and they are a big component of that winning.

“They’re not capped, and it’s a differentiator.

“The team should have to make decisions between paying a driver more and having more upgrades, because they both do the same thing.

“A good driver might get you two tenths of a second a lap, and an upgrade might get you two to three tenths of a second a lap. But you have to trade those off. My belief. It’s not like that.

“Now that they’re out of the cost cap, and if the teams do get closer together in performance, the differentiator will become the driver. Once that happens, their salaries go even higher, because the value of winning is high.”

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Smedley concurred: “100 per cent right. That is 100 per cent what’s happening.”

Reported F1 2026 driver earnings place the lowest base salary on the grid next to Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad’s name.

His reported salary comes in at between $500,000 – $1m.

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