Ever Wondered how much a Formula One car cost and what cost teams have to incur to keep their car competitive with other teams and do it on course of the season ? here is indepth analysis of raw f1 car components.
The most high profile car racing in motorSport is Formula 1 and there is alot of money involved all around to host a grand prix to putting cars on the track. Some of the big teams in Formula 1 spend more than $300 million every year on the cost of cars, car engineers and research & development units to get that half second advantage over rivals. Today we take a in depth look at how much a Formula 1 car costs on average ?
Before we get into the cost of Formula 1 car components, you should know that component cost is just the fraction of total budget a team spend on building a competitive Formula 1 car. Huge amount of money is spent on R&D by ever team and car manufacturer, while there are many high profile automotive engineers working for the teams plus the race crew and of course the drivers salaries which range from $7million a year to $25 million a year.
So all the research and developments stuff has to go through alot of construction and testing before the hit the actual car and that needs time and time is money in this sport. Most of the engineers work over time preseason and during the season to gain that half second in lap time (they are also paid more than average salary). So here is the component by component guide of F1 car plus how much does it cost.
| Components | Single Price | Lifetime cost |
| Car Engine Unit | $250,000 | $4.7 million |
| Undertray | $8600 | $86,000 |
| Monocoque | $117,000 | $117,000 |
| Gearbox | $138,500 | $138,500 |
| Telemetry Software | $110,000 | $110,000 |
| Rear Wing | $13,900 | $139,000 |
| Steering Wheel | $28,000 | $28,000 |
| Exaust | $13,000 | $255,000 |
| Front Wing | $21,500 | $215,000 |
| Tyres | $650 | $300,000 |
| KERs | ||
| Brakes | $3600 | $220,000 |
| TOTAL COST | $7.9 Million |
So above is the raw components needed to build a Formula 1 team, but like we mentioned earlier this is the fraction of a cost which Formula 1 spend to put their two cars on the circuit for a full season. There are other costs which are way higher than the matrial and components used in F1 car. lets take a look at some of them.
The All Important F1 “Car Engine”:
With the new “1.6-litre turbo-charged V6 engines” used in 2014 seasons teams had to spend around $10m to $15m on engine cost of f1 car (that of course is different from team to team). Teams like Ferrari, Mercedez and McLaren has their own engine or they get it from Honda which keep their engine cost lower than the other teams (Customer teams) who end up buying engines from big car manufacturers.
Tyres & Fuel Cost Over A Season:
Pirreli supply tyres to F1 car and one tyre can cost a team around $650 so its kind of hard to know exactly how much tyres a car (or a team of 2 cars) end up using in a season. Than there is fuel cost where on average a single F1 team with two cars consume around 200,000 litre of petrol so that set a team back for around $450,000 a year.
Engineers, Crew, trucks and motorhomes:
Team engineers are paid highly competitve wages to keep them with the f1 teams, than there are crew members who are in the pits before, during and after the race. A mechanic’s fireproof suit cost around $500 and there are usualy 16 crew and mechanic in the put.
Apart from that every team has their own Trucks and motorhomes. This cost is again different from team to team. Like Caterham had 9 trucks in 2014 season and their main bespoke race trucks cost team around $1.5million on the other hand Ferrari has their own two bespoke race trucks which cost in the region of 3 to 4 million.