Formula 1 racing, otherwise known as F1 or the Grand Prix, is clearly the most expensive sport in the world. Each year, billions and billions of dollars are spent just on this single sport. Why? For the answer, perhaps we should look closely at the sport and the rules surrounding it.
There are two championships to be won in Grand Prix Racing. The first one, The Driver’s Championship, is concerned with the racer who actually wins. Every year, over 120 million dollars are spent on the salaries of race car drivers alone. The more popular and talented the driver, the higher his salary is. Of course, if you were supposed to go at breakneck speeds, constantly risking your life, you’d want a high salary, too. The second championship is called the Constructor’s Championship. In the rules and regulations of this sport, there’s a clause that says that all the contestants must design their own cars. By contestants, I don’t mean the drivers alone. The whole racing team is involved in this undertaking. So, every year, all the major car companies like McLaren and Toyota spend hundreds of millions of dollars on engine development alone. But that’s not all, during the course of the race, the car must be maintained. The race team must make sure that the car stays at its top condition all throughout, or this will prove to be detrimental to their chances of winning.
Other than that, there’s also the construction of the race tracks, the video coverage and all of the other matters that need tending to.
If you total every penny spent on this sport, the outcome will amount to roughly 2.5 billion dollars. Anyone who reads these figures is sure to get dizzy. This 2.5 million dollars can feed the whole of Africa for years on end, yet people choose to spend it on entertainment. It’s absurd, but hey, it’s a free world.
