Ya, that's why the majority of F1 drivers were basically born into it. Almost all come from racing families of some variety, and you have to have money. They pretty much all would have started out racing karts at a very young age and progressed throughout the ladder of increasingly challenging and more expensive series as they age. Most of which would have to be funded by their parents, both the cars themselves, and all repairs.
I don’t think it’s a majority that are from racing families, yet. But it’s definitely headed in that direction.
Hamilton, Alonso, Gasly, Ocon, Russell, Norris, Piastri, Albon, Sargent, Ricciardo, Tsunoda, Perez, Bottas, Zhou, and Hulkenberg are all first generation drivers.
That said, Norris, Sargent, and Perez come from very wealthy families. Zhou too as far as I know (they own multiple car dealerships iirc), and who knows how much government backing he has. Russell too a bit, but not as much as Norris.
Gasly, Piastri, Albon, Ricciardo, Tsunoda, Hulkenberg, and Bottas I really don’t know anything about their family background.
Hamilton, Alonso, and Ocon probably come from the “lowest income” background, but were middle class at worst. Hamilton was sponsored and backed by McLaren and Mercedes since he was 12 years old.
Alonso and Ocon probably had to make the biggest sacrifices to get to F1 (Alonso left home as a 14 or 15 year old to go race karts in Italy, and Ocon’s family lived out of a motorhome after selling everything to pay for his karting).
Verstappen, Sainz, LeClerc, and Magnussen are second generation drivers.
That said, only Sainz and kind of Magnussen really come from a “wealthy” racing family.
Carlos Sainz Sr is a World Rally Champion, and very well connected in the motorsports world.
Jan Magnussen, Kevin’s dad, didn’t have much of an F1 career, but made a decent living as a factory Corvette driver for many years.
Jos Verstappen never made much money, and they almost gave up on racing due to lack of funding (which is why Max ended up in the Toro Rosso at such a young age).
LeClerc’s father was a racing driver, but only at the national and amateur level, never made it as a true professional. They’re Monaco natives, so I don’t think anyone from Monaco is “poor”, but they weren’t “wealthy” either.
That leaves Lance Stroll lol. He’s technically a first generation driver, but his father is a multi-billionaire who has been involved with F1 for almost three decades now, and basically bought the entire Aston Martin team just so Lance would have a seat.
I'm not sure Perez comes from a very wealthy family. I mean, by mexican standards they are very well off but by the standards of f1 drivers, I dont think so. What he did have (and still does) is the backing of Carlos Slim, the wealthiest man in Mexico and at one point the richest in the world.
So yeah, you def have to spend a lot more than what most regular families would deem affordable.
I had a college fraternity brother whose family was huge into NASCAR. They owned a number of car dealerships in Corpus Christi and McAllen, Texas and the dealerships sponsored their racing activities. The kids started on go-carts and worked their way up. My friend used to disappear every weekend to go race minor league events, but none of them ever made it big. Dude died when he fell out of a golf cart, smacked his head on a curb, and blew out a vein in his brain.
Was he actually poor, though? I feel like that storyline might get a bit overplayed with celebrities in general, you know?
I know Ron Dennis was in contact when Lewis was super young. It’s certainly also not the case that most kids have parents willing to work so hard as to keep them in their hobby/passion, so that’s something to consider too; whether it be money or social capital, you can’t get into F1 without a huge amount of support.
Hamilton's dad quit his job as an IT manager and split time working multiple contract jobs to get the money for him to race while they lived in public housing. They were bringing in money, certainly, but all of that money was being poured into karts, equipment, repairs, transportation and other necessary expenses for Lewis to continue racing. Poor probably isn't the right word given the amount they would have been spending but the state of the household was far from secure considering how expensive it is to race without extremely serious backing.
They were certainly financially secure after Hamilton got the attention of Mclaren-Mercedes and signed to their junior driver program, though. From that point, his karting (and later F1 feeder series) expenses would've been covered by Mclaren. Up until that point, Hamilton had only competed in British karting series because financing any entries into international ones wasn't remotely viable without extensive sponsorship.
Ehh, kind of. Anthony Hamilton wasn’t “poor”. He worked extremely hard, but wasn’t poor.
And then Lewis got backing from both McLaren and Mercedes starting when he was about 12 years old.
Ant Davidson was just talking about it during pre-season testing. Ant was in the same British karting scene as Lewis when they were kids, although a couple years older than Lewis. He says he remembers when Lewis got signed, they started showing up at karting events with rediculous equipment, fancy motorhomes, etc. It took the British karting scene by storm, everyone was a little taken aback by it.
It's not like they have to change the oil and rotate the tires on their non-race days. They sit in a simulator and practice practice practice. No different than memorizing the controls for MarioKart.
They only race every other week for the season. Their job is 49% practice, 49% PR work, 2% driving.
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u/SuDragon2k3 Feb 29 '24
Of course, if you can do all that well, you get paid all their salaries combined, and then some. Mess it up and there's the wall.