Max Verstappen must cough up more than £1MILLION to compete in F1 next season – but Lewis Hamilton pays less than half

MAX VERSTAPPEN will have to pay more than £1MILLION to compete in F1 next season.

The Dutch star, 26, claimed his third successive drivers’ championship in 2023 with a record 16 wins and 575 points.

Max Verstappen will have to pay more than £1million to take part in the 2024 seasonRex

Lewis Hamilton will only have to pay £431,000 to compete next yearAlamy

But the price of his dominant year means he will have to shell out a substantial amount to compete in 2024.

F1 racing licences for the following season are always calculated by the previous term’s points totals.

The base cost for the drivers is nearly £9,000, before each point accumulated incurs an additional £1800.

This means Verstappen‘s 575-point total racks up a payment of more than £1m.

The overall total for the Dutch driver stands at £1,046,911.

However, it is likely Red Bull will cover the cost of the racing licence for their star man.

Meanwhile, seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton will only have to pay £431,349 to compete in 2024 – less than half the fee of rival Verstappen.

He picked up just 234 points and failed to win a race for a second consecutive season.

Williams driver Logan Sargeant, who claimed just one point in the 2023 season, will pay the least amount after accumulating a total of just £10,800.

Verstappen has complained in the past about having to pay the hefty fees.

He said: “I don’t think it’s right that we have to pay so much.

“It doesn’t happen in other sports either. And there are more and more races.”

There will be a record 24 races next season, up from 22 in 2023.