Formula1 Journal

*Note: Jarno Trulli, Heikki Kovalainen, Timo Glock, Lucas Di Grassi and Bruno Senna all received salaries from their team, but did not score points and therefore aren’t included in the final total

 

As you can see, for the second year running it is a Ferrari driver who tops the list for the highest cost per point. Last year it was Kimi Raikkonen, who cost Ferrari nearly a $1m per point last year (as a side note, he still earns £14m a year from Ferrari as part of his severance package). This year, it was Fernando Alonso who topped the list, costing around $120,000 a point this year. The difference between Alonso this year and Raikkonen last is that Ferrari finished a place higher in the constructors standings, won 4 more races and challenged for the title, so therefore you could argue that it was money well spent this year.

 

As you can see from the table, the team who got the best value for money were undoubtedly Red Bull, with Webber costing around seventeen and a half thousand dollars per point, and world champion Sebastien Vettel only costing just under $8,000 per point. Altogether it cost Red Bull around $25,000 per point for the team, compared to runners up McLaren, who cost over 4 times that value.

 

The biggest gap between team-mates was surprisingly the Williams team, with Rubens Barrichello costing a massive $85,000 more per point than team-mate Nico Hulkenberg, Rubens earned 7 times more than the young German, yet only scored just over double the amount of points than his team-mate. Add to that Hulkenberg’s pole in Brazil, and Rubens perhaps cost Williams more than he should have.

 

So there you are - the true value of the F1 drivers in 2010. And with F1 looking to cut costs further in the coming years, the drivers will be required more to prove they are value for money