110. Formula 1 Teams

·23 min·2 clips

How does a two-tenths second start in Formula One translate into a multi-billion dollar global industry?

The race begins with choreography. Twenty cars sit in pairs, five red lights count down, and all 20 drivers launch in roughly two tenths of a second. The episode then follows Williams Racing, one of Formula 1's oldest teams, to show what sits underneath the noise and glamour: design work, factory output, shipping, and a budget that keeps score. Formula 1's audience has grown to more than 820 million fans worldwide, helped largely by Drive to Survive and F1 the Movie. Ten teams carry the sport. Each team designs, engineers, manufactures, and delivers two cars for 24 races across 21 countries. The car is only the first bill. One Formula 1 car costs about £5 million to build for a season, before spares and crash repairs start eating the budget. Driver pay sits outside the cost cap. Salaries can run from half a million dollars to $80 million a year, with Williams drivers reported around £8 to £10 million. Then the wall gets expensive. Williams had a rough 2024, with destroyed wings, floors, suspension, gearboxes, and other parts piling up. A front wing costs about £150,000. A harder hit can add £200,000 for front suspension and another £150,000 for a floor. Williams says most spares travel in sets of three, four, or five because the team may need to rebuild a car overnight. Car parts alone run about £55 million a year. Every collision hurts the lap time and the ledger. The target stays blunt: build the fastest car, win, and keep the show worth watching.

As heard by us

A clear look at how Formula 1 turns speed into a very expensive operation.

The piece treats Formula 1 less like a race than a finely tuned business. It lays out the scale plainly: 20 cars on the grid, 10 teams building and delivering two cars across 24 races in 21 countries, with each machine made from about 20,000 bespoke parts.

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Why you'd press play

You want the hidden price tag behind every lap, crash, and repair.

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