Max Verstappen may have become a triple world champion in 2023 but has also got a curse because of the same. The Dutchman’s dominance over the field accumulated his 575 points throughout the season. This points tally also forces him to pay a whopping super license renewal fee for the 2024 season – over $1.3 million! F1 photographer Kym Illman has given a great analogy of the amount to the equivalent worth of supercars one can buy with Verstappen’s super license fee.
Illman stated in one of his YouTube videos,
“That would have bought 20 Teslas, nine [Porsche] 911 Carreras, five Ferrari Romas, or two Ferrari SF90 Spiders in Europe.”
The concept of the super license fee is such that often top drivers performing great, will be at a loss. There is a base fee for every driver of €10,400 ($11,327). On top of that, for every point scored in the previous season, drivers have to pay €2,100 ($2,287). This totals Verstappen’s amount to €1,217,900 ($1,327,145).
According to Motorsport.com, Verstappen revealed that Red Bull will be paying this fee on his behalf. The Milton Keynes team confirmed that they will be paying and team boss Christian Horner labeled it as a luxury problem to have. However, it is still unclear whether will they do the same for Sergio Perez and do other teams follow suit or does everyone else has to pay their own fees.
Regardless, FIA and F1 have this system in place as a tax-kind of a system for the top team drivers, who score a lot more points and earn a lot more salary than the lower tier teams’ drivers. All the fees money goes into improving the safety of the sport, naturally the drivers.
Verstappen‘s 2024 super license fee will be the most expensive renewal ever; as he scored the most number of points last season, any driver has ever scored.
Is Max Verstappen on board with the high super license fee?
While revealing that his team will bear the pain of paying his renewal fee, Max Verstappen also labeled the system as “absurd”. According to the 26-year-old, with the increasing number of races, the points any driver earns will increase, especially if anyone has a dominant season as he did in 2022 and 2023.
Verstappen compared how this is not the case in other sports, where athletes have to pay so much to compete every year. Naturally, the Dutchman may be startled at how his super license fee has hit the 7-figure mark for 2024. Besides he is the only driver, whose fee is beyond the million-dollar mark.
Sergio Perez, who finished P2 with 285 points will have to pay €608,900 ($663,214), which is almost half of Verstappen’s amount. Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton has a bill of €501,800 ($546,560). And here on for Fernando Alonso and everyone who finished below him, the amount goes below the $500,000 mark.
So, it is natural for Verstappen to feel frustrated about his $1.3 million fee. However, with Red Bull bearing the cost, it won’t matter much to the three-time champion. If the Austrian team is going to pay for Perez too, their total obligation would become $1,990,359.
Whether Verstappen likes it or not, this has been a persistent issue for every world champion. Hamilton dominated the sport for several years, breaking records; and before him, Sebastian Vettel had his dominant seasons too. So, it is not an oddity but showcases that the Dutchman’s 2023 season was impeccable, causing the most expensive renewal.
