How much does an F1 car cost? There’s no official price, but there is a cost cap

How much does an F1 car cost?

There is no official price. An F1 car isn’t a commercial product: the team itself is responsible for designing and manufacturing the key parts, including the chassis, and under the regulations those parts belong to that team alone. We found no price for a complete car in the FIA regulations, from the teams or from Formula 1 (we searched on 29 September 2026). The figures that are official are different ones — they are in the tiles below.

The FIA limits something else: how much a team may spend in a year on all its Formula 1 work — development, manufacturing, testing and racing. How to divide that money is up to the team. So the honest answer to the question of price is the cost cap, the price of engines for customer teams and the teams’ own estimates, each with its source and year.

The 2026 cost cap

Under the FIA’s 2026 Financial Regulations (Section D, Issue 07), a team may spend no more than $215 million in a season of 24 rounds or fewer. For each round beyond 24, the cap rises by $1.8 million. From 2027 the amount is indexed to inflation.

If a team reports in a currency other than dollars, the cap is converted into that currency. For 2026 the regulations list the amounts themselves: £170.09 million, €198.663 million and 189.992 million Swiss francs. From 2027 a team may spend up to $2 million of the previous year’s unused cap on top of the current one.

The regulations state plainly why the cap exists: for the competitive balance of the championship, sporting fairness and the teams’ financial stability. There is a short entry on it in the glossary: cost cap.

What the cap doesn’t cover

A lot, so the cap isn’t a team’s whole budget. Under Section D for 2026, the costs left out of the calculation include:

• pay and travel for the team’s Formula 1 drivers;
• pay for the team’s three highest-paid staff;
• marketing, heritage cars and young driver academies;
• human resources, finance, legal and property;
• flights, hotels and transfers for races and tests;
• fuel, catering at the track and at the factory, and health and safety;
• FIA entry and Super Licence fees, and payments to Formula 1;
• the power unit, up to the maximum supply price.

Money in Formula 1 is covered in brief in the chapter “Teams, drivers and cars”.

How the cap has changed

The cap arrived in 2021. Under the first Financial Regulations it was $145 million in 2021, $140 million in 2022 and $135 million from 2023, each time for 21 rounds. In 2026 it rose to $215 million, but as Formula 1 explains, the rise is roughly neutral: costs that used to be counted separately were brought inside the cap.

For example, there used to be a separate capital expenditure cap of $36 million over four years. It was scrapped for 2026, and annual depreciation now counts towards the cap instead. Staff who spend only part of their time on Formula 1 now count in full too.

How much do engines cost?

For a customer team the price is capped. Under Section A of the 2026 regulations, a manufacturer supplies power units to a customer for no more than €22 million a season, adjusted for inflation. From 2027 the limit is €20.75 million.

The price covers power units and spare components for every round of the season for both drivers. It also includes testing and demonstration runs of up to 8,000 km a year, and up to eight of the manufacturer’s specialists at the track. Replacing engines after a crash, or for any other cause the team is responsible for, is not part of the supply and is paid for separately. How the power unit itself works is explained in the engine article.

The manufacturers are capped too. Under Section E for 2026, a manufacturer may spend no more than $190 million a year on power units from its first season of supply. In the three years of preparation before that, the limit is $148.5 million a year. For the manufacturers whose engines power the 2026 cars, that first season is 2026.

What does a crash cost?

Here there are only the teams’ own estimates, and both are from 2021, the first year of the cap.

A team pays for repairs out of the same cap, which leaves less for developing the car. That is how Formula 1 explained it in 2024, when Mercedes had to build a new chassis after a series of crashes. The 2021 British Grand Prix page covers that crash.

What happens if a team overspends?

The team is penalised. Under Section D for 2026, an overspend of less than 2% is a “Minor Overspend Breach”: a fine and, if needed, minor sporting penalties. An overspend of 2% or more is a “Material Overspend Breach”: the team must lose Constructors’ Championship points, and a fine and other penalties are added, up to exclusion from the championship.

One example is Red Bull in 2021. Their cap in pounds was £118.036 million, and their spending, as determined by the FIA’s review, exceeded it by £1.864 million, or 1.6%. Under an agreement with the FIA dated 26 October 2022, the team was given a $7 million fine, and its aerodynamic testing allowance was cut by 10% for 12 months. Under the 2021 rules this counted as a minor overspend: the threshold then was 5%.

Why is F1 so expensive?

Because a team does so much itself. In Formula 1 each team is responsible for designing and manufacturing the key parts of its car, develops it through the season and takes it to races all over the world. Under the 2026 regulations a season can have up to 24 rounds. All of this, apart from the exclusions, is what the cap limits.

Formula 2 is different: everyone has the same car, built by the series’ suppliers, and a team’s entry fee is €60,000 a year. How else the two series differ is explained in the article on F1 and F2. Which parts of the 2026 car a team makes itself is covered in the article on the 2026 car.