Formula 1 cars don’t come with a price tag at the dealership. They’re prototypes built in-house, with every component designed, tested, and manufactured at aerospace-level precision. But if you wanted to put a number on it? Get ready for sticker shock.
The rough breakdown (2025 spec)
- Chassis & monocoque — around $700,000–1 million. Carbon fibre tubs designed to survive 50G crashes.
- Power unit — up to $10–15 million each. Hybrid V6 turbos with MGU-H and MGU-K systems are insanely complex and insanely expensive.
- Front & rear wings — $150,000+ per set. And they’ll go through multiple in a season.
- Gearbox — about $500,000. Ultra-lightweight and brutally reliable.
- Suspension — $100,000+ per corner.
- Steering wheel — $50,000–70,000. Packed with electronics, buttons, and custom molds for each driver’s hands.
- Overall per car — somewhere in the ballpark of $12–15 million to build and run.
The hidden costs
That’s just the hardware. Factor in R&D, wind tunnel time, CFD simulations, and endless upgrades across the season, and the real spend per car program rockets into the hundreds of millions.
The drivertalk take
An F1 car is less “vehicle” and more “rolling tech lab” that just happens to lap Spa in 1:44. Teams don’t buy them, they invent them. The headline number — $15 million a piece — is shocking enough, but the truth is scarier: in Formula 1, performance is priceless, and the cost is whatever it takes.
