F1: Do you have to be a millionaire to make it to the top of the sport?

But not everyone pays the same. Deals can be made for the right drivers. In multi-car teams, it is not uncommon for richer drivers with less talent to fund the seats of faster, less rich ones.

Leaving the top spot, Russell says he paid £800,000 for his championship-winning F2 season in 2018.

However, these figures are still not accessible to everyone except a very small part of the society.

Budgets have increased significantly in real terms over the last 30 years.

In 1994, a season of British Formula 3, then the leading international championship, cost a top team around £250,000. The equivalent in Formula 3000, which has now become F2, was £500,000.

If you adjust these figures for inflation they would be equivalent to £500,000 and £1.1 million today. So why have costs actually tripled?

The answer depends on how the championships evolve. Within 10 years the cost of the F3 season had almost doubled to £500,000. This is currently equivalent to around £1.1 million.

In 2005 it became F3000 GP2 and was taken over by then Renault F1 team principal Flavio Briatore and his business partner Bruno Michel.

There was competition between chassis and engine companies in the F3 and F3000. GP2 and GP3 and their successors F2 and F3 are single-model formulas; Everyone has to use the same chassis and engine.

The idea is to better compare drivers by ensuring equipment parity. Michel is negotiating the supply price with F2 and F3’s chassis and engine partners and says he wants the best offer.

“I try to reduce the burden of the cost of the vehicles on the teams as much as possible,” he says.

However, the conditions for these championships have changed significantly.

British F3 was held entirely in the United Kingdom. The F3000 was European and usually ran in its own independent events (mostly at lesser-known circuits), only occasionally joining the bill at a grand prix.

Both F3 and F2 are now part of the F1 package and the number of races included in a season has increased significantly. Every extra race, even at the same track on the same weekend, costs money, especially in terms of crash damage.

Racing alongside F1 provides significant benefits in terms of visibility, but also comes with a disadvantage when it comes to cost.

The championships have become international and while F2/F3 cover transport costs centrally, F1 being on the support bill means staff must travel to cities hosting grand prixes.

As the cost of F1 increased, this also had an impact on the junior categories. Flights and hotels are more expensive. Labor costs have also increased as junior categories compete for staff with the likes of Formula E and the World Endurance Championship. Therefore, the packages offered to engineers and mechanics need to be more competitive.

Moreover, the cars have been made more similar to those in F1, so they are more expensive to produce. As with F1, safety standards have improved significantly. But this also has a price.

Karun Chandhok, now a Sky F1 commentator, says he paid 1.7 million euros for the F2 season in 2008. This is currently equivalent to 2.2 million euros.

So give or take, this means F2 has been tracking inflation ever since.

Although prices for equipment and spare parts increase by around 15% when a new car design is introduced, F2 and F3 CEO Michel says he takes the wider economic environment into account when making decisions on improving the cars and insists: “At the time of GP2 we were making a bigger margin on spare parts than we do now.”

Karting is where costs have really exploded in recent years, according to insiders.