Revealed: Where the F1 driver fine money really goes after $278k bill

The FIA flag flying in Baku
Racking up $278k worth of fines in the F1 2024 championship through over 50 offences, Nikolas Tombazis has explained the money the drivers have to pay goes to two notable causes: grassroots racing and road safety initiatives.
And it is just a fraction of the over 10 million that is spent on motorsport at grassroots level around the world every year.
Drivers were fined more than 50 times in F1 2024
The Formula 1 drivers have often questioned where the money they have to pay when they are fined goes, with Max Verstappen making headlines for doing just that back in 2021.
Fined 50,000 for touching Lewis Hamilton’s rear wing in parc ferme at the Brazilian GP, he quipped: “It’s quite a big fine, so I hope they have a nice dinner and a lot of wine, some good expensive wine!
“That would be nice, and they can invite me for dinner as well. I’ll pay for that dinner, too!”
He wasn’t the only one who pondered the question, Mercedes’ GPDA director George Russell calling for “transparency” and an “understanding of what was promised from the beginning” as the drivers reportedly racked up $278k in fines in the F1 2024 season.
But instead of answering the question, FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem fanned the flames of disconnect.
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“They talk and then they say, where are you putting the money? Why we don’t do this? I don’t say ‘Oh, sorry, what about you?’,” Ben Sulayem told Reuters. “The drivers are getting over 100 million. Do I ask where they spend it? No. It’s up to them. It’s their right…
“We do whatever we do with the money. It’s our business. It’s also with them and their money. It’s their business.”
However, FIA’s head of single-seater racing Nikolas Tombazis has spoken with Autosport to clear up the situation and explain where motorsport’s governing body uses the money paid for fines.
“I think this question is sometimes slightly influenced by the emotions of the moment, of whatever fine is being discussed and so on,” Tombazis said.
“I realise that anyone who is paying a fine is always slightly annoyed about it and may feel somewhat aggrieved, but for sure there are so many different levels of projects that I think you can never come to the conclusion that this money is somehow spent for Christmas parties and so on.
“The amount of money spent in grassroots vastly exceeds the fines accumulated, which I think indicates that anything that goes in there will have a positive impact. I think you would struggle to find projects at the FIA that don’t have some motorsport grassroots or social impact.
“What I can say with absolute certainty is that fines of drivers in one sport don’t subsidise another sport or another category or something like that. But if you look at other initiatives, whether it is our campaigns, like the one about online abuse and all the grassroots we’ve been talking about before, or safety projects, I believe are noble ways of spending such money. And this money does contribute to that.”
He revealed that over 10 million is spent every year on grassroots motor racing.
“The FIA is not a profit-making organisation,” Tombazis explained. “We don’t have shareholders who are looking at some numbers in the stock exchange and hoping for share prices to go up or get more dividends or anything like that.
“So all the money is spent on what is considered to be beneficial aspects, whether it is for safety, for grassroots in motorsport, or sometimes other projects which are to do with road safety.”
He added: “There’s about 10.3 million euros spent on grassroots, for many clubs, for many countries, just to promote a range of projects of early motorsport activity, and I think that is very important.
“Ultimately, I think the health of Formula 1 is largely dependent on the overall appeal of motorsport. It’s not just having an exciting grand prix, but it’s also having more people who generally even do some relatively low level of grassroots level of motorsport in their country. I think that’s going to be ultimately beneficial for Formula 1.
“The other part, of course, is in order to select drivers for the future, how drivers can grow into the ladder and have the opportunity to do so even if they’re maybe not coming from a wealthy family, for example. That is what is ultimately the key aim.”
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