There is a price to pay for success – and more so for domination – as Mercedes have found out thanks to a £3.2 million ($4.9m) bill just to be allowed to race this year.
Thanks to a record-breaking 701 Constructors’ Championship points between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, the team has been handed an equally impressive bill by the FIA.
A new-for-2013 regulations sees the teams pay a fee for each point they score on top of a standard entrant fee of £340,000 ($516,000).
For Mercedes, because it won the championship, it must pay an inflated £4,080 ($6,200) per point scored, whilst the likes of Red Bull and Ferrari must pay £3,400 ($5,161) per point.
Therefore, once you’ve added it all up, Mercedes must pay an eye-watering £3.2m – the highest fee ever paid to enter the sport.
Red Bull, for coming second, pays almost half at just £1.72m ($2.6m).
The FIA will receive a total of a £11m ($16.7m) in fees for the 2015 season, though it’s likely to be a little less thanks to the bankruptcy of both Marussia and Caterham which were due to pay a combined total of around £687,000.
Mercedes however won’t feel too hard done-by, as they’ll collect an estimated £68m ($102m) in prize money at the end of this year for securing the 2014 title.
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