Liam Lawson, Sarah Hirini and Steven Adams. Photos / Getty Images
A lengthy career in F1 will make New Zealand’s rising motorsport ace our highest-paid sports star ever but it hasn’t been an easy ride; two Kiwi alpha males line up NRL glory.
Formula One nowadays is paved with gold.
As the sport breaks through in America and with Gulf States throwing even more money at them, F1 is awash with greenbacks and Middle East petro-dollars.
According to Sportico, motorsport’s premier championship is currently worth US$18.6 billion ($30b). Its revenues have risen 20% in the past year. The Ferrari team alone are valued at US$3.13b ($5b).
This is the world young New Zealander Liam Lawson will find himself officially parachuted into any day now (and possibly overnight) when he is announced as one of Red Bull’s four drivers on the 2025 F1 championship circuit.
It’s a heady environment. Glamour and glitz, appearances on Netflix’s phenomenally successful Drive To Survive, big salary, fast sports car... all of that.
Current world champion Max Verstappen is said to earn US$55 million ($88m) annually, which sounds pretty healthy and suggests all of the drivers who comprise the F1 circuit are rolling in it, too.
But the average F1 contract is US$13.4m ($21.3m), excluding bonuses and sponsors. At least two drivers, Logan Sargeant and Yuki Tsunoda, reportedly only make US$1m ($1.6m) a year.
For context, Steven Adams is currently being paid US$12.6m (almost $20m) a season by the Houston Rockets.
The giant Kiwi basketballer is only the 132nd-highest-paid player in the NBA yet his salary nearly matches the average across 26 drivers in 13 separate F1 teams. At the peak of his powers a few seasons ago at the New Orleans Pelicans, Adams was being paid double that.
Peer a little deeper into some of F1′s backroom secrets and you discover further disquiet lies in what the sport pays its “reserve drivers” – or stars-in-waiting. This is the world Lawson has inhabited for the past three seasons.
There are some who are not paid at all. Shockingly, sometimes it can often be the opposite.
Following Lawson’s story through his formative development years has exposed Kiwis to the often dubious path a talented rookie has to tread to secure one of those precious F1 cockpits.
So while the 22-year-old is on the precipice of achieving a childhood dream, climbing the ranks of the planet’s best young drivers has been a punishing, frustrating and surprisingly impoverishing journey.
This is due to the strange and almost unique system that operates in F1, where the sport’s rookies and emerging talent (rather than the teams themselves) effectively finance their own development.
There are really only four ways to do that – rich parents, philanthropic supporters (who might want a future payback), bringing lucrative sponsorship to the team or having so much talent a team partially subsidises you.
Lawson’s career has been funded by a combination of mostly the second and partly the fourth options.
As a result, “reserve drivers” are lucky to earn around US$100,000 to US$500k, at best, a year. This is despite being assets at practice and testing sessions and potentially invaluable if pressed into grand prix duty.
It was Lawson’s stint standing in for an injured Daniel Ricciardo last year that sparked the irresistible charge to replace him. Arguably, the Kiwi should have been there earlier but for the charismatic Australian’s commercial appeal to sponsors.
Red Bull are also notoriously poor payers at the development end, leveraging their status as the sport’s premier team to pay “unders” for the best emerging talent.
It’s possible Lawson has been earning, at best, little more than US$100k annually to date. He would also be footing his own travel and accommodation costs out of that.
The enormous cost of funding and operating a team is at the heart of why some reserve drivers and aspiring stars pay for their F1 berth by bringing either money or sponsors that contribute significantly to a team’s annual budget.
That’s not just at the reserve driver level.
At one stage in recent weeks, it was being speculated Lawson would replace the underperforming Sergio Perez alongside Verstappen in the top Red Bull team.
But the popular Perez has been critical to Red Bull securing massive sponsorship out of Mexico. His contract is safe and it is Ricciardo who will make way for Lawson instead.
This is the sport’s shameful dirty secret – you can buy or influence your way into F1′s elite driver ranks, making the tussle for just 26 seats even more cut-throat.
If you’re not a “son of” a wealthy benefactor or connected to big money, the path is infinitely more challenging – which is why Lawson’s feat in simply breaking into F1 is an achievement all Kiwis should laud.
He has secured F1 attention largely via his talent alone, along with the support of a group of Kiwi motorsport philanthropists including the late Sir Colin Giltrap.
Funding a career in the lower-division single-seater F4, F3 and F2 ranks has been enormously expensive and it’s likely Lawson has similar arrangements with his backers to the likes of IndyCar king Scott Dixon, where future money won is paid back over time.
Lawson expressed a hint of frustration at F1′s chicanery in a podcast earlier this year, revealing a season’s campaign of F2 racing can come with a $US2m price tag, which the driver must secure.
He told the On The Radar podcast that many people think he is already wealthy, when chasing a F1 dream has in fact come at the expense of a decent payday in other motorsport championships.
“That’s the crazy thing... in other sports, their development championships and all the way up, you get paid at [those] lower levels,” he told the podcast.
“To be honest, if you went other motorsport routes like the GT side or World Endurance or even [Australian] SuperCars or some championship like that, it’s easy to get paid. But it’s not until you get into F1 that you get paid.
“Anything below it, F2 or F3, you don’t get paid, unless you can bring your own sponsorship and basically cover your costs. That’s the only way you can get paid because you’re paying the teams to race.”
So it has been by no means an easy ride for Lawson, but the payoff is just around the corner...
If he’s good enough (and despite F1′s torturous development route), Lawson could scale enormous heights, including eclipsing Adams as the most well-paid Kiwi sports star in history.
That is based on Verstappen’s current salary and the ongoing growth of F1, which now has events in 21 countries and is seeing its global broadcast audience go through the roof.
At the peak of his powers, basketball star Adams was earning almost US$30m ($48m) a year.
F1 insiders are suggesting Lawson’s upgraded Red Bull contract will jump to somewhere between US$5m to US$10m a year ($8-$16m), excluding bonuses.
It will put him close to the same stratosphere as Adams, currently on US$12.6m ($20m) annually with Houston, and currently New Zealand’s best-paid sports star, well ahead of All Whites striker Chris Wood and UFC fighter Israel Adesanya, currently sitting in the No 2 and No 3 spots.
WHERE LAWSON’S NEW CONTRACT WILL PLACE HIM AMONG OUR HIGHEST PAID STARS
(Earnings per year, New Zealand dollars)
1.) Steven Adams $20m
2.) Liam Lawson* $12m
3.) Chris Wood $8.8m
4.) Israel Adesanya $6.8m
5.) Joseph Parker $6.5m
* Estimated and subject to new Red Bull deal.
But if Lawson can climb the team’s internal driver rankings and muscle Perez out of the way, or if a frustrated Verstappen left Red Bull, that contract will easily jump closer to the US$20m mark.
That would mark the first time in more than a decade that Adams has been toppled as our highest-paid sportsman.
Lawson’s elevation comes at a challenging time for Red Bull though.
The team’s three-year stranglehold on both the individual driver’s title and the Constructors Championship has come under siege from McLaren and Ferrari this year and the previously invincible Verstappen hasn’t won in his past seven starts.
Between them, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Nelson Asofa-Solomona have played 527 games of NRL in the toughest position in rugby league.
The two Kiwi props are the old warhorses of the Aussie competition and are feared across the league.
The two will clash for the last time on opposing teams when Asofa-Solomona’s Melbourne Storm host the Sydney City Roosters, where Waerea-Hargreaves is the most capped player in the storied club’s history.
At stake on Friday night is a berth in this year’s grand final.
You can hear the rafters at AAMI Park shaking in anticipation already.
Waerea-Hargreaves is retiring from the NRL after a 16-year career as the game’s toughest enforcer. And after a slow start to his season, the giant Asofa-Solomona has been a key player for the Storm.
Their confrontation this week looms as the NRL attempts to navigate a growing injury concern from thunderous forwards like the two Kiwis running back the ball from kickoffs.
In the Roosters’ big playoffs win over Manly last week, Waerea-Hargreaves levelled (legitimately) a Manly player in the opening seconds with a powerful run almost off the back fence of the stadium.
Once play resumed after the Manly player left the field, exactly the same thing happened on the next tackle and the Sea Eagles lost a second player in as many tackles, leading to fresh controversy over NRL kickoffs.
Critics argue players like “JWH” and “NAS” are even angling their runs from kickoffs to pick out smaller but important rival players and punishing them by forcing them to put their bodies on the line defensively.
The theory is the extra 10 to 20 metres of “wind-up time” that kickoff returns make possible is making rampaging big men even harder to tackle. Others argue the showdown from kickoffs is part of league’s theatre and that fans don’t want it changed.
There’s no doubt it’s a dramatic sight. And nor is it a recent controversy... remember the one from our own Ruben Wiki in a Warriors home semifinal against the Roosters in 2008 at Mt Smart Stadium?
Current Kiwis coach Stacey Jones was on the field that same night. I wonder if the Little General is planning one final hurrah for Waerea-Hargreaves and Asofa-Solomona.
You can picture the anxiety in the Australian test team if the pair turn out one last time for New Zealand in next month’s Pacific Championship.
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