Gentleman drivers and sponsored racers At one time F1 regulations regarding the changing of drivers during the course of a season were extremely liberal, which encouraged some teams to recruit a string of pay drivers to drive their cars, sometimes only for one or two races. In the 1970s,
Frank Williams Racing Cars (the predecessor to
Frank Williams and
Patrick Head's highly successful
Williams F1 team) were particularly prolific with regard to the number of drivers they would use in a season - ten drivers drove for the team in both 1975 and 1976. Pay drivers experienced a revival in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as many small constructors like
Pacific,
Forti, and
Rial joined the grid and were desperate for funding. In general, pay drivers (such as
Giovanni Lavaggi,
Jean-Denis Délétraz,
Nikita Mazepin,
Ricardo Rosset, and
Alex Yoong) are usually associated with poorer performances compared to those with paid drives. As such, teams willing to accept pay drivers are often at the back of the grid and struggling financially. While a pay driver often brings an infusion of much needed funding, their terms often require share ownership and / or influence in the team's operations. A team that relies too heavily on pay drivers can enter a downwards spiral; a pay driver may scare off sponsors, The competence of pay drivers varies. Three-time Formula One world champion
Niki Lauda grew up in a wealthy family. Against his parents' will, he was able to borrow money against his life insurance to secure drives in Formula Two and Formula One. His performances impressed
Ferrari driver
Clay Regazzoni, who persuaded
Enzo Ferrari to pay off Lauda's debts. More prosaically, Pedro Diniz managed to score some decent results compared to the other pay drivers of the time, scoring championship points in eight races over six years (two fifth-place finishes and six sixth-place finishes, at a time when only the top six drivers scored points; currently, the top 10 finishers score points, and Diniz had 26 top-10 finishes), when many other pay drivers did not score any points or even failed to qualify for races. It was said that Diniz was "competent enough that his presence in the sport was largely accepted." In recent years, there have been fewer traditional pay drivers on the grid. Instead, the "pay driver" tag has (at times) now been extended from family-funded drivers to drivers who have strong relationships with wealthy corporate sponsors. For example, Sauber allegedly received $30-35 million/year from Chinese advertisers once Chinese driver
Zhou Guanyu signed with the team. The lines in this space are somewhat blurred, as several sponsor-backed drivers have attained impressive results in Formula One, including race winners
Sergio Perez,
Robert Kubica, and
Pastor Maldonado, who were backed by
Telmex,
Orlen, and
PDVSA, respectively. However, after her retirement, she admitted that "unfortunately, ... I had to sell race seats" to keep the team afloat.
Paying drivers, but not "pay drivers" Not all drivers who pay for their seats are stigmatized as "pay drivers." The most common example is the academy driver, who typically signs with an established auto manufacturer or top-level racing team. Because F1 teams are limited to two drivers per race, a championship contender will often sign two established drivers, in which case it will need to pay other teams to make room for its junior drivers. In recent years,
Mercedes placed
George Russell with its engine customer Williams, and
Ferrari placed
Charles Leclerc and
Antonio Giovinazzi with
Alfa Romeo-Sauber. Most famously, in 1991, Mercedes (which did not enter Formula One until the debut of
Sauber-Mercedes in 1993) paid the
Jordan team $150,000 to give its junior driver
Michael Schumacher his F1 debut. In addition, several drivers who paid for rides in the comparatively affordable junior formulae were able to strike out on their own after making it to Formula One. Three-time champion
Ayrton Senna received financial assistance from his wealthy father during his junior career in Britain, and 1992 champion
Nigel Mansell quit his engineering job and mortgaged his house to drive professionally.
Decline of the traditional pay driver Although pay drivers still exist in Formula One, they are less common than they used to be for a number of reasons: • There are fewer teams in Formula One than in the early 1990s, leaving fewer opportunities for all drivers, including pay drivers. As a result, every driver in Formula One, pay driver or not, has had a relatively successful career before Formula One. For example,
Nicholas Latifi only made it to Formula One after finishing second in the
2019 Formula Two season (albeit after four and a half seasons in F2 and its equivalents); the top three finishers in Formula Two automatically earn enough Super License points to be promoted to Formula One. • In general, Formula One teams are more financially stable than they were in the 1990s or 2000s, meaning that fewer teams need to hire pay drivers to pay the bills. The
Williams team was in chronic financial distress for much of the 2010s until the
Williams family sold the team to a private equity investor. A notable exception is Lance Stroll, who debuted with Williams after allegedly receiving $80 million in financial backing from his father, including junior formulae expenses. Even so, Stroll had a fairly strong resume for a pay driver, having beaten the now-current F1 driver George Russell for the
2016 FIA Formula 3 European Championship title. In addition, since joining Formula One, he has scored three F1 podiums as of September 2025. Nonetheless, he was dogged by accusations that his father's financial backing had given him an unfair advantage in his junior career. The Super Licence system has occasionally been criticized for slowing promising young talents' path to Formula One. Four-time world champion
Max Verstappen, who went directly from European Formula Three to Formula One, opined that the Super License "was introduced because of me, of course," and encouraged the FIA to relax its rules for the most talented young drivers. Verstappen added that pay drivers can still make it to Formula One despite the Super License system.) In addition, while the Super License prevents truly incompetent drivers from making it to Formula One, the high cost of racing in junior formulae (estimated at €2-3 million/year) makes it difficult for a junior driver without family resources or outside backing to qualify for a Super License. Seven-time world champion
Lewis Hamilton expressed concern that "There are only wealthy kids coming through [today]. There are not kids from working-class families." ==Sports car racing==