Sebastian Vettel reaches $500 million in prize money

Sebastian Vettel has hooved up more prize money than Lewis Hamilton. Despite the British driver picking up one more World Championship, Vettel tops the list by $60 million.

Forbes revealed the list earlier. By making the percentage of points earned by a driver proportionate for his team to the percentage of the prize money that a team receives at the end of the season, the prize money can be calculated per driver.

By adding this prize money of all seasons, you get an estimate of what a driver has won during his career in prize money. According to Forbes, Sebastian Vettel is still a big earner, with Lewis Hamilton lagging behind around $ 60 million.

The top 10 for the current Formula 1 field is as follows:

Sebastian Vettel - $ 511.9m
Lewis Hamilton - $ 449.6m
Kimi Raikkonen - $ 386.3m
Nico Hulkenberg - $ 250.9m
Sergio Perez - $ 232.1m
Daniel Ricciardo - $ 231.1m
Valtteri Bottas - $ 218.3m
Romain Grosjean - $ 200.9m
Robert Kubica - $ 154.7m
Max Verstappen - $ 132.5m

The fact that Vettel tops this list has three reasons. McLaren were excluded from the 2007 prize pool is the most important reason. Because of the 'spygate' scandal, Mclaren did not receive any prize money that year. This was their first season in Formula 1 for both Vettel and Hamilton (although Vettel only entered halfway).

Vettel has also been proportionally more dominant within the team where he drove for. Throughout his career, Vettel earned 56.8% of the points for the team, whereas Hamilton has a lower result at 53.8%.

Finally, it also has to do with the distribution of the prize money in Formula 1. Ferrari still receives a considerably larger share of the prize pool than Mercedes.