With the Formula 1 2023 season well and truly underway, F1 drivers are witnessing a boom in Instagram followers this past week due to both the start of the season, and the release of Season 5 of Netflix hit ‘Drive to Survive’.
Lewis Hamilton is currently top of the potential earnings in the wake of the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Round 2 of the 2023 F1 World Championship, having gained close to 100,000 followers in the past ten days
Seeking to ascertain the earning potential of F1 drivers on social media, experts at RantCasino.com analysed data from Influencer Marketing Hub to discover which driver could earn the most from a sponsored Instagram posts.
Top 15 F1 Drivers Potentially Earnings Per Instagram Post
Find the full data set attached here.
Hamilton by far the motorsport’s biggest social media earner
Placing first, and potentially earning the most from sponsored Instagram posts, is Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton. With the highest number of followers out of all of the drivers, over 31 million, Hamilton could potentially earn over $100k per sponsored post.
The seven-time F1 world champion finished fifth in the Bahrain Grand Prix opening race , over 50 seconds behind the race winner, Max Verstappen; he followed that up with fifth place in Jeddah.
Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc is the second-placed potential earner and is able to ask $32k for every sponsored Instagram post (about $1,500 more per post than Max Verstappen in third place). This despite, Leclerc enduring a disappointing start to the 2023 season due to engine failure, putting him out of the Bahrain Grand Prix, followed by a hugely disappointing seventh place in Saudi Arabia.
In third is the current world champion and Red Bull driver, Verstappen, with 10.1 million Instagram followers and potential earnings of around $31k ($60k less than Hamilton in first place.)
In fourth place is Spanish Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz with a potential Instagram earning of an estimated $20,000 per sponsored post. Carlos is currently fourth place after the opening drive in Bahrain.
In fifth place is 23-year-old Bristol-born Lando Norris, the youngest-ever British Formula 1 driver; his increased presence has been matched by his growth on social media, and a sponsored post could fetch the McLaren driver up to $20k. (Stats & Info supplied by RantCasino)