F1 Pit Crew Salary: What Mechanics Really Earn

Formula 1 pit crew members earn a reported £30,000 to well over £100,000 a year, but the headline everyone misses is this: they are not paid to be a pit crew. They are the team’s mechanics and technicians, and changing tyres on Sunday is a second job stacked on top of building and running the car all week. All the numbers below are approximate, because no team publishes what its staff are paid.

That framing changes how you read the pay. The salary is for the engineering, not the two-second stop.

What the pay looks like by role

Piecing together reported figures from motorsport coverage, the scale runs roughly like this. Treat every band as an estimate.

Role	Reported annual pay (approx.)
Junior / garage mechanic	£30,000 – £45,000
Experienced mechanic	£45,000 – £65,000
Number-one mechanic / wheel-gun operator	£50,000 – £80,000
Chief mechanic	£100,000+

The pattern is clear: pay tracks overall responsibility for the car, not the specific pit-stop job. A wheel-gun operator is not paid more because they hold the gun; they are paid as an experienced mechanic who happens to have been drilled into that role. The chief mechanic, who oversees the whole garage operation, sits at the top.

Why they aren’t “pit crew” for a living

This is the part that reframes everything. The 20 people who swarm the car on Sunday spend the rest of the weekend — and the weeks between races — as the team’s mechanics and engineers, assembling the car, changing power units, running practice, and fixing damage. The pit stop is an extra duty, rehearsed hundreds of times, layered onto a full-time engineering role.

So there is no such thing as a “professional tyre changer” salary. The pay is a mechanic’s or technician’s salary, and the pit-crew work is an unpaid-in-itself expectation of the job, occasionally topped up.

Bonuses, travel and the real extras

Base salary is only part of the package. The meaningful add-ons for most crew are:

• Travel allowances — the calendar is over 20 races on multiple continents, and crew are away from home for long stretches. Allowances and overtime add up.
• Performance bonuses — some teams reward fast pit stops or strong finishes, and the season-long DHL Fastest Pit Stop standings give crews something to chase, but the sums are modest next to base pay.
• Team success — a title-winning season can mean bonuses, though these vary enormously by team and contract.

None of these turn a mechanic into a millionaire. They compensate for a brutal schedule as much as they reward the stopwatch.

How the salary compares across the grid

The historically wealthier teams generally pay more and travel better, while smaller outfits run leaner. The budget cap has compressed spending, but staff pay is treated separately in various ways, and crew still move between teams chasing better roles, pay, or a faster car. The gap between teams is real but far narrower than the gulf you see in driver salaries.

And that gulf is the useful comparison. The people who make a two-second stop possible earn a solid professional wage; the person sitting in the car earns something on a completely different scale.

The bottom line on F1 pit crew pay

An F1 pit crew member is a skilled mechanic earning a reported £30,000 to £100,000-plus, with the top of the range going to chief and number-one mechanics rather than to any specific pit-stop specialist. Add travel allowances and the occasional bonus, and you have a demanding, well-regarded engineering career — not a lottery win. The tyre change is the glamour; the salary is for everything around it.

For a sense of just how differently the sport pays the person in the cockpit, see our breakdown of the highest-paid F1 drivers. And to appreciate exactly what those mechanics rehearse for, our explainer on how F1 pit stops work walks through all 20 jobs.