Russell is a six-time grand prix winner, and is hoping to challenge for the drivers’ championship this year after a fast start for him and his Mercedes team.

He currently trails team-mate Kimi Antonelli – who is just 19 years of age – by nine points in the standings after three race weekends.

Antonelli is in his second season in the sport, and is one of several youngsters who have managed to make it into F1 in recent years, with five rookies starting the 2025 season, and one 18-year-old in Arvid Lindblad taking to the track this year.

As well as having the talent, however, these young drivers need to have serious financial backing, with progression through the junior racing ranks not cheap.

Russell has revealed that his own father invested £1million in him over the course of 12 years to help him to get into a position where an F1 team might want to invest in his talent as a junior racer.

Russell eventually joined the F1 grid in 2019, so that figure is likely even more now for families trying to get their own racing prodigies into the top motorsport series.

The 28-year-old Brit has revealed in an interview with BBC Sport a sad truth for drivers trying to make it in today’s world, and that some of his older rivals might be fortunate to be where they are.

“Unfortunately, today, I think so, yeah,” Russell said when asked whether youngsters need to be millionaires to get onto the grid.

“My father spent everything we had on my career. He sold his business, and the total sum he invested was about £1m over 12 years, which is a huge amount of money.

“If I started karting today, I don’t think I’d be able to get there. Karting is so expensive. There’s kids in karting who are spending the same money as Mercedes spent for me to race in GP3.

“There’s a number of drivers on the grid today, top drivers, I don’t think they’d be able to get to F1 if they started today.”

F1’s inequality problem

While Russell didn’t pick out any specific names in that last sentence, seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton is somebody who has previously spoken about his family’s financial struggles when he was growing up in Stevenage.

In an interview with Sky Sports F1 back in 2023, Hamilton revealed that certain sacrifices had to be made so that he could race alongside his peers at a young age.

“I got my first helmet when I was eight and it was called an FM, it was red,” he said.

“You know all the other cool kids had an Arai helmet and that’s what all the cool kids had, it was like having cool kicks, and that was my dream as a kid.

“So eventually my Dad saved up, my Dad and my step-Mum and my Mum got money together and bought me a Playstation for Christmas, but I was like ‘I want a new helmet!’

“They said ‘we can’t afford to get you both’, so they took the Playstation back and I got a new helmet.”

Hamilton has set up his Mission 44 organisation in recent years to try and help children from disadvantaged backgrounds to be able to thrive in school, access careers in STEM, and feel empowered, but very few organisations exist that specifically help young racers.

Formula 2 and 3 CEO Bruno Michel, spoke to F1 in 2021 about the costs of motorsport in the two categories claiming they do ‘as much as possible’ to keep the costs low.

“It is true that drivers from wealthy families have the possibility to go up into the ladder,” he said. “But there have been many times in our junior categories where we had some drivers from wealthy families who are not only financing their own son or their own driver but also their teammate or also some other drivers in other teams or even team owners to help to do the job. So that’s one very, very important part of the funding of the drivers.

“The academies are funding the drivers but they generally don’t come up with the full budget, so the driver also has to find other sources of income to supplement it.”