Cash-for-crashes a way of life in F1

London: The agonised grimace and upward cast eyes on the frowning face of a Grand Prix team chief intently following his drivers’ progress on a pit-lane television monitor is usually the giveaway of a costly pay-out.

The distraught boss will have just witnessed one of his drivers smashing into either an unforgiving steel barrier or a rival’s car and the resultant mess, the remains of his pride and joy, is a heap of rubble to be replaced at eye-watering cost.

That scenario has too often been an issue this season with some big money incidents that render a punishing impact on the team’s cash flow.

The driver may be safely, snugly and securely protected in an £82,000 (Dh484,167) carbon fibre shell and escaped with little more than a smudge on his reputation...but the team’s budget is a surefire sufferer. There’s rarely been a race in this, the most exciting campaign in F1 history, without incident and F1 bosses forking out fortunes to meet the resultant repair bill.

The cash-for-crashes setback is a potentially ruinous reality that every team faces: GPS missiles of cars go through around 2800 gear changes a lap. They accelerate from standstill to 200km/h in 3.8 seconds and hurtle onto 305km/h in another five seconds forcing a driver’s head sideways with a 5g force equivalent to 20kg, making breathing a hardship.

Is it any wonder accidents can happen in the melee of 24 cars being blasted to 300-plus km/h by a determined mass of equally committed drivers?

Biggest spenders a season are Ferrari on £307m, then McLaren with £211m with their rivals not too far short in their outlay.

Here’s a rundown on the bills that can raid an F1 team’s slush funds....

Engines: Their 1000 working parts take 80 hours to assemble and they run on regular unleaded petrol. Cost? £ 149,000 each.

Gearboxes for the car that does 3.1mpg (5km per gallon) cost£90,000. Brakes £2,500, rear wings £9,000 and front wings £15,000. Tyres, which last around 210 kilometres are £450 each. A steering wheel weighing just 0.9kg is £20,000, exhaust £8,000, and wheelnuts £850.

It is reckoned that the total racing life of a Grand Prix car works out at £4.76m and £3.26 m of that is spent on engines. Then there are, of course the “incidentals” like the drivers’ wages. They vary from the lowest at around £3.46m to top-paid aces like Fernando Alonso on £24m. Pit crews, according to performance and experience, have a take-home of between £25,000 and £62,000.

Only the insiders at the FIA, the sport’s ruling body, supremo Bernie Ecclestone and the team owners know the rewards they reap from the sport watched worldwide by around 350 million. The annual pay outs, graded on title finishing places, are cloaked in mystery and subterfuge.

They are figures carefully blurred, unlike say golf or tennis where prize money is a well publicised figure. But it runs into very many millions of pounds even for the no-hoper also-rans there to make up the numbers..

Intrigue is the Formula One hierarchy’s mantra...