Inside Ferrari's $410 million F1 budget

Ferrari had the largest pocket among the 10 teams in 2018. With a budget of $410 million, they edged out Mercedes who had a kitty of $400 million as the constructor with the most financial clout. They raked in a lot of points too (571) and so spent $ 0.7 million per point and had their best season yet since winning the constructor's championship back in 2008.

Ferrari got $190 million from the Formula One Management (FOM) of which $80 million was prize money from 2017 and $110 million as bonus for being a heritage team. Commercially, the Maranello outfit has the advantage of taking home the largest slice of FOM revenues with 20% of the ‘pot’, irrespective of their position in the previous year's constructor championships.

Additionally, raised $40 million from Ferrari licensing and another $20 million from their technical partners. The long-term sponsors of the Italians - Philip Morris International ($100 million) and Shell ($30 million) came in with the lion's share of funds for their campaign.

Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari sporting the Mission Winnow livery

At the 2018 Japanese Grand Prix, Ferrari and Philip Morris, which owns Marlboro cigarettes, came up with a new livery of Mission Winnow. The logo if turned 90 degrees, resembles the iconic design of Marlboro cigarette pack. A clever subliminal design for advertising their brand, since tobacco product manufacturers prohibited from promoting their brands on the cars.

In terms of pace, the budget certainly helped the scarlet car which had a lap time improvement of 1.19 seconds as compared to last year. Ferrari also added 50 more people to their staff to last year's 900 for a real push for the title. They stumbled in key moments in the championship and the updates at Singapore didn't perform as per expectations.

They actually had to go back to the previous settings to gain their pace back, and once they did, Kimi Raikkonen won a classic race at the Circuit of the Americas, Texas. For 2019, Ferrari is expected to add more personnel and cash to snatch the trophy from the hands of Mercedes and become the first team apart from the Brackley unit to win the constructors championship in the V6 Turbo era.