Top 20 best-paid British racers

Who's the highest paid British racing driver? That's an easy question and you probably won't need telling it's Lewis Hamilton, and by some margin. Working out who ranks underneath him in the pay scale of racing Brits is much more difficult.

This is our attempt to come up with a list of the top earners from Britain in our sport and is part of a much wider examination of the British professional racing scene that you can read in this week's Autosport magazine. Of course, it can only be based on informed estimation, because only a handful of sets of eyes will have seen each driver's contract.

What constitutes a professional driver is also far from straightforward. There are drivers, including some of the highest paid members of the Formula 1 circus, who earn their crust by taking a cut of the sponsorship they or their management find. For us, that doesn't count.

Our definition of a professional driver is someone who is paid to race by a manufacturer, a team and, further down the scale, by an individual. There is a growing class of pro working with gentleman drivers who can be termed as 'racer-coaches', though none come close to making the top 20.

We don't count those who are solely paid to test. Nor British-based foreign nationals even though they pay income tax in the UK, the likes of Mark Webber and Nicolas Minassian. And there are no drivers with dual nationality, such as Guildford-born Ricky Taylor, who we might like to claim as our own.

One driver missing from this list is the late Justin Wilson. One travesty of his sad death was that, with an Andretti IndyCar contract for next season in his briefcase, he was finally due to start earning at the level his talents deserved.

Apologies to anyone whose earnings we've underestimated and anyone who reckons they're earning more than the driver above them in our order. And double apologies to anyone who gets the taxman on their back because we've erred the other way.

THE MEGABUCKS EARNERS

1 Lewis Hamilton
The two-time world champion tops our list even before a new three-year deal with Mercedes, reputedly worth approaching $100million (£66million) plus success bonuses, kicks in for next season.

That is believed to be a small increase on his current deal of somewhere in the region of $30million a year. Even that is more than enough to put him well into Forbes magazine's top 10 earning sportsmen in the world before endorsements are taken into account.

2 Jenson Button
Button is reputedly paid $10million (£6million) this season by McLaren. That's understood to rise by 50 per cent in the second year of his current deal for what will his seventh season with the team in 2016.

Even then, a salary of $15million will leave him some way short of the $22million he earned with BAR Honda back in the middle of the noughties.

£351,000 TO £1 MILLION

3 Jamie Green

Getting poached is a sure-fire way to boost your earnings. Green's jump from Mercedes to Audi ahead of the 2013 season will have made him one of the better paid DTM drivers. That means he's earning somewhere comfortably north of half a million euros.

4 Gary Paffett
Mercedes stalwart Paffett is at the higher end of the DTM pay scale. He, like Green, was a beneficiary of the end of the gentleman's agreement between Audi and Mercedes not to approach each other's drivers.

That was called off with BMW's arrival on the scene in 2012, which Paffett (pictured above, right, battling with Green) and manager Mark Blundell used to their advantage after an approach from one of Mercedes' rivals.

5 Paul di Resta
DTM returnee di Resta is another top earner in the DTM, though he'd probably be taking home more if he'd not departed for his three-year Formula 1 sojourn.

6 Oliver Jarvis
Long-standing Audi driver Jarvis won't be quite in the same league as DTM counterpart Green even though he's been promoted to the full World Endurance Championship squad for this season.

£250,000-£350,000

7 Anthony Davidson
Toyota can't match the spending power of its LMP1 rivals on the WEC trail, but Davidson's money will be on the up thanks to his successes and a series of short-term contracts.

8 Andy Priaulx
Priaulx is paid a salary commensurate with this longevity and successes at BMW - that's 13 years and three World Touring Car Championship titles to save you the bother of counting.

Anything he makes from driving for West Surrey Racing in the British Touring Car Championship doesn't count here, because he found the sponsorship from long-term backer IHG Rewards Club to make it happen, though that undoubtedly boosts his bank account.

9 Ryan Dalziel
Expat Briton Dalziel is easily the highest-paid LMP2 driver anywhere in the world, British or not (not counting the dual role of his team boss at Extreme Speed Motorsports, Scott Sharp).

He supplements his earnings from the WEC with a race-by-race deal with the EFFORT Porsche team in the Pirelli World Challenge. Together, those deals make him the best paid British driver without a factory contract.

10 Oliver Gavin
Now in his 15th season with Corvette Racing, Gavin tops up his income with the odd drive in ADAC GT Masters and the Aussie V8 Supercars enduros.

11 Johnny Mowlem
This 17-year professional, who has always worked the angles, still ranks high on this list even though he has raced less this year. That's thanks to Ram Racing honouring a lucrative three-year deal covering the 2015 season despite pulling the plug on its GTE programme.

Mowlem has amply topped up his income with a couple of drives with the BAR1 Prototype Challenge squad in the United SportsCar Championship and a racer-coach role in the domestic-level GT Cup.

£150,000 - £250,000

12 Rob Huff
The move to the factory Lada squad for 2014 has undoubtedly brought '12 World Touring Car champion Huff his biggest payday and puts him at the very top of this pay bracket.

13 Richard Westbrook
Former Porsche man Westbrook, who races for the Spirit of Daytona squad in the USC, is still a Chevrolet factory driver even though he lost his place in the Corvette Racing line-up for the enduros (meaning no Le Mans 24 Hours in 2015).

He also picked up a deal this year with BMW for the Nurburgring 24 Hours and a round of the VLN long-distance championship on the Nordschleife to bring him close to breaking out of this pay band.

14 Nick Tandy
The big paydays for GT regular Tandy, now in his third season as a factory driver at Porsche, will come with elevation to the German manufacturer's full LMP1 squad, though that's something for the future.

15 Oliver Turvey
Turvey is finally earning a living from actually racing rather than his simulator-based role as a McLaren F1 development driver. He landed a seat in Super GT with Dome team for this season and now has a full-time drive in Formula E with Team China Racing for 2015/16 after a one-off at the season one finale in London.

16 Rob Bell
Bell has a retainer with McLaren GT that covers much of his racing, but also gets additional payments when he's placed with customer teams.

17 Tom Kimber-Smith
The three-time Le Mans class winner, now based in the USA, looked to have found himself on the sidelines for 2015. A winning one-off in the Prototype Challenge class with PR1/Mathiasen at the Daytona 24 Hours turned into full-season drive with a decent salary boosted by success bonuses.

UP TO £150,000

18 Guy Smith
Smith is a valuable commodity to Bentley: he's quick after mastering the art of driving a GT car following years in prototypes and provides a link with its past as the only one of its 2003 Le Mans winners you're likely to see wearing British Racing Green.

18= Steven Kane
The salary of the M-Sport Bentley's star driver is on a par with that of Smith, even though he doesn't have the same profile.

20 Jason Plato
The most successful driver in the history of the BTCC languishes down this list, yet he wouldn't even have made the cut a year ago.

Plato's deal with Triple Eight was a commercial one based on the backing he brought to the team, but this year he is paid a retainer by the big-spending Team BMR Volkswagen squad.

That puts him at the top of this pay band, but he'll be taking home much more through personal sponsorship and media work.