F1 Drivers With Private Jets: Who Actually Owns One

At the 2026 Belgian Grand Prix, three drivers sitting inside the top seven of the championship climbed off the same aircraft. George Russell, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris shared a Cessna Citation CJ4 out of Nice, a light jet worth about $7 million, along with a photographer, a McLaren trainer and Mark Webber.

That single detail undoes most of what people assume about F1 drivers with private jets. The grid flies privately almost without exception, but hardly any of them own the aircraft.

Four drivers on the 2026 grid have a documented aircraft in their name. This article covers each of them with full specifications and tail numbers, the aircraft the rest of the field charters, the champions who owned jets before them, and why ownership makes so little sense in a sport that flies constantly.

Which F1 Drivers Own a Private Jet in 2026

Ownership on the current grid is a short list. Everyone else buys flights rather than aircraft.

Driver	Aircraft	Registration	Status
Max Verstappen	Dassault Falcon 8X	PH-UTL	Owner since February 2025
Fernando Alonso	Dassault Falcon 900C	Not public	Owner
Lance Stroll	Bombardier Challenger 604	N18LS	Owner
Sergio Pérez	Bombardier Global Express XRS	Not public	Owner
Lewis Hamilton	Bombardier Challenger 605	G-LCDH	Sold, owns nothing since
Rest of the grid	Charter and shared charter	Varies	No ownership

Two things stand out. Three of the four owners are over 35, and two of them fly Dassault trijets, an aircraft family that has quietly become the Formula 1 default.

Max Verstappen: The Dassault Falcon 8X

Verstappen owns the most capable aircraft on the grid, and he is the only driver whose jet has become a fan object in its own right. Tracking accounts follow it, and the registration is a piece of personal branding.

PH-UTL stands for Unleash The Lion, a reference to the Dutch lion he races under. It entered the Dutch civil register on February 7, 2025, and is operated on his behalf by Exxaero, a Netherlands-based business aviation company that handles crew, planning and maintenance.

The paint is the giveaway on any apron. Matte black with orange accents, carrying his personal marks, on an aircraft type that is almost always delivered in conservative white.

The Dassault Falcon 8X is a three-engine ultra-long-range jet, the longest-cabin aircraft Dassault builds. Its 6,450 nautical mile range covers Amsterdam to Singapore or Europe to Los Angeles without stopping, which matters on a 22-race calendar spread across five continents.

The jet he replaced: Richard Branson’s Falcon 900EX

Verstappen’s first aircraft came with a story attached. He bought a 2008-build Dassault Falcon 900EX from Richard Branson’s Virgin group at the end of 2020, reportedly for around $15 million.

He registered it PH-DTF for Down To Fly, painted it matte dark grey with orange graphics, and had the cabin refurbished in 2021 with his MV33 logo worked into the interior.

It went on the market in March 2025 at around £12 million, offered to buyers in the United States and Canada. That is roughly what a 17-year-old 900EX with those hours is worth, so this was a clean upgrade rather than a distress sale.

The range difference explains the move. The 900EX manages 4,500 nautical miles, the 8X does 6,450, and that gap is the difference between refuelling on the way to Asia and not.

Fernando Alonso: The Dassault Falcon 900C

Alonso has owned a Dassault Falcon 900C for years, a trijet reported at around $12 million and notably modest for a two-time world champion in his 25th season of top-level racing.

The 900C is the simplified, shorter-range member of the Falcon 900 family, built in small numbers in the early 2000s. It carries the same three-engine tail arrangement as Verstappen’s aircraft with about 4,000 nautical miles of range.

Alonso also signed a partnership with the aircraft brokerage and management firm EMCJET in 2020, which is the usual route for an owner who does not want to run a flight department personally.

Ownership does not mean he always flies his own aircraft. He arrived at the 2026 Belgian Grand Prix on a chartered Dassault Falcon 2000 from Strasbourg, which is exactly how owners behave when the jet is somewhere else or in maintenance.

Lance Stroll: The Bombardier Challenger 604

Lance Stroll flies a Bombardier Challenger 604 registered N18LS, a 2006 airframe carrying serial 5658 and his initials on the tail. It is the oldest owned aircraft on the grid and, at roughly $10 million in today’s used market, one of the cheapest.

The wider Stroll family aviation picture is a different order of magnitude. His father Lawrence Stroll, who owns the Aston Martin F1 team, took delivery of a three-year-old Bombardier Global 7500 on January 30, 2026, an aircraft valued at roughly $80 million.

The Global 7500 is one of the very few aircraft that outranks Verstappen’s Falcon, and it sits near the top of any list of the longest range private jets in service. New York to Hong Kong is within its nonstop capability.

At the 2026 Belgian Grand Prix, Lance Stroll arrived on a Bombardier Global 5000 from Nice and transferred onward by AgustaWestland AW139 helicopter. Team-principal-level aviation and driver-level aviation blur together when your team principal is also your father.

Sergio Pérez: The Bombardier Global Express XRS

Pérez is back on the grid in 2026 with Cadillac alongside Valtteri Bottas, and he brought his aircraft with him. He arrived at Spa that season on a Bombardier Global Express XRS from Madrid, an aircraft reported at around $15 million.

Go to aircraft: Bombardier Global Express XRS

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The XRS is the long-range Bombardier that competes directly with the Falcon 8X and the Gulfstream G550. Buying a used one is the value play in the category, since a 2008-era XRS delivers most of an 8X’s capability for a quarter of the money.

Pérez has a practical reason for wanting range that most of the field does not. Mexico to Europe is a long way, and he flies it repeatedly across a season.

Lewis Hamilton: The Champion Who Gave His Jet Away

Hamilton is the most famous name in any conversation about F1 private jets, and he has not owned an aircraft since 2019.

His Bombardier Challenger 605 was painted candy apple red and registered G-LCDH after Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton. He bought it in 2013, became the subject of a Paradise Papers story about a £3.3 million VAT refund in 2017, and sold it as his environmental politics hardened.

The airframe is still flying. It returned to the UK register as G-RANE in February 2019 with SaxonAir at London Luton, and anybody with the budget can now charter the aircraft Hamilton used to own. The full account of that sale is in our piece on Lewis Hamilton’s private jet.

He did not stop flying privately. In 2026 he leads Ferrari’s title challenge and arrived at Spa on a chartered Embraer Legacy 500 from Bologna, which is a smaller and less thirsty aircraft than the one he sold.

What the Rest of the Grid Actually Flies

The 2026 Belgian Grand Prix produced the clearest single snapshot of how Formula 1 travels, because the paddock arrivals at Liège were photographed and identified aircraft by aircraft.

Driver	Aircraft	From	Owned or chartered
Max Verstappen	Dassault Falcon 8X	Prague	Owned
Sergio Pérez	Bombardier Global Express XRS	Madrid	Owned
Lance Stroll	Bombardier Global 5000	Nice	Family aircraft
Fernando Alonso	Dassault Falcon 2000	Strasbourg	Chartered
Lewis Hamilton	Embraer Legacy 500	Bologna	Chartered
Charles Leclerc	Bombardier Challenger 605	Bologna	Chartered
Pierre Gasly	Embraer Praetor 600	Milan	Chartered
Kimi Antonelli	Cessna Citation CJ2+	Rimini	Chartered
Valtteri Bottas	Hawker 400XP	Nice	Chartered
Norris, Piastri, Russell	Cessna Citation CJ4	Nice	Shared charter
Sainz, Albon	Cessna Citation XLS+	Oxford	Shared charter
Hülkenberg, Bortoleto	Pilatus PC-24	Barcelona	Shared charter

Read the right-hand column and the picture inverts. Nine of twelve movements were charters, and three of them were shared between rivals from different teams.

The championship leader that weekend, Kimi Antonelli, flew in on a Citation CJ2+ from Rimini, a light jet worth about $3 million. That is roughly one-twentieth of what the driver sixth in the standings was flying.

Why So Few Drivers Buy the Aircraft

The obvious explanation, that they cannot afford it, is wrong. A top-five F1 driver earns enough to buy a used Challenger outright in a single season.

The real answer is utilisation. Business aviation economics turn in favour of ownership somewhere above roughly 200 to 250 flight hours a year, once crew salaries, hangarage, maintenance programmes, insurance and depreciation are counted.

A driver does about 24 race weekends, plus testing, sponsor days and holidays. Most of those legs are short European hops, and the long-haul flyaways are flown on team or sponsor aircraft.

Age and career stage matter too. The four owners are Verstappen, Alonso, Pérez and Stroll, all of whom have either a very long earning history or family wealth behind them.

The younger drivers are earning well but have not yet accumulated the capital, and they can access the same aircraft on demand. That is the same calculation that produces the empty legs and repositioning flights covered in our guide to private jet empty leg flights.

The Origin Story: How F1 Learned to Fly Itself

Driver aviation is older than most fans assume, and the first serious aviator on the grid did not buy a business jet. He bought an airline.

The through line is that F1 aviation has got quieter, not louder. Schumacher and Hamilton flew aircraft with their initials painted on the tail; today’s grid mostly books a CJ4 and splits it.

Niki Lauda: The Only Champion Who Flew the Airliner Himself

No driver has come close to Lauda’s involvement in aviation. He did not just own aircraft, he held an airline transport pilot licence and flew scheduled services as captain.

Lauda Air went bankrupt within three years of its 1979 launch, which forced him back into a race seat to fund it. He came out of retirement, won the 1984 title with McLaren, and used the money to rebuild the airline.

He founded two more carriers after Lauda Air: Niki in 2003 and LaudaMotion in 2016. He told The Guardian in 2004 that he still captained Niki flights at least twice a week.

There is a strange footnote connecting Lauda to Hamilton. Between 2017 and 2018, Hamilton’s Challenger 605 spent roughly 22 months on the Austrian register as OE-IXI, operating with LaudaMotion.

Lauda is also the reason the grid’s list of celebrity pilots has an unbeatable entry at the top. No current driver holds a commercial licence.

Fuel Burn Across the F1 Fleet

The aircraft on this list span a factor of three in fuel consumption, which is a bigger spread than the sport’s own emissions debate usually acknowledges.

Split three ways, the CJ4 that carried Norris, Piastri and Russell to Spa burned roughly 47 gallons per hour per driver. Verstappen’s Falcon 8X flown alone burns about 340.

Formula 1 itself reported a 35% cut in its total carbon footprint against a 2018 baseline in June 2026, having removed almost 80,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent from its operations in eight years. Travel emissions specifically fell 27%, or more than 21,000 tonnes.

Those figures cover the sport’s own freight, logistics and broadcast operations rather than what drivers do on their own time. Personal aviation is the part of the ledger that nobody publishes.

How They Are Getting to Zandvoort

The Dutch Grand Prix on August 21 to 23, 2026 is the last one Zandvoort will hold for the foreseeable future, and it carries the first F1 sprint ever run on Dutch soil.

It is also Verstappen’s home race, on a weekend where he sits sixth in a championship led by Kimi Antonelli with Lewis Hamilton second for Ferrari. He has won at Zandvoort three times.

PH-UTL has flown into the Dutch GP before, and Zandvoort is one of very few races where the sport’s most expensive driver-owned jet has almost no distance to cover. Amsterdam Schiphol is 20 miles (32 km) from the circuit.

That is the quiet joke of F1 private aviation. The aircraft with 6,450 nautical miles of range spends a good part of its year on legs a car could manage.

How F1 Compares to Other Sports

Formula 1 has the most demanding travel calendar in professional sport and the lowest rate of aircraft ownership among its stars. That combination is unusual.

Cristiano Ronaldo owns a Gulfstream G650 worth around $75 million and Lionel Messi owns a Gulfstream V, on a football calendar that rarely leaves one continent in a season. Among athletes with private jets, footballers and basketball players out-own drivers by a wide margin.

The closest parallel is stock car racing, where the schedule is dense but domestic, and where NASCAR drivers with private jets tend to buy smaller, cheaper aircraft such as the Citation CJ series and the Learjet 60.

One reason is structural. F1 teams and sponsors move drivers as a matter of course, so a driver who owns nothing still never queues at a gate, a convenience gap explored in our comparison of private jet vs first class travel.

The other is manufacturer preference. Dassault has an unusually strong hold on this grid, which is uncommon in a market otherwise dominated by Gulfstream and Bombardier, as our guide to the best private jet manufacturers lays out.

FAQ

Which F1 drivers own private jets?

Four drivers on the 2026 grid have a documented aircraft in their name: Max Verstappen (Dassault Falcon 8X, PH-UTL), Fernando Alonso (Dassault Falcon 900C), Lance Stroll (Bombardier Challenger 604, N18LS), and Sergio Pérez (Bombardier Global Express XRS). Lewis Hamilton owned a Challenger 605 until 2019 but has owned no aircraft since. Every other driver charters.

What private jet does Max Verstappen have?

A Dassault Falcon 8X registered PH-UTL, standing for Unleash The Lion. It is a 2023-build trijet, serial 498, entered on the Dutch register on February 7, 2025 and operated for him by Exxaero. It has a range of 6,450 nautical miles, a top speed of Mach 0.90, three Pratt & Whitney Canada PW307D engines, and a reported value of $50 million to $60 million. The paint is matte black with orange accents.

What was Max Verstappen's old private jet?

A 2008 Dassault Falcon 900EX registered PH-DTF, for Down To Fly, which he bought from Richard Branson’s Virgin group at the end of 2020 for around $15 million. It had logged 6,103 flight hours and 2,693 landings when it was listed for sale in March 2025 at roughly £12 million, offered to buyers in the United States and Canada.

Does Lewis Hamilton have a private jet?

No. Hamilton sold his Bombardier Challenger 605, registered G-LCDH, in 2019 on environmental grounds and has not owned an aircraft since. He flies a mix of chartered jets, team aircraft, and commercial airlines. He arrived at the 2026 Belgian Grand Prix on a chartered Embraer Legacy 500 from Bologna.

What jet does Fernando Alonso own?

A Dassault Falcon 900C, a three-engine business jet with about 4,000 nautical miles of range, up to 12 seats, and a reported value near $12 million. Its registration has not been made public. Alonso also entered a partnership with the aircraft brokerage and management firm EMCJET in 2020.

Do F1 drivers share private jets?

Yes, and it is common. At the 2026 Belgian Grand Prix, George Russell, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris shared a Cessna Citation CJ4 from Nice, Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon shared a Citation XLS+ from Oxford, and Nico Hülkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto shared a Pilatus PC-24 from Barcelona. Shared charters work because a large share of the grid lives around Monaco and Nice.

Why do so few F1 drivers own private jets?

Utilisation. Business aviation economics favour ownership above roughly 200 to 250 flight hours a year, and most drivers fly well under that in their own name because team and sponsor aircraft cover the long-haul races. A used Challenger 604 costs about $10 million to buy and $1.5 million to $2 million a year to keep flying before a single hour is logged.

What private jet did Michael Schumacher own?

A silver eight-seat Dassault Falcon 2000EX registered M-IKEL on the Isle of Man, a play on his own name. He logged 300 to 400 flight hours a year in it during his career. His wife Corinna sold the aircraft in 2019 for a reported $29 million.

Was Niki Lauda a real pilot?

Yes, and more than that. Lauda held an airline transport pilot licence, founded Lauda Air in 1979, then Niki in 2003 and LaudaMotion in 2016, and flew as a line captain on his own airlines’ aircraft. He told The Guardian in 2004 that he still captained Niki flights at least twice a week. No current F1 driver holds a commercial licence.

How much is the most expensive F1 private jet?

Among drivers, Max Verstappen’s Falcon 8X at a reported $50 million to $60 million. Across the whole paddock, Aston Martin team owner Lawrence Stroll’s Bombardier Global 7500, delivered on January 30, 2026, is valued at roughly $80 million and has a range of 7,700 nautical miles.

Can you charter the same jets F1 drivers use?

Most of them, yes. Nine of the twelve driver arrivals identified at the 2026 Belgian Grand Prix were on chartered aircraft available to any customer, and Lewis Hamilton’s former Challenger 605 is itself now on the charter market as G-RANE with SaxonAir at London Luton.