Every summer, for four weeks, a quiet bay on Sardinia’s north-east coast becomes an unofficial Formula One paddock on water. Drivers, team principals and billionaires anchor within sight of one another, chasing the one thing money still struggles to buy in this sport: privacy.
At the end of July, two of the most closely watched men in Formula One had lunch together on a boat, convinced nobody was watching. They were wrong. Somewhere on a hillside, or aboard a tender a kilometre out, a long lens caught the moment. The photographs made headlines in four countries. It wasn’t even the first time it had happened to them. This bay isn’t an accident — it offers two things the sport’s wealthiest cannot buy anywhere else: to be left alone, and to be left alone next to people exactly like them. Or so they think.
Who Owns Them
Roughly $15 million is what it took to put both Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc on the water this year — two very different boats for two very different reasons.
Leclerc’s is the newer of the two. In May 2026, he took delivery of a 30-metre Riva 102′ Corsaro Super from the shipyard’s La Spezia facility, naming it Sedici — Italian for 16, his race number and birth date combined. Estimates put its value between $15 million and $19 million, though the figure has never been officially confirmed. Onboard: twin MTU engines cruising at 24 knots, a flybridge kitted out as an open-air restaurant, and a 35-square-metre beach club at the stern. Notably, Riva sits under the Ferretti Group, whose strategic product committee is chaired by Piero Ferrari — Enzo Ferrari’s son. A Ferrari driver, in other words, bought his yacht from a company effectively steered by a Ferrari.
Verstappen took the opposite approach. His 33-metre Mangusta Grand Sport 33, named Unleash the Lion, was collected from Overmarine’s yard in Viareggio in 2025 and is reported to cost around $15 million. It runs on Volvo Penta IPS propulsion — one of the first large yachts to do so — offering a 26-knot top speed with notably lower fuel burn than a conventional hull. The branding extends beyond the boat: the same “UTL” initials appear on his private jet.
Fernando Alonso looked at boats like these and bought the deliberate opposite: a $4.5 million solar-electric catamaran, the Sunreef 60 Power Eco, fitted with over 68 square metres of photovoltaic paneling. “Yachting should not be about ego,” he has said. “It’s about sharing good moments and being respectful towards the environment.”
Who Actually Enjoys Them
Yachts, it turns out, aren’t for everyone — not even among Formula One’s wealthiest. Seasickness, an inability to swim, and being stranded on one spot for a full day are all real deterrents. Getting into this world requires either the money to buy in, or the fame to have a tender sent for you.
Verstappen falls into the second camp for one simple reason: it’s the only place he can be with his family without engineers, media pens or a radio in his ear. Lando Norris, by contrast, owns no yacht at all — and doesn’t need one. In 2025, he based himself aboard the 72.6-metre Coral Ocean, reportedly refitted for $37 million, celebrating a Monaco Grand Prix win on a boat he doesn’t own a plank of.
Lewis Hamilton bought a Sunseeker 90 seventeen years ago and has kept it in Monaco ever since, though in recent years he’s been spotted far more often aboard chartered boats nearly twice its size — evidence, perhaps, that he no longer needs ownership to make the point.
Not everyone got the balance right. A young Jenson Button moored a $72-foot yacht at Monaco in the early 2000s, prompting Flavio Briatore to brand him a “lazy playboy” to the press — a label that stuck for a decade. The irony: Briatore’s own superyacht was later seized by Italian tax authorities over allegations he was living aboard it while it was registered as a charter vessel.
David Coulthard went further still, owning three yachts at once, reportedly worth £7.5 million combined — enough for Monaco to nickname him accordingly within a fortnight.
Then there’s Toto Wolff, whose yacht has never been named, modelled or confirmed by anyone — despite being photographed in Sardinia repeatedly. With a personal fortune estimated near $1.5 billion, he’s comfortably the richest man in this story, yet the only one without a hull number to his name.
Why the Biggest Yacht Belongs to None of Them
Every boat mentioned so far belongs to someone who works in Formula One. A driver, however famous, is still an employee. Lawrence Stroll is not. As executive chairman and co-owner of the Aston Martin Aramco team, his 79.95-metre Faith is estimated at $225 million, with running costs alone reaching $20 million a year — more than most drivers in this story earn to actually race.
And even Stroll isn’t at the top. British retail billionaire Philip Green’s Lionheart runs 92.4 metres and an estimated $150 million. Shahid Khan’s Kismet, at 122 metres and roughly $360 million, includes a submarine for guests to explore the seabed. Topping them all is Breakthrough, a 118.8-metre hydrogen-fuel-cell vessel originally commissioned by Bill Gates and now owned by entrepreneur Patrick Drahi, valued at an estimated $645 million.
Put next to that, Leclerc’s yacht — worth around a quarter of his entire net worth — belongs to a completely different world. The drivers, for all their fame, were never the money in this bay. They were the show.
The Real Price of Privacy
A yacht at anchor sits in open water, visible to anyone with a long enough lens — a hillside, a passing tender, a rented terrace. The people aboard can’t see the photographer. That isn’t a flaw in the equipment; it’s exactly what it’s built for. More than one driver’s partner has learned this the hard way, requesting photographs be taken down only after they’d already gone public.
So what are these men really buying? Not luxury — distance. Distance from the paddock, the sponsors, the phone. Four weeks a year in which nobody can reach them.
▶ The full story — who really owns what, and why one photograph exposed it all — is unpacked in our latest video below, and subscribe to Paddock Life by The Motion Report, where we show you how the world of Formula 1 actually spends its money.
Formula 1, F1 Drivers, Superyachts, Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen, Lawrence Stroll, Sardinia, F1 Lifestyle
Read More
- Cadillac Sacks Team Principal Lowdon Mid-Season, Names Budkowski as Replacement
- Honda Denies 50 Horsepower Boost Ahead of Aston Martin’s Zandvoort Test
- The £1.8m Watch Chase: Why F1 Drivers Are Being Targeted on Their Own Wrists
- Max Verstappen’s $200m Gamble: Sign, Stay, or Walk Away From Red Bull?
- Why Half the Formula One Grid Calls Monaco Home — And Why Some Are Having Second Thoughts
