The champagne has barely had time to go flat, but the new Formula One world champion was already back at work yesterday. Lewis Hamilton was at the famous Claridge’s Hotel in the West End of London, proving why he is worth his weight in gold to the sponsors who could make the youngster from a council house in Stevenage the richest sportsman on earth.

Hamilton, 23, was on time and on message with a mellifluous endorsement of the latest product from Vodafone, ready for public show only five days after the McLaren Mercedes driver won his first world championship in front of a television audience that peaked at more than 13 million.

As the credit crunch was shredding bank accounts across the globe, Formula One rolled seamlessly on to its spectacular conclusion at the Brazilian Grand Prix last Sunday, with the £100 million champion driving a £1 million car, for a team that spent more than £200 million to win the title, before climbing aboard a £25 million private jet for the journey home.

No wonder viewers are awestruck and sponsors adore Formula One. This is sport in the fast lane. But for how much longer?

Even Formula One’s executives are starting to worry that the money is going to run out. Meetings have been taking place all week among team principals and officials from the FIA, the world governing body, to find ways of reducing the extraordinary cost of running a Formula One team.

Gerhard Berger, the principal of Toro Rosso, one of the smallest teams, is under no illusion. “It is going to be difficult. If you look at big sponsors coming into Formula One, it is very seldom,” he said.

While the world tightens its collective belt, Formula One is fuelled by such huge amounts that even football looks poverty-stricken. Vodafone, the world’s biggest telecommunications company, pulled the plug on its four-year shirt sponsorship deal with Manchester United in 2005 and is ending its sponsorship of the Uefa Champions League. Even then, the estimated £30 million a year that Vodafone spends on McLaren is almost twice as much as on United (£9 million a year) and the Champions League (£8 million) combined.

Vodafone was one of the companies that rushed to fill the void when tobacco sponsors were expelled from Formula One. It was the cigarette companies that first realised how the danger, exotic locations and James Bond-like technology were irresistible to consumers. The cigarette makers were lavish spenders and the banks, insurance companies and telecom businesses that followed have been no more frugal. The question is whether they can continue to spend, spend, spend.

Royal Bank of Scotland, the troubled bank, has a long-term deal with the team belonging to Sir Frank Williams. Williams knows how to struggle – 30 years ago he ran his fledgeling team from a telephone box because his had been cut off. But his title sponsor will be under pressure to ditch a deal that might, to the eyes of the Government, its newest investor, see Formula One as little more than an opportunity for a series of corporate jollies.

ING, the Dutch financial group that has just been given a €10 billion (about £8 billion) cash injection from the Government of the Netherlands, will be in the final year of its title sponsorship with Renault next season, while sponsors up and down the pitlane are weighing up whether they can afford Formula One’s stratospheric prices.

The big spenders behind Formula One, though, are the five carmakers – Honda, Toyota, Ferrari, Mercedes and BMW – who are thought to invest as much as £200 million a year each. But the bottom has fallen out of the car business: sales in the UK alone slumped to a 40-year low in August, while the United States, their biggest market, is in deep trouble.

The genius of Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One’s commercial rights-holder, is that he transformed a ragbag of enthusiasts into the most watched annual television spectacle in the world. Each year its tentacles reach farther into new markets where hundreds of millions of viewers are tantalised by the sight of the world’s fastest cars driven by daring young men, surrounded by impossibly beautiful young women.

Which is why sponsors see Formula One as their ultimate advertising vehicle in front of almost any other sport, including football.

So do whole countries. Abu Dhabi is added to the calendar next year to join China and Bahrain, with South Korea, Russia and India all anxious to be involved and willing to pay Ecclestone up to £50 million to stage a grand prix. Experts say that governments get up to five times their investment in tourism and advertising.

But that assumes that there are still enough fans with money to travel to each new and exotic location, and sponsors who can afford to fill private planes to fly their guests to five-star hotels to quaff champagne and admire the world of Hamilton.

Formula One, the richest and most expensive sport on earth, waits and watches to see whether the credit crunch turns out to be the biggest collision in its 58-year history.

Deals on wheels

— It is 40 years since Colin Chapman signed the first sponsorship deal in Formula One, painting his Lotus 49 cars in the colours of Player’s Gold Leaf tobacco brand.

— The combined budgets of the six teams based in Britain – McLaren, Renault, Williams, Red Bull, Force India and Honda – are thought to be almost £900 million.

— Toyota are Formula One’s biggest spenders, with an annual budget estimated at about £230 million, yet they have never won a grand prix.

— Sponsors are thought to plough up to £300 million a year into getting their names on Formula One cars.

— Sir Jackie Stewart became Formula One’s first millionaire driver after winning the last of three world championships in 1973; Lewis Hamilton, the new world champion, has a contract with McLaren worth a minimum of £75 million over five years.

— Ken Tyrrell, Stewart’s team boss, operated his world championship team from a wood yard in Surrey; the McLaren team are housed in a futuristic factory designed by Sir Norman Foster, reckoned to have cost more than £200 million to build.