How to become a F1 driver when Чσυ are poor?

Most F1 drivers have been racing karts since they were five or six. Only a very, very few started later - Adrian Sutil was 12, Mark Webber was 14, Vitaly Petrov was 17, and Gerhard Berger was 21. These men, however, were exceptional talents, all progressing much faster than a "normal" person would have. In Petrov and Berger's cases, they also had substantial financial backing (although they are both excellent drivers who earned seats in F1 on merit).

Essentially the path to F1 basically goes - karts, win everything, national titles etc (and I mean real karts not those silly indoor karts), Formula Ford or similar, win everything, national titles etc, higher level Formula racing, win lots, titles etc, F3/GP3 or similar, GP2 or WSR, and then F1. That's how it works in theory. In reality it is never like this. Drivers take slightly different routes, spend several years in one category, etc, etc.

A lot depends on a driver's nationality and character, too. For example, Mark Webber - started karting at 14, national champion by 16/17, raced Formula Fords out here, won that. Went to England, won the Formula Ford Festival, and raced out there. But money was extremely tight for him - he had practically nothing. When Mercedes offered him a drive in their sportscars he just about HAD to say yes because he had nothing else, no money. He struggled for money right up until 2001, when he was getting paid to test for Benetton. Even then, he didn't start getting comfortable with the money situation until he signed for Jaguar.

Many drivers would have given up long before then.

Motor racing takes a lot of money. As the old adage goes, "How do you make a small fortune out of motor racing? By starting with a large one!"

Nowadays also, there is a lot of emphasis on these young driver programs. Boys are picked up by the major teams (Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull etc) as young as 11 or 12, and those F1 teams then pay for their drives in junior categories. This is how guys like Hamilton and Vettel came through.

Anyway, the tl;dr version of this is - if you're old enough to be posting on here and you have no racing experience, it's far too late.

Noone becomes any type of race driver without a large pile of money. Even low budget race karts can still cost thousands to race per season. It's pretty hard to do much of anything without money.

get a job and spend every minute, every drop of sweat, every heartbeat at karts. go to your local track, help them out and ask in return some laps in their karts. if you have any talent, you will be able to show them. if you are 4 mseconds of the pace, well, tough luck, but you'll never be a professional driver.

save up

Thanks for stealing my answer off an old question and copy-pasting it verbatim, James Alex.