#formula 1 explained

One of the most difficult sports in the world to understand both inside and outside the seat.

Picture this. It is a Sunday afternoon. Somewhere in the world ; Melbourne, Monaco, Mexico City, it doesn’t matter. A grid of twenty cars sits stationary on a strip of tarmac. Engines are running, but they are barely audible above the noise of the crowd. Mechanics in the matching kit make final adjustments, then scatter. The cars are left alone. Five red lights appear at the top of the gantry, one by one, like a countdown written in fire. Then, all at once, they go dark.

What follows is a world filled with controlled chaos.

Twenty drivers, from ten teams and twelve countries, push multimillion-pound machines to their limits, through impossible corners, past pit walls where engineers watch hundreds of data channels, into braking zones so precise that hundredths of a second separate a good lap from a great one.

That is Formula 1. And once you understand what you’re actually watching, it is almost impossible to stop.

The Basic Idea

At its core, Formula 1 is a motorsport world championship. Twenty drivers compete across a season of races, called Grands Prix, held at circuits around the world. In 2026, that calendar stretches across twenty-four races, from Bahrain to Brazil, from Japan to Las Vegas.

Each driver earns points based on where they finish: 25 for a win, down to a single point for tenth place. The driver with the most points at the end of the season wins the Drivers’ Championship. Simple enough.

But here’s where Formula 1 separates itself from almost every other sport in the world: the drivers are not the only ones competing.

Two Championships, One Sport

Every driver races for a team, called a constructor. Ferrari. Mercedes. Red Bull. McLaren. Each team runs two cars and two drivers, and the points scored by both count toward a separate title: the Constructors’ Championship.

Every Sunday features two races. A driver chases the championship, while the team may use a strategy to favour one driver, since team and individual goals can diverge.

That tension between individual ambition and collective strategy is one of the things that makes the sport endlessly compelling. A driver can win every race and still lose the championship if their teammate scores consistently. A team can win the constructors’ title without either of its drivers winning the drivers’ crown. The mathematics are always running in the background, shaping decisions you might not immediately understand if you’re new to watching.

The Teams

Ten teams. Twenty cars. Each constructor designs, builds, and develops its own car, which is part of what makes Formula 1 unlike any other sport. The competition happens not just on track but in the factory, in the wind tunnel, in the simulator, across months of engineering work before a single lap is turned in anger.

Some teams have histories stretching back to the 1950s. Ferrari has never missed a season of Formula 1. Others are relatively new arrivals still finding their feet. And every few years, a new manufacturer enters… which brings its own fascinating story, something we’ll come back to in a later piece.

The teams are split broadly into those who manufacture their own engines, called power units in the modern era, and those who buy them from manufacturers. Mercedes, Ferrari, Honda, and Renault have all supplied engines to multiple teams at once, meaning that even the cars competing against each other sometimes share the same engine beneath the bodywork.

The Race Weekend

A Formula 1 race weekend is not just the race. It is three days of competition, and understanding what happens across those three days makes the Sunday far more meaningful.

Friday is practice: two or three sessions where drivers learn circuits, teams collect data, and engineers test setups. Drama is rare, but trends emerge before Saturday.

Saturday is qualifying : three knockout sessions that decide the starting grid. All twenty drivers compete in the first, with the five slowest eliminated. The second cuts the field again. The final session, Q3, is ten drivers fighting for pole position. Within each session, drivers can run multiple laps, but only their single fastest time counts. It is some of the most exciting twenty minutes in motorsport. Do not skip qualifying.

Sunday is the race. Anywhere between 44 and 78 laps, depending on the circuit, with pit stops, safety cars, strategy calls, weather, mechanical failures, and the occasional collision all conspiring to make it unpredictable, regardless of what qualifying suggested.

Why People Fall in Love With It

The honest answer is that different people fall in love with Formula 1 for different reasons, and the sport is large enough to accommodate them all.

Some love the engineering; the relentless hunt for gains, the aerodynamic debates, how tenths of a second hinge on front wing geometry.

Others follow the drivers; the personalities, rivalries, careers spanning eras. Some current drivers started before their rivals were born.

Some love the politics; team orders, paddock gossip, boardroom clashes that sometimes explode into public view.

Some watched one race, in one city, and couldn’t look away. Formula 1 rewards attention. The deeper you look, the richer it becomes. What first seems simple, car goes fast, car wins, reveals itself as a battle of strategy, psychology, engineering, and human ambition at the absolute edge.  You don’t need to know everything. You just need a reason to start watching. The rest will follow.