Formula One

Juan Manuel Fangio's 1951 title-winning Alfa Romeo 159

History

The Formula One series originated with the European Championship of Grand Prix motor racing of the 1920s and 1930s. The formula consists of a set of rules that all participants' cars must meet. Formula One was a new formula agreed upon during 1946 with the first non-championship races taking place that year. The first Formula 1 race was the 1946 Turin Grand Prix. A number of Grand Prix racing organisations had laid out rules for a world championship before World War II, but due to the suspension of racing during the conflict, the World Drivers' Championship did not become formalised until 1947. The first world championship race took place at Silverstone in the United Kingdom in 1950. Giuseppe Farina, in his Alfa Romeo, won the first World Championship for Drivers in 1950, narrowly defeating his teammate Juan Manuel Fangio. However, Fangio won the title in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, and 1957 (his record of five World Championship titles stood for 45 years until Michael Schumacher took his sixth title in 2003). Fangio's streak was interrupted (after an injury) by two-time champion Alberto Ascari of Ferrari.

A championship for constructors followed in 1958. Although the UK's Stirling Moss was able to compete regularly, he was never able to win the world championship and has been described by The Independent as "The greatest driver to never win the world championship". In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961, Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and in third place the other three times. Fangio, however, achieved the record of winning 24 of the 52 races he entered - a record that holds to this day. National championships existed in South Africa and the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. Non-championship Formula One events were held by promoters for many years. However, due to the increasing cost of competition, the last of these occurred in 1983.

This period featured teams managed by road-car manufacturers Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Maserati. The first seasons featured pre-war cars like Alfa's 158. They were front-engined, with narrow tyres and 1.5-litre supercharged or 4.5-litre naturally aspirated engines. The 1952 and 1953 World Championships were run to Formula Two regulations, for smaller, less powerful cars, due to concerns over the lack of Formula One cars available. When a new Formula One formula for engines limited to 2.5 litres was reinstated to the world championship for 1954, Mercedes-Benz introduced the advanced W196. This featured innovations such as desmodromic valves and fuel injection, as well as enclosed streamlined bodywork. Mercedes drivers won the championship for two years, before the team withdrew from all motorsport in the wake of the 1955 Le Mans disaster.

Drivers

Every team in Formula One must run two cars in every session in a Grand Prix weekend, and every team may use up to four drivers in a season. A team may also run two additional drivers in Free Practice sessions, which are often used to test potential new drivers for a career as a Formula One driver or gain experienced drivers to evaluate the car. Most drivers are contracted for at least the duration of a season, with driver changes taking place in-between seasons, in comparison to early years where drivers often competed at an ad hoc basis from race to race. Each competitor must be in the possession of a FIA Super Licence to compete in a Grand Prix, which is issued to drivers who have met the criteria of success in junior motorsport categories and having achieved 300 kilometres (190 mi) of running in a Formula One car. Drivers may also be issued a Super Licence by the World Motor Sport Council if they fail to meet the criteria. Although most drivers earn their seat on ability, commercial considerations also come into play with teams having to satisfy sponsors and financial demands.

Teams also contract test and reserve drivers to stand in for regular drivers when necessary and develop the team's car; although with the reduction on testing the reserve drivers' role mainly takes places on a simulator, such as rFactor Pro, which is used by most of the F1 teams.

2005 Canadian Grand Prix: Kimi Räikkönen leading Michael Schumacher, with Jarno Trulli (Toyota) and Takuma Sato (BAR-Honda) fighting for pos

Each driver chooses an unassigned number from 2 to 99 (excluding 17 which was retired following the death of Jules Bianchi) upon entering Formula One, and keeps that number during their time in the series. The number one is reserved for the reigning Drivers' Champion, who retains their previous number and may choose to use it instead of the number one. At the onset of the championship, numbers were allocated by race organisers on an ad hoc basis from race to race. Permanent numbers were introduced in 1973 to take effect in 1974, when teams were allocated numbers in ascending order based on the Constructors' Championship standings at the end of the 1973 season. The teams would hold those numbers from season to season with the exception of the team with the World Drivers' Champion, which would swap its numbers with the one and two of the previous champion's team. New entrants were allocated spare numbers, with the exception of the number 13 which had been unused since 1976. As teams kept their numbers for long periods of time, car numbers became associated with a team, such as Ferrari's 27 and 28. A different system was used from 1996 to 2013: at the start of each season, the current Drivers' Champion was designated number one, their teammate number two, and the rest of the teams assigned ascending numbers according to previous season's Constructors' Championship order.

As of the conclusion of the 2021 Championship, a total of 34 separate drivers have won the World Drivers' Championship, with Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton holding the record for most championships with seven. Lewis Hamilton achieved the most race wins, too, in 2020. Jochen Rindt is the only posthumous World Champion, after his points total was not surpassed despite his fatal accident at the 1970 Italian Grand Prix, with 4 races still remaining in the season. Drivers from the United Kingdom have been the most successful in the sport, with 18 championships among 10 drivers, and 307 wins.

Constructors

A Formula One constructor is the entity credited for designing the chassis and the engine. If both are designed by the same company, that company receives sole credit as the constructor (e.g. Ferrari). If they are designed by different companies, both are credited, and the name of the chassis designer is placed before that of the engine designer (e.g. McLaren-Mercedes). All constructors are scored individually, even if they share either chassis or engine with another constructor (e.g. Williams-Ford, Williams-Honda in 1983).

Ferrari (pictured with Sebastian Vettel) have competed in every season

Since 1981, Formula One teams have been required to build the chassis in which they compete, and consequently the distinction between the terms "team" and "constructor" became less pronounced, though engines may still be produced by a different entity. This requirement distinguishes the sport from series such as the IndyCar Series which allows teams to purchase chassis, and "spec series" such as GP2, which require all cars be kept to an identical specification. It also effectively prohibits privateers, which were common even in Formula One well into the 1970s.

The sport's debut season, 1950, saw eighteen teams compete, but due to high costs, many dropped out quickly. In fact, such was the scarcity of competitive cars for much of the first decade of Formula One that Formula Two cars were admitted to fill the grids. Ferrari is the oldest Formula One team, the only still-active team which competed in 1950.

Early manufacturer involvement came in the form of a "factory team" or "works team" (that is, one owned and staffed by a major car company), such as those of Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, or Renault. Ferrari holds the record for having won the most Constructors' Championships (sixteen).

Companies such as Climax, Repco, Cosworth, Hart, Judd and Supertec, which had no direct team affiliation, often sold engines to teams that could not afford to manufacture them. In the early years, independently owned Formula One teams sometimes also built their engines, though this became less common with the increased involvement of major car manufacturers such as BMW, Ferrari, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, and Toyota, whose large budgets rendered privately built engines less competitive. Cosworth was the last independent engine supplier.[80] It is estimated the major teams spend between €100 and €200 million ($125–$225 million) per year per manufacturer on engines alone.

In the 2007 season, for the first time since the 1981 rule, two teams used chassis built by other teams. Super Aguri started the season using a modified Honda Racing RA106 chassis (used by Honda the previous year), while Scuderia Toro Rosso used the same chassis used by the parent Red Bull Racing team, which was formally designed by a separate subsidiary. The usage of these loopholes was ended for 2010 with the publication of new technical regulations, which require each constructor to own the intellectual property rights to their chassis,[82][83] The regulations continue to allow a team to subcontract the design and construction of the chassis to a third-party, an option used by the HRT team in 2010 and Haas currently.

Although teams rarely disclose information about their budgets, it is estimated they range from US$66 million to US$400 million each.

Entering a new team in the Formula One World Championship requires a £25 million (about US$32 million) up-front payment to the FIA, which is then repaid to the team over the course of the season. As a consequence, constructors desiring to enter Formula One often prefer to buy an existing team: BAR's purchase of Tyrrell and Midland's purchase of Jordan allowed both of these teams to sidestep the large deposit and secure the benefits the team already had, such as TV revenue.

Seven out of the ten teams competing in Formula 1 are based close to London in an area centred around Oxford. Ferrari have both their chassis and engine assembly in Maranello, Italy. The Alpha Tauri team are based close to Ferrari in Faenza, whilst the Alfa Romeo team are based near Zurich in Switzerland.

Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, which became the FIA Formula One World Championship in 1981, has been one of the premier forms of racing around the world since its inaugural season in 1950. The word formula in the name refers to the set of rules to which all participants' cars must conform. A Formula One season consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix, which take place worldwide on both purpose-built circuits and closed public roads.

A points system is used at Grands Prix to determine two annual World Championships: one for drivers, the other for constructors. Each driver must hold a valid Super Licence, the highest class of racing licence issued by the FIA. The races must run on tracks graded "1" (formerly "A"), the highest grade-rating issued by the FIA.

Formula One cars are the fastest regulated road-course racing cars in the world, owing to very high cornering speeds achieved through the generation of large amounts of aerodynamic downforce. The cars underwent major changes in 2017, allowing wider front and rear wings, and wider tyres, resulting in peak cornering forces near 6.5 lateral g and top speeds of around 350 km/h (215 mph). As of 2021, the hybrid engines are limited in performance to a maximum of 15,000 rpm; the cars are very dependent on electronics and aerodynamics, suspension and tyres. Traction control, launch control, and automatic shifting, plus other electronic driving aids, were first banned in 1994. They were briefly reintroduced in 2001, and have more recently been banned since 2004 and 2008 respectively.

With the average annual cost of running a team – designing, building, and maintaining cars, pay, transport – being approximately US$247 million, its financial and political battles are widely reported. On 23 January 2017, Liberty Media completed the acquisition of the Formula One Group, from private-equity firm CVC Capital Partners for $8 billion.

Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, which became the FIA Formula One World Championship in 1981, has been one of the premier forms of racing around the world since its inaugural season in 1950. The word formula in the name refers to the set of rules to which all participants' cars must conform. A Formula One season consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix, which take place worldwide on both purpose-built circuits and closed public roads.