Formula 1

Every season awards two titles from the same set of races.

• The drivers' championship — points scored by each driver individually across the season.
• The constructors' championship — points scored by both cars of each team added together. This is the title that determines a team's share of the sport's commercial revenue, which is why teams will sometimes prioritise the team result over an individual driver's finishing position.

Teams build their own cars to a shared technical rulebook; they are constructors rather than entrants of identical equipment. That is the central structural difference from almost every other form of motorsport and from every team sport on this site: the performance of the machine is a designed variable, not a constant.

How a race weekend runs

There are two weekend formats, and the difference matters when reading a schedule.

Standard weekend

1. Practice sessions for set-up work and tyre evaluation. These do not score anything.
2. Qualifying, run in progressive segments that eliminate the slowest cars, ending in a final shootout for the fastest times.
3. The Grand Prix, with the starting grid set by qualifying order.

Starting first — pole position — is an advantage because overtaking is difficult, particularly at circuits with few passing opportunities. Because of that, qualifying is treated as a competitive session in its own right rather than a formality.

Sprint weekend

A Sprint weekend compresses the schedule and adds a second, shorter race. The order is rearranged so that the Grand Prix grid is set by a separate qualifying session, with a shorter Sprint race inserted earlier in the weekend. Sprint races are run over a much shorter distance than a Grand Prix — roughly a third of the length — and award their own, smaller, set of points.

Points

Points from the Grand Prix are awarded to the leading finishers on a declining scale set in the sporting regulations. Sprint races award a smaller set to a shorter list of finishers.

What the regulations control

Two rulebooks govern the sport, and both are rewritten on a cycle rather than tinkered with annually.

• Technical regulations set what the cars may be: dimensions, the power unit, aerodynamics and materials. A new technical cycle tends to reshuffle the competitive order, because every team starts from a new problem at the same time.
• Sporting regulations set the competition itself: the weekend formats, qualifying, the points scale, tyre allocation, penalties and the rules on when a car may be worked on — including parc fermé, the period in which a car is largely locked to its qualifying specification.
• Financial regulations impose a cost cap on team spending, which shapes how teams allocate resources between current development and the next regulation cycle.

Because cars are prototypes, an entire subsystem can be replaced between races. A team's season is therefore a development race as much as a driving one, and a mid-season upgrade package can change the order independently of results.

Race craft that decides results

• Tyres. Several compounds are available, with a trade-off between grip and durability. Because each car must use specified compounds across a race, strategy is a structural part of the contest rather than an optional extra.
• The pit stop. Stopping for fresh tyres costs time but can gain more than it loses later in a stint. The undercut — stopping earlier than a rival to use fresh tyres to gain track position before they stop — is a standard tactic.
• Safety cars and stoppages. When the race is neutralised, gaps are compressed, which can erase an advantage entirely. A well-timed stop under a safety car is one of the largest swings available in a race.
• Penalties. Grid penalties for component changes, and time penalties for on-track infringements, are applied by the stewards. Their application is a frequent subject of dispute precisely because a five-place grid drop can decide a race before it starts.