Formula 1

Formula 1 was established in 1950 by the FIA as the first official world championship for automobile racing, following decades of unstructured Grand Prix racing dating back to the 19th century. The first World Championship race took place on 13 May 1950 at Silverstone Circuit in England, watched by Britain’s King George VI. The winner and first World Champion in history was Italian driver Giuseppe Farina in an Alfa Romeo, ahead of his compatriot and later record holder Juan Manuel Fangio.

Throughout the 1950s, Fangio dominated the young series with five drivers’ titles between 1951 and 1957, won with four different manufacturers (Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes and Ferrari), a record that stands to this day. It was only in 1958 that the FIA introduced a separate Constructors’ Championship, in which teams have competed for the title ever since; the first Constructors’ Champion was the British team Vanwall.

The 1960s and 1970s are regarded as a golden era, shaped by drivers such as Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart and Niki Lauda, while technical innovations like monocoque chassis and wing profiles took hold. The 1980s and early 1990s were defined by turbo engines and the legendary rivalry between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. The race weekend at Imola in 1994, in which Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna were killed, remains the last fatal accident in Formula 1 to date and triggered a safety revolution that continues to this day, from improved chassis structures and run-off areas to the Halo system introduced in 2018.

The 2000s belonged to Michael Schumacher, who won five consecutive drivers’ titles with Ferrari between 2000 and 2004, a record that has never been matched. With the introduction of hybrid turbo engines in 2014, the next era began: Mercedes won eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships through 2021, while Lewis Hamilton drew level with Schumacher during this period as joint record holder for the most drivers’ titles (seven each).

After the end of Mercedes’ dominance, Red Bull Racing with Max Verstappen took the lead, before McLaren secured back-to-back Constructors’ titles with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in 2024 and 2025. Norris also won his first drivers’ title in 2025 and enters the 2026 season as reigning World Champion, a season that also marks the biggest technical shake-up since the start of the hybrid era: lighter, actively aerodynamic cars, a new power unit split evenly between electric and combustion power and running on fully sustainable fuel, plus two new constructors in Audi and Cadillac, bringing the grid back to eleven teams for the first time since 2016.