F1 Basics 101: Everything you need to know as a Casual F1 Watcher

Have you ever watched a Formula 1 race with your racing-obsessed friend or family member and wondered “What are these commentators going on about?” or “What the hell does all of this terminology and acronyms even mean?????”. Well fear not, because in the first ever piece for The F1 Carnicles, I will teach you everything that you need to know about to be able to keep up with all your friends and family who tune in to watch the fast-paced, adrenaline-filled world of Formula 1 every race weekend. 

While this blog will mainly focus on the cars themselves at first (with future plans to delve further into other aspects of the sport like the teams themselves and how they run & operate etc), hence the name being The F1 “Car”nicles, I wanted to give a small introduction to the F1 world as a whole for any beginners who are not so familiar with how everything works. I want to give all my readers a solid foundation of understanding and knowledge before we get into the juicy bits and pieces. I am going to explain anything and everything (even things that you may already know) to help you get the full picture and fill in any gaps in your F1 knowledge or answer any of your burning questions that you’ve been meaning to research.

The Racing Season: 

Photo Credit: F1 Instagram

First things first, let's talk about the races themselves. As of the 2025 season, there are 24 stops spanning across the globe, with 6 of these stops having a mini-race on Saturday called the Sprint race along with the main race on Sunday (more on Sprint races later!). The F1 season starts mid-March and ends in early December, with the summer break happening for 3 weeks in August. Each race has a minimum distance of 305km (about 190mi). The number of laps each race will have will depend on the length of each circuit, as shorter circuits will need more laps to reach the required distance and vice versa for longer circuits. 

The only exception to this rule is the Monaco Grand Prix, which has a distance of around 260km (about 162mi). It was given this exception because the circuit itself is very challenging and quite dangerous due to its tight corners and lack of overtaking opportunities. A race can last anywhere between 1.5 hours to 2 hours if there are no major incidents or interruptions. Things like large crashes and big rainstorms can result in races being red-flagged or postponed to a later time. However, there is a rule that once a race starts, the race must be completed within 3 hours of its start time, even if the race has to be made shorter. 

Photo Credits: JefinLuke on Reddit

Now for the teams. The overview of them is that each team has two drivers and there are 10 teams. This years teams are: McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull, Alpine, Mercedes, Williams, Haas, Aston Martin, Visa Cash App Red Bull (VCARB --this is Red Bull's other team) and Stake Kick Sauber. A grand total of 20 drivers will race every weekend. The odd driver here and there will not race due to injuries, illness or even due to bad accidents that happened in qualifying that resulted in damage to the car that is unfixable before race day. Each team also has one or two reserve drivers and the teams even have test drivers –who are normally rookies– that will drive the car during the first practice of a weekend from time to time to help gather data to make the car better or gain experience in a F1 car in the team they hope to get a future seat in. 

Note: Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson switched places. Yuki is now in Red Bull and Liam is in VCARB.

The Race Weekend:

On a regular race weekend, there will be three 1-hour-long free practices for the drivers to practice driving around the circuit, where they test car setups with various new parts, upgrades and tires as well as gather data for the analysts on their teams. There are two practices on a Friday and one on Saturday, which comes just before qualifying. Qualifying sessions are the most important part of a weekend because at some tracks, it's very difficult to overtake and pass the other cars, so qualifying gives the drivers that extra advantage by allowing them to get a good place on the grid, which can ensure that they score as many points as they can. By the way, the grid refers to the actual places from 1st to 20th that a driver will start in. Finally, on Sunday, there is the main event: the Grand Prix Race. 

Many of the race weekends will also have races from the other classes of Formula style racing like Formula 2, Formula 3 and the F1 Academy Races (which is made up of all girls). 

Qualifying is split into 3 rounds. Qualifying 1 (Q1) starts with all 20 drivers. They will push their cars to the limits, trying to set fast enough times that will move them to the next round, with the 5 drivers with the slowest times falling out and their grid places being determined by their times they set during Q1. A faster lap time means a higher grid placing. A similar thing happens in Q2. The drivers will yet again push to secure one of the 10 spots in Q3 and the 5 slowest drivers will yet again have their grid places determined by their times. Finally, in Q3, the drivers do the final, most important laps that will determine where in the top 10 grid places they will start on Sunday’s race. However, if a driver changes a major component of their car like their power unit or gearbox or if they receive a penalty for an on-track incident, they can be given a grid drop penalty. In more extreme cases, they may have to start from the pit lane (pit-lane starts are normally for drivers who crashed during qualifying or those who did not manage to set a time at all).

Speaking of points, let me explain how drivers earn points that will help them in both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships. Depending on where in the race they finish, a driver can earn up to 25 points. The driver who wins will earn 25 points. 2nd place earns 18 points, 3rd earns 15, 4th earns 12, 5th earns 10, 6th earns 8, 7th earns 6, 8th earns 4, 9th earns 2 and finally 10th place earns 1 point. There used to be an extra point you could earn if you got the fastest lap time during a race and were in the top 10 but unfortunately, the FIA (the governing body of Formula style racing) removed it. There are also 2 “awards” that F1 fans can vote for. Each race will have a Driver of the Day, where the people watching the race can vote for the driver that they feel was the MVP or performed the best. You can also vote for the Overtake of the Month award, which goes to the best overtake of the month. Sadly, neither of these awards give the drivers extra points, but they are still super fun to vote for!

Flags & Safety Cars:

One of the most important features at every race are the flags and the safety car. The safety car will come out to slow down the drivers to allow for debris,  accidents and retired cars to be cleaned up or safely moved off the track by the trackside marshals. If the situation is not too dire, the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) will go into place. This just means that the drivers will slow down to a specific and will maintain a certain gap between the car in front without the actual safety car leading them around the track. During both a regular and virtual safety car, the drivers are not allowed to overtake one another. Sometimes, accidents and debris clean up can be quite a big job, so a race will be red flagged and then resumed once the track is clear and safe to race on again. Red flags become a bathroom break and snack break for me because you never know how long they are going to last

There are also a series of flags that are waved by the trackside marshals throughout a race and each flag means different things. Of course, a chequered flag is waved when a race is finished and the winning driver has crossed the finish line. Other important flags are the yellow flag which indicates a hazard on the track in the area where it is being waved, a red flag which indicates a race is being stopped, a blue flag which tells one driver to get out of the way of the faster car (this flag is normally waved at a car at the back of the positions who has been lapped –passed by the leading driver of the race– to tell them to get out of the way and let the front of the pack of cars pass) and a green flag to indicate that everything is all clear and that the drivers are clear to go back to racing. A black and white flag that is diagonally divided will sometimes be shown to a driver who is showing unsportsmanlike behaviour or has crossed the track limits too many times. Crossing track limits too many times will result in time penalties for the drivers. 

The Championships:

Now to explain how the championships work. As I mentioned before, there are 2 championships, meaning that there are 2 trophies to win at the end of the year. The first and most coveted is the Drivers’ Championship Trophy. This trophy is given to the driver who earns the most points by the end of the final race of the year. That driver will then be crowned as the World Champion. The current world champion is Max Verstappen, whose winning streak has lasted 4 years from 2021 to 2024. His win in 2021 was his most famous, where he beat reigning world-champion Lewis Hamilton in the nail-biting final in Abu Dhabi. I remember watching that race like it was yesterday. I was on the edge of my seat for the whole race. This year, the battle is between the 2 McLaren drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, with Oscar currently leading the championship. 

The Constructors’ Championship is the championship for the teams as a whole. All the points a driver earns throughout the year will also go towards a count for their team. So both of a team’s drivers’ points will count towards their team’s standings in the championship. The team whose drivers gathered the most points throughout the year will win the Constructors’ Championship. However, the driver who wins the Drivers’ Championship’s team is not always the winner of the Constructors’ trophy. Last year, in 2024, Max Verstappen (who races with Red Bull) won the Driver’s trophy but McLaren took the Constructors’ trophy by a mile thanks to the year-round consistency from both their drivers. 

The Cars:

Enough talk about the drivers and the races, let’s talk about the cars themselves. These cars are marvels of engineering that run on a hybrid engine that combines a powerful turbocharged engine with electric energy recovery systems to maximize speed and efficiency. During every race, the cars have to drive into the pits at least once to get a change of tires. These pit stops are insanely fast, with peak-performance pit stops lasting only 2-3 seconds. The race engineers and strategists at each team will determine strategies for either 1 or 2 stops (meaning 1 or 2 pit lane stops to change tires) based on how much the track degrades the tires and weather conditions. They will also pit during strategic times to ensure they stay ahead of other drivers and won’t fall too far down in the places. Pit stops will cost a driver around 20-25 seconds (sometimes more), so they have to plan accordingly to ensure minimum place loss. 

Fun fact: this year, the Monaco Grand Prix enforced a mandatory 2-stop rule, which meant that the drivers had to pit twice to change tires. This was put in place to increase the excitement of the race due to the lack of overtaking opportunities on the street circuit (which can make for a bit of a boring race in my opinion, no shade to the prestige of the Monaco Grand Prix. I would die to go see the Monaco Grand Prix in real life). 

Photo Credits: GP Blog

The cars also have a very special feature that you will hear mentioned often throughout a race. This feature is called DRS, which stands for Drag Reduction System. This system is a process in the cars that involve the flaps on the back wings of the car opening up to allow for more airflow through the car, which in turn reduces the aerodynamic drag of the car, making the car’s straight-line speed increase up to 10-12 km/h (6-7.5 mph) faster. This system is very important when it comes to overtaking other cars on a straight (this refers to a very long straight part of a track) as it gives the drivers a speed boost to help them overtake the car in front of them. However, there is a catch. This system will only activate at certain parts on the track and only if the driver is within 1 second of the car in front of him. You will often hear the commentators speak about one driver “being within DRS range” of the car in front of him. This range refers to that 1 second. 

Now, let's talk about the tires and how that whole system is organized. Pirelli is the tire supplier for F1 and has been the sole supplier since 2011. But before that, the teams would have different tire suppliers. The tire suppliers of the past were Michelin, Bridgestone, Goodyear and Pirelli (with some other suppliers who stopped supplying tires in the 70s). Pirelli makes 6 slick compound tires (tires that are smooth, allowing the drivers to gain maximum speed and maximum grip) and 2 special types of tires for when the weather conditions get wet and rainy. These tires look like regular car tires with grooves that allow for the water on the track to be spat up behind the car so that they can still drive fast and not lose too much traction. There is still the risk of spinning out as rainy conditions can be very unpredictable. 

The 2 types of “wet” tires are the Intermediates, aka the Inters, and the Wets. The Inters can be identified with their green stripe around their rim and the Wets with their blue stripe. The Inters are for light-to-medium rain and the Wets are for the heavy downpours. The slick tires come in 6 different compounds with the C1 tire being the hardest and most durable tire and the C6 tire being the softest and fastest but also the fastest to degrade. For each race, Pirelli will choose 3 consecutive compounds that will serve as the soft, medium and hard tires for the race. They choose the compounds based on aspects like weather and track characteristics to decide which compounds would best suit a track. The 3 compounds of choice can be identified by a red stripe on the rim for the soft compound, yellow for the medium and white for the hard compound. 

Sprint Races:

Finally, let’s circle back to sprint races. Sprint races were introduced to the F1 race weekends in 2021 to add more excitement and action for the spectators and more point gaining opportunities for drivers, which creates more competition in the Drivers’ Championship. These races are around 30 minutes or so and cover about 100km (about 62mi). Only the top 8 get points for these races with the winner getting 8 points, with the points decreasing down to 8th place getting 1 point. These points are very valuable as they can help shorten gaps in the Drivers’ Championship and even help the drivers overtake each other in the points. The sprints have their own qualifying sessions that work just like the normal ones. On these weekends, there will be one free practice and the sprint qualifying on a Friday, the sprint race and normal qualifying on Saturday and then the main race on Sunday. These races don’t usually have pit stops as they are so short. 

Phew, this was a long first blog post. I hope that you enjoyed reading and that you learnt some new things about Formula 1! Please leave a comment to let me know what you thought and if you have any questions, feel free to ask away!

See you next time :P