Formula One

"F1" redirects here. For other uses, see F1 (disambiguation).

Formula One, abbreviated to F1, and also known as Grand Prix racing, is the highest class of single-seat open-wheel formula auto racing in the world. The "formula" in the name is a set of rules which all participants and cars must meet. The F1 season consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix, held in most cases on purpose-built circuits, and in a few cases on closed city streets. The results of each race combined determine two annual World Championships, one for drivers and one for constructors. The cars race at speeds often in excess of 300 km/h (187 mph). The formula introduces a number of restrictions and specifications that cars must meet, designed, amongst other things, to keep the ever-increasing cornering speeds in safe ranges. From 2006<ref>FIA Rules & Regulations Sporting Regulations - 2006 season changes www.formula1.com Retrieved 11 May 2006</ref> engines have been restricted to normally-aspirated V8s with a displacement (capacity) of 2.4 litres (providing around 800 HP [560 kW] at nearly 20,000 rpm). The performance of the cars is highly dependent on electronics, aerodynamics, suspension and tires. The formula has seen many evolutions and changes through the history of the sport. There have been many different types of engines; normally aspirated, supercharged and turbocharged, ranging from straight-4 to H16, with displacements from 1.5 litres to 4.5 litres. The maximum power achieved in the history of the series was around 1200 bhp in racing trim, during the 1980s 'turbo era'.

Europe is Formula One's traditional center and remains its leading market; however, Grands Prix have been held all over the world, and with new races in Bahrain, People's Republic of China, Malaysia and Turkey since 1999, its scope is continually expanding. As the world's most expensive sport, its economic impact is significant, and its financial and political battles are widely observed. Its high profile and popularity makes it an obvious merchandising environment which leads to very high investments from sponsors translating into extremely high monetary budgets for the constructor teams, however, in recent years several teams have gone bankrupt.

The sport is regulated by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), with its headquarters in Place de la Concorde, Paris. It's President is Max Mosley. Formula One's commercial rights are vested in the SLEC Holdings|Formula One Group, now owned by Alpha Prema. Although now a minority shareholder, the sport is still generally promoted and controlled by Bernie Ecclestone.

History

See 2009 Formula One season for details of the 2009 season

The Formula One series has its roots in the European Grand Prix Motor Racing (q.v. for pre-1947 history) of the 1920s and 1930s. The "formula" is a set of rules which all participants and cars must meet. Formula One was a new formula agreed after World War II in 1946, with the first non-championship races being held that year. A number of Grand Prix racing organisations had laid out rules for a World Championship before the war, but due to the suspension of racing during the conflict, the World Drivers' Championship was not formalised until 1947. The first world championship race was held at Silverstone, United Kingdom in 1950. A championship for constructors followed in 1958. National championships existed in South Africa and the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. Non-championship Formula One races were held for many years but, due to the rising cost of competition, the last of these occurred in 1983.<ref name=LastnonchampF1>Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}}</ref>

The sport's title, Formula One, indicates that it is intended to be the most advanced and most competitive of the FIA's racing formulae.

The return of racing (1950–1958)

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Juan Manuel Fangio drove this Alfa-Romeo 159 to the title in 1951.

The first Formula One World Championship was won by Italian Giuseppe Farina in his Alfa Romeo in 1950, barely defeating his Argentine teammate Juan Manuel Fangio. However Fangio won the title in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956 & 1957 (His record of five World Championship titles stood for 45 years until German driver Michael Schumacher took his sixth title in 2003), his streak interrupted after an injury by two-time champion Alberto Ascari of Ferrari. Although the UK's Stirling Moss was able to compete regularly, he was never able to win the World Championship, and is now widely considered to be the greatest driver never to have won the title.<ref>{{#if: Moss can guide Hamilton through chicane of celebrity

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The period was dominated by teams run by road car manufacturers—Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Mercedes Benz and Maserati - all of whom had competed before the war. The first seasons were run using pre-war cars like Alfa's 158. They were front engined, with narrow treaded 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 number of Formula One cars available.<ref>Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}}</ref> When a new Formula One, for engines limited to 2.5 litres, was reinstated to the world championship in 1954, Mercedes-Benz introduced the advanced W196, which featured innovations such as desmodromic valves and fuel injection as well as enclosed streamlined bodywork. Mercedes won the drivers championship for two years, before withdrawing from all motorsport in the wake of the 1955 Le Mans disaster.<ref>{{#if: Moss returns to scene of GP victory

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The 'Garagistes' (1959–1980)

The first major technological development, Cooper's re-introduction of mid-engined cars (following Ferdinand Porsche's pioneering Auto Unions of the 1930s), which evolved from the company's successful Formula 3 designs, occurred in the 1950s. Australian Jack Brabham, World Champion in 1959, 1960 and 1966, soon proved the new design's superiority. By 1961, all regular competitors had switched to mid-engined cars.<ref>Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}} The Ferguson P99, a four-wheel drive design, was the last front-engined F1 car to enter a world championship race. It was entered in the 1961 British Grand Prix, the only front-engined car to compete that year.</ref>

The first British World Champion was Mike Hawthorn, who drove a Ferrari to the title in 1958. However, when Colin Chapman entered F1 as a chassis designer and later founder of Team Lotus, British racing green came to dominate the field for the next decade. Between Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, John Surtees, Jack Brabham, Graham Hill, and Denny Hulme, British teams and Commonwealth drivers won twelve world championships between 1962 and 1973.

In 1962, Lotus introduced a car with an aluminium sheet monocoque chassis instead of the traditional space frame design. This proved to be the greatest technological breakthrough since the introduction of mid-engined cars. In 1968, Lotus painted Imperial Tobacco livery on their cars, thus introducing sponsorship to the sport.<ref>Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}}</ref>

Aerodynamic downforce slowly gained importance in car design from the appearance of aerofoils in the late 1960s. In the late 1970s, Lotus introduced ground effect aerodynamics that provided enormous downforce and greatly increased cornering speeds (though the concept had previously been used on Jim Hall's Chaparral 2J in 1970). So great were the aerodynamic forces pressing the cars to the track, (up to 5 times the car's weight), that extremely stiff springs were needed to maintain a constant ride height, leaving the suspension virtually solid, depending entirely on the tyres for any small amount of cushioning of the car and driver from irregularities in the road surface.<ref>Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}}</ref>

Big business (1981–2000)

Beginning in the 1970s, Bernie Ecclestone rearranged the management of Formula One's commercial rights; he is widely credited with transforming the sport into the billion-dollar business it is today.<ref name="guardian280397">{{#if: The Formula for Striking It Rich

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The formation of the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) in 1979 set off the FISA-FOCA war, during which FISA and its president Jean-Marie Balestre clashed repeatedly with FOCA over television revenues and technical regulations.<ref>{{#if: Filling Balestre's shoes is no job for a back-seat driver

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FISA imposed a ban on ground effect aerodynamics in 1983.<ref>{{#if: Pros and cons of being just Williams; A quiet achiever keeps his head down as the new season gets under way with familiar high anxiety and a squealing over brakes

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 }}|Template error: argument title is required.}}</ref> By then, however, turbocharged engines, which Renault had pioneered in 1977, were producing over 700 bhp and were essential to be competitive. By 1986, a BMW turbocharged engine achieved a flash reading of 5.5 bar pressure, estimated to be over 1300 bhp  in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix. The following year power in race trim reached around 1100 bhp, with boost pressure limited to only 4.0 bar.<ref>Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}} BMW's performance at the Italian GP is the highest qualifying figure given in Bamsey. The estimate is from Heini Mader, who maintained the engines for the Benetton team. It should be noted that maximum power figures from this period are necessarily estimates; BMW's dynamometer, for example, was only capable of measuring up to 1100 bhp. Figures higher than this are estimated from engine plenum pressure readings. Power in race trim at that time was lower than for qualifying due to the need for greater reliability and fuel efficiency during the race.</ref> These cars were the most powerful open-wheel circuit racing cars ever. To reduce engine power output and thus speeds, the FIA limited fuel tank capacity in 1984 and boost pressures in 1988 before banning turbocharged engines completely in 1989.<ref>{{#if: The technology behind Formula 1 racing cars
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The development of electronic driver aids began in the 1980s. Lotus began to develop a system of active suspension which first appeared in 1982 on the F1 Lotus 91 and Lotus Esprit road car. By 1987, this system had been perfected and was driven to victory by Ayrton Senna in the Monaco Grand Prix that year. In the early 1990s, other teams followed suit and semi-automatic gearboxes and traction control were a natural progression. The FIA, due to complaints that technology was determining the outcome of races more than driver skill, banned many such aids for 1994. This led to cars that were previously dependent on electronic aids becoming very "twitchy" and difficult to drive (notably the Williams FW16), and many observers felt that the ban on driver aids was a ban in name only as they "have proved difficult to police effectively".<ref>{{#if: F1 Plans Return of Traction Control

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The teams signed a second Concorde Agreement in 1992 and a third in 1997, which expired on the last day of 2007.<ref> Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}}</ref>

On the track, the McLaren and Williams teams dominated the 1980s and 1990s, with Brabham also being competitive in the early part of the 1980s, winning two drivers' championships with Nelson Piquet. Powered by Porsche, Honda, and Mercedes-Benz, McLaren won sixteen championships (seven constructors', nine drivers') in that period, while Williams used engines from Ford, Honda, and Renault to also win sixteen titles (nine constructors', seven drivers'). The rivalry between racing legends Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost became F1's central focus in 1988, and continued until Prost retired at the end of 1993. Senna died at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix after crashing into a wall on the exit of the notorious curve Tamburello, having taken over Prost's lead drive at Williams that year. The FIA worked to improve the sport's safety standards since that weekend, during which Roland Ratzenberger also lost his life in an accident during Saturday qualifying. No driver has died on the track at the wheel of a Formula One car since, though two track marshals have lost their lives, one at the 2000 Italian Grand Prix,<ref name=MarshallDeaths2000s>{{#if: F1's pressing safety question

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Since the deaths of Ayrton Senna, Roland Ratzenberger and Gilles Villeneuve, the FIA has used safety as a reason to impose rule changes which otherwise, under the Concorde Agreement, would have had to be agreed upon by all the teams - most notably the changes introduced for 1998. This so called 'narrow track' era resulted in cars with smaller rear tyres, a narrower track overall and the introduction of 'grooved' tyres to reduce mechanical grip. There would be four grooves, on the front and rear - although initially three on the front tyres in the first year - that ran through the entire circumference of the tyre. The objective was to reduce cornering speeds and to produce racing similar to rain conditions by enforcing a smaller contact patch between tyre and track. This, according to the FIA, was to promote driver skill and provide a better spectacle.

Results have been mixed as the lack of mechanical grip has resulted in the more ingenious designers clawing back the deficit with aerodynamic grip - pushing more force onto the tyres through wings, aerodynamic devices etc - which in turn has resulted in less overtaking as these devices tend to make the wake behind the car 'dirty' (turbulent) preventing other cars from following closely, due to their dependence on 'clean' air to make the car stick to the track. The grooved tyres also had the unfortunate side effect of initially being of a harder compound, to be able to hold the groove tread blocks, which resulted in spectacular accidents in times of aerodynamic grip failure (e.g., rear wing failures), as the harder compound could not grip the track as well.

Drivers from McLaren, Williams, Renault (formerly Benetton) and Ferrari, dubbed the "Big Four", have won every World Championship from 1984 to the present day. Due to the technological advances of the 1990s, the cost of competing in Formula One rose dramatically. This increased financial burden, combined with four teams' dominance (largely funded by big car manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz), caused the poorer independent teams to struggle not only to remain competitive, but to stay in business. Financial troubles forced several teams to withdraw. Since 1990, twenty-eight teams have pulled out of Formula One. This has prompted former Jordan owner Eddie Jordan to say that the days of competitive privateers are over.<ref>Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}}</ref>

The manufacturers' return (2000–2009)

Michael Schumacher and Ferrari won an unprecedented five consecutive drivers’ championships and six consecutive constructors’ championships between 1999 and 2004. Schumacher set many new records, including those for Grand Prix wins (91), wins in a season (13 of 18), and most drivers' championships (7).<ref>{{#if: Schumacher makes history

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During this period the championship rules were frequently changed by the FIA with the intention of improving the on-track action and cutting costs.<ref>Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}}</ref> Team orders, legal since the championship started in 1950, were banned in 2002 after several incidents in which teams openly manipulated race results, generating negative publicity, most famously by Ferrari at the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix. Other changes included the qualifying format, the points scoring system, the technical regulations and rules specifying how long engines and tyres must last. A 'tyre war' between suppliers Michelin and Bridgestone saw lap times fall, although at the 2005 United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis seven out of ten teams did not race when their Michelin tyres were deemed unsafe for use. During 2006, Max Mosley outlined a ‘green’ future for Formula One, in which efficient use of energy would become an important factor.<ref>Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}}</ref> And the tyre war ended, as Bridgestone became the sole tyre supplier to Formula One for the 2007 season.

Since 1983, Formula One had been dominated by specialist race teams like Williams, McLaren and Benetton, using engines supplied by large car manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Renault and Ford. Starting in 2000, with Ford’s creation of the largely unsuccessful Jaguar team, new manufacturer-owned teams entered Formula One for the first time since the departure of Alfa Romeo and Renault at the end of 1985. By 2006, the manufacturer teams–Renault, BMW, Toyota, Honda and Ferrari–dominated the championship, taking five of the first six places in the constructors' championship. The sole exception was McLaren, which is part-owned by Mercedes Benz. Through the Grand Prix Manufacturers Association (GPMA) they negotiated a larger share of Formula One’s commercial profit and a greater say in the running of the sport.

The Breakaway (2009–)

This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

On June 19, 2009, it was announced that eight manufacturers (Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, Renault, Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Toyota and BrawnGP) will create a breakaway series under FOTA organization.<ref>{{#if: F1 teams drop breakaway bombshell

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Because of that, 2010 Formula One season would have had only have privateers, and no car manufacturers.

Outside the World Championship

Currently, the terms "Formula One race" and "World Championship race" are effectively synonymous; since 1984, every Formula One race has counted towards an Official FIA World Championship, and every World Championship race has been to Formula One regulations. This has not always been the case, and in the earlier history of Formula One many races took place outside the world championship.

European non-championship racing

In the early years of Formula One, before the world championship was established, there were around twenty races held from late Spring to early Autumn in Europe, although not all of these were considered significant. Most competitive cars came from Italy, particularly Alfa Romeo. After the start of the world championship these non-championship races continued. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were many Formula One races which did not count for the World Championship (e.g., in 1950, a total of twenty-two Formula One races were held, of which only six counted towards the World Championship). In 1952 and 1953, when the world championship was run for Formula Two cars, a full season of non-championship Formula One racing took place. Some races, particularly in the UK, including the Race of Champions, Oulton Park International Gold Cup and International Trophy, were attended by the majority of the world championship contenders. These became less common through the 1970s and 1983 saw the last non-championship Formula One race: The 1983 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, won by reigning World Champion Keke Rosberg in a Williams Cosworth in a close fight with American Danny Sullivan.<ref name=LastnonchampF1 />

South African Formula One championship

South Africa's flourishing domestic Formula One championship ran from 1960 through to 1975. The frontrunning cars in the series were recently retired from the world championship although there was also a healthy selection of locally built or modified machines. Frontrunning drivers from the series usually contested their local World Championship Grand Prix, as well as occasional European events, although they had little success at that level.

British Formula One Series

The old fashioned DFV helped make the UK domestic Formula One series possible between 1978 and 1980. As in South Africa a generation before, second hand cars from manufacturers like Lotus and Fittipaldi Automotive were the order of the day, although some, such as the March 781, were built specifically for the series. In 1980, the series saw South African Desiré Wilson become the only woman to win a Formula One race when she triumphed at Brands Hatch in a Wolf WR3.<ref>Template:Citation/core{{#if:|}}</ref>

Racing and strategy

A Formula One Grand Prix event spans an entire weekend, beginning with two free practices on Friday, and one free practice on Saturday. Third drivers are allowed to run on Fridays for teams that finished the preceding season in 5th place or lower. After these practice sessions, a qualifying session is held.

The format of this qualifying session has been through several iterations since 2003. Attempts were made to reinvigorate interest in the qualifying session by using a "one-shot" system in which each driver would take turns on an empty track to set their one and only time.

For the 2006 season a knockout qualifying system has been introduced. The FIA revised the 2006 procedures starting with Round 11, the 2006 French Grand Prix <ref>[1] Press release from Formula 1 website</ref>.

In the first phase, all 22 cars are permitted on the track for a 15-minute qualification session. Only their fastest time will count and drivers may complete as many laps as they wish. In the original format, the clocks were stopped immediately at the end of the session, which meant that drivers on a timed lap did not have their time registered once the 15 minutes were up. From Round 11, any car running a timed lap at the time of the chequered flag is entitled to complete the lap. The slowest six cars can take no further part in qualifying, these cars will make up the last six grid positions in the order of their times.

The times for the sixteen remaining cars are reset for the next 15-minute session. In the original format, the clocks were stopped immediately at the end of the session. From Round 11, cars running timed laps at the chequered flag are allowed to complete the lap. The slowest six cars will make up the grid in positions 11 to 16 in the order of their times.

The times for the ten remaining cars will be reset for the next session. The shootout session lasted 20 minutes under the original regulations, changed to 15 minutes from Round 11. For the final period, the cars will be arranged on the grid in positions one to ten in the order of their times. In the first two 15-minute sessions, cars may run any fuel load and drivers knocked out after those sessions may refuel ahead of the race. However, the top-ten drivers must begin the final 15-minute session with the fuel load on which they plan to start the race. They will be weighed before they leave the pits. Whatever fuel they use in the 15 minutes may be replaced at the end of the session provided that the laps they complete are all within 110% of their best session time. Any fuel for a lap outside of the 110% time will not be replaced. As with the first two 15 minute sessions, if a driver starts a timed lap before the chequered flag falls for the 15 minute session, their time will count even if they cross the finish line after the session has ended. <ref>2006 season changes from the Official Formula 1 Website</ref>

The race begins with a warm-up formation lap, after which the cars assemble on the starting grid in the order they qualified. If a driver stalls before the parade lap, and the rest of the field passes him, then he must start from the back of the grid. As long as he moves off and at least one car is behind him, he can retake his original position. A racer may also elect to start from pit-lane if he has any last minute problems with the car. If they choose to do this, they must wait for all cars to pass pit-lane before they may begin the race.

A light system above the track then signals the start of the race. Races are a little over 305 kilometres (180 miles) long and are limited to two hours, though in practice they usually last about ninety minutes. Throughout the race, drivers may make one or more pit stops in order to refuel and change tyres. Drivers have access to seven sets of dry-weather tyres, four sets of wet-weather tyres and three sets of extreme-weather tyres for the entire weekend. Drivers must choose the dry-weather compound they will use for the race ahead of qualifying.

The FIA awards points to the top eight drivers and their respective teams of a grand prix on a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis (the race winner receives ten points, the first runner-up eight, and so on). The winner of the two annual championships are the driver and the team who have accumulated the most points at the end of the season. If any drivers and/or teams have the exact amount of points and are both competing for the driver and/or team championships, the driver and/or team who has won more Grand Prix races during the course of the season is declared the winner.

Drivers and constructors

Formula One teams must build the chassis in which they compete, and consequently the terms "team" and "constructor" are more or less interchangeable. This requirement distinguishes the sport from series such as IRL, Champ Cars, and NASCAR, which allow teams to purchase chassis, and "spec series" such as GP2, which require all cars be kept to an identical specification. In its early years, Formula One teams sometimes also built their engines, though this became less common with the increased involvement of major car manufacturers such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Toyota, and Honda, whose large budgets rendered privately built engines less competitive (and redundant).

Early manufacturer involvement came in the form of a "factory team" (that is, one owned and staffed by a major car company), such as those of Alfa Romeo, Ferrari (FIAT) or Renault. Companies such as Climax, Repco, Cosworth, Hart, Judd and Supertec, which had no direct team affiliation, often sold engines to teams who could not afford to manufacture them. As the manufacturers' deep pockets and engineering ability took over, almost all engines are now produced by major manufacturers.

After having virtually disappeared by the early 1980s, factory teams made a comeback in the 1990s and 2000s, and now form half the grid with Toyota, Ferrari (FIAT), Honda, Renault and BMW either setting up their own teams or buying out existing ones. Mercedes-Benz (DaimlerChrysler) owns 40% of the McLaren team and manufactures the team's engines. The remaining teams buy engines from the factory teams or from Cosworth, currently the only commercial engine manufacturer.

The sport's 1950 debut season 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 only still-active team which competed in 1950, and as of 2006 eleven teams remain on the grid, each fielding two cars. Although teams rarely disclose information about their budgets, it is estimated that they range from US$75 million to US$500 million each.

Entering a new team in the Formula One World Championship requires a £25 million (about US$47 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: B.A.R.'s purchase of Tyrrell and Midland's purchase of Jordan allowed both of these teams to sidestep the large deposit.

Each car is assigned a number. The previous season's World Drivers' Champion is designated number 1, with his teammate given number 2. Numbers are then assigned according to each team's position in the previous season's World Constructors' Championship. There have been exceptions to this rule, such as in 1993 and 1994, when the current World Drivers' Champion (Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost, respectively) was no longer competing in Formula One. In this case the drivers for the team of the previous year's champion are given numbers 0 and 2. The number 13 has not been used since 1974, before which it was occasionally assigned at the discretion of individual race organizers. Before 1996, only the world championship winning driver and his team generally swapped numbers with the previous champion – the remainder held their numbers from prior years, as they had been originally set at the start of the 1974 season. For many years, for example, Ferrari held numbers 27 & 28, regardless of their finishing position in the world championship. As privateer teams quickly folded in the early 1990s, numbers were frequently shuffled around, until the current system was adopted in 1996.

Michael Schumacher holds the record for having won the most Drivers' Championships (seven) and Ferrari holds the record for having won the most Constructors' Championships (sixteen). Jochen Rindt has the distinction of having been the only posthumous World Champion.

Grands Prix

The number of Grands Prix held in a season has varied over the years. Only seven races comprised the inaugural 1950 season; over the years the calendar has almost tripled in size. Though the number of races had stayed at sixteen or seventeen since the 1980s, it reached nineteen in 2005.

Six of the original seven races took place in Europe; the only non-European race that counted towards the World Championship in 1950 was the Indianapolis 500, which, due to lack of participation by F1 teams, since it required cars with different specifications from the other races, was later replaced by the United States Grand Prix. The F1 championship gradually expanded to other non-European countries as well. Argentina hosted the first South American grand prix in 1953, and Morocco hosted the first African World Championship race in 1958. Asia (Japan in 1976) and Oceania (Australia in 1985) followed. The current nineteen races are spread over the continents of Europe, Asia, Oceania, North America, and South America.

Traditionally, each nation has hosted a single grand prix that carries the name of the country. If a single country hosts multiple grands prix in a year, they receive different names. For example, every year two grands prix take place in Germany, one of which is known as the European Grand Prix.

The grands prix, some of which have a history that predates the Formula One World Championship, are not always held on the same circuit every year. The British Grand Prix, for example, though held every year since 1950, alternated between Brands Hatch and Silverstone from 1963 to 1986. The only other race to have been included in every World Championship season is the Italian Grand Prix. It has always taken place at Monza, with one exception in 1980 when it took place at Imola (which now hosts the San Marino Grand Prix).

One of the newest races on the Grand Prix calendar, held in Bahrain, represents Formula One's first penetration into the Middle East with a high tech purpose-built desert track. The Bahrain Grand Prix, along with other new races in China and Turkey, present new opportunities for the growth and evolution of the Formula One Grand Prix franchise whilst new facilities also raise the bar for other Formula One racing venues around the world.

Gallery

• 

  The F1 Safety Car; a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG.

References

• Arron, Simon & Hughes, Mark (2003). The Complete Book of Formula One. Motorbooks International. ISBN 0760316880.
• FIA Archive. (2004). Federation Internationale de l'Automobile. Retrieved 25 October 2004.
• Formula One Regulations. (2004). Federation Internationale de l'Automobile. Retrieved 23 October 2004.
• Gross, Nigel et al (1999). Grand Prix Motor Racing. In, 100 Years of Change: Speed and Power (pp. 55-84). Parragon.
• Insight. (2004). The Official Formula 1 Website. Retrieved 25 October 2004.
• Jones, Bruce (1997). The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Formula One. Hodder & Stoughton.
• Jones, Bruce (1998). Formula One: The Complete Stats and Records of Grand Prix Racing. Parragon.
• Jones, Bruce (2003). 'The Official ITV Sport Guide: Formula One Grand Prix 2003]. Carlton. Includes foreword by Martin Brundle. ISBN 1842228137.
• Jordan: Privateer era is over (2005). itv.com/f1. Retrieved 1 September 2005.
• Jones, Bruce (2005). The Guide to 2005 FIA Formula One World Championship : The World's Bestselling Grand Prix Guide]. Carlton. ISBN 1844425088.
• Mexican GP back on track (2005). itv.com/f1. Retrieved 1 September 2005.
• Rajan, Sanjay. (Dec. 28, 2002). It was Ferrari all the way. The Sportstar.
• Schumacher makes history (2002). BBC Sport. Retrieved 1 September 2005.
• F1 third biggest global TV draw. Referenced 5 January 2006.
• Seven teams boycott US Grand Prix. (June 19, 2005). BBC Sport.
• Tremayne, David & Hughes, Mark (1999). The Concise Encyclopedia of Formula One. Parragon.

Constructors and drivers competing in the 2010 Formula One championship
McLaren	Mercedes	Red Bull	Ferrari	Williams	Renault	Force India	Toro Rosso	Lotus	Campos	US F1	Virgin	Sauber
1 Button 2 Hamilton	3 Schumacher 4 Rosberg	5 Vettel 6 Webber	7 Massa 8 Alonso	9 Barrichello 10 Hülkenberg	11 Kubica 12 Petrov	14 Sutil 15 Liuzzi	16 Buemi 17 Alguersuari	18 Trulli 19 Kovalainen	20 TBA 21 Senna	22 López 23 TBA	24 Glock 25 di Grassi	de la Rosa Kobayashi
Other drivers who have participated in the 2010 season: •

See also

• List of racing drivers
• F1 Racing (magazine)
• Michel Vaillant (the only comic book character driver french Formula One, created in 1957 by Jean Graton)
• Formula 1 Decade (show held on SPEED Channel)
• FOTA

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Formula One

Official sites

• Formula1.com — The official site of Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One Management; contains schedules, race results, live timing during each race, the official F1 shop, and some news
• Current regulations — from the FIA website

News and reference

• autosport.com — Subscription motorsport news, articles and analysis. Formerly known as AtlasF1
• F1db — F1 database and forum
• F1-Live — News, results, discussion forum, Internet TV coverage
• GrandPrix.com — F1 news and a Grand Prix encyclopedia
• Formula 1 Review - Offers F1 news, statistics, quotes, profiles and a community forum
• ITV.com/F1 — News, pictures, and commentary from ITV, F1's British broadcasters; also from Matt Bishop and F1 Racing magazine
• mergetek.com — Aerial Views of Formula 1 (F1) Tracks via Google Maps
• Pitpass — News, results, analysis, discussion forum
• F1Online — News, results, analysis, discussion forum
• Manipe F1 — News, results, testing, statistics
• Chicane F1 — Results, statistics
• Video explaining 2006 new regulations — 2006 New Rules for Qualifying
• Europe wants F1 to kick tobacco habit
• FIA increases cost of F1 superlicense
• BREAKING: Formula 1 Teams Association announces breakaway series for 2010
• Official: FOTA Announce Breakaway Series for 2010
• That didn't take long: FIA sues the FOTA over breakaway series

History

• Formula 1 History — All results since 1950, articles, statistics, compare drivers, preview for next races ...
• Grand Prix History — The history of Grand Prix Racing through the lives of its greatest drivers, people and events.