Formula 1 has picked up more new fans in the last five years than in the previous twenty. Drive to Survive brought in millions of viewers who had never watched a race. The F1 movie did the same. If you're one of them and you're trying to figure out what's actually going on when you watch a Grand Prix, this is the guide that gets you there.
What Formula 1 actually is
Formula 1 is the highest level of single-seater motorsport in the world. Twenty drivers, ten teams, twenty-four races across five continents over nine months. The cars are the fastest road-course racing cars ever built: capable of over 350 km/h, generating enough downforce to theoretically drive upside down on a ceiling at speed, and built to regulations so precise that the difference between the fastest and slowest car on the grid is often less than two seconds per lap.
The championship runs from March to December. Each race weekend has three practice sessions, one qualifying session (which sets the starting grid), and the race itself. There are also sprint weekends at selected venues where a shorter qualifying and sprint race run on Saturday before the main event on Sunday.
The driver with the most points at the end of the season wins the World Drivers' Championship. The team with the most combined points wins the Constructors' Championship. Both are decided separately, which means two separate title fights happen simultaneously throughout the year.
The teams
Ten teams, two drivers each. Teams design, build and develop their own cars. This is what separates F1 from most other motorsport categories where everyone buys the same machinery. The engineering competition between teams is as much a part of the sport as the racing itself.
The teams that matter most right now:
McLaren are the current Constructors' Champions, having ended a 26-year title drought in 2024. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are arguably the most talked-about driver pairing in the sport: young, fast, and with a dynamic that generates more social media content than any other team on the grid.
Red Bull Racing dominated the sport from 2021 to 2024, winning four consecutive Constructors' Championships with Max Verstappen as their lead driver. Verstappen won three consecutive World Championships. In 2025 the team has been less dominant, making the title fight significantly more competitive.
Ferrari are the oldest and most recognisable team in Formula 1, having competed in every season since the championship began in 1950. Lewis Hamilton joined the team in 2025 after 12 years at Mercedes, which is the single biggest driver move in the sport's recent history.
Mercedes dominated F1 from 2014 to 2021 with Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, then Valtteri Bottas, winning eight consecutive Constructors' Championships. They have been rebuilding since losing Hamilton and are aiming to return to the front of the grid.
Aston Martin, Alpine, Williams, Haas, Kick Sauber and Racing Bulls make up the remainder of the grid. Haas is the only American-owned team in F1, which matters to a lot of US fans.
The drivers to know
Max Verstappen is the four-time reigning World Champion and the most statistically dominant driver of the modern era. Dutch-Belgian, 27 years old, uncompromising in a way that has divided opinion but is impossible to ignore. When his car is competitive, he wins. In 2025 the Red Bull car has been less dominant, which has made for better racing and a more open championship.
Lando Norris is the current face of F1's new generation. British, 25 years old. McLaren's lead driver and the sport's most followed driver on social media. His rivalry with Verstappen through 2024 (competitive, occasionally heated, always watchable) is the defining storyline of the current era.
Oscar Piastri is Norris's teammate at McLaren. Australian, 24 years old, widely considered one of the most naturally talented drivers in the field. His rivalry with Norris within the same team adds an internal dimension to the McLaren story that plays out differently from most teammate relationships.
Lewis Hamilton holds the record for most wins (103), most pole positions (104) and most World Championships jointly with Michael Schumacher (7). Now at Ferrari. His move to the red car has been the most anticipated storyline of 2025. He is 40 years old, still fast, and one of the biggest names in global sport.
Charles Leclerc is Ferrari's other driver and one of the quickest single-lap performers in the sport. His relationship with Hamilton at Ferrari is one of the more complex team dynamics in the paddock. Two drivers with very different careers, both capable of winning, sharing the same garage.
The races that matter most
Twenty-four races is a lot. Some matter more than others, either because of their history, their setting, or their place in the calendar.
The Monaco Grand Prix is the most famous race in the world. Street circuit through the principality, no run-off, barriers everywhere, and a history stretching back to 1929. Overtaking is nearly impossible which makes qualifying and strategy more important than anywhere else on the calendar.
The British Grand Prix at Silverstone is the home race for most of the F1 teams (the majority are based within an hour of the circuit) and consistently produces one of the best atmospheres on the calendar. The crowd noise at Silverstone is unlike any other race.
The Italian Grand Prix at Monza is the fastest race on the calendar and the home of Ferrari's most passionate supporters, the Tifosi. When Ferrari wins at Monza, it produces some of the most emotional scenes in sport.
The Miami Grand Prix was the most-watched F1 race in American television history in 2024, averaging 3.1 million viewers. The circuit runs around and through the Hard Rock Stadium and the race weekend has become one of the most high-profile events on the social calendar as well as the racing calendar.
The United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas in Austin has the most dedicated American F1 fanbase of any race on the calendar. COTA was built specifically for F1 and the race draws a genuinely passionate crowd rather than a celebrity-watching one.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix runs at night on a street circuit built around the Strip. It is the most spectacular visual spectacle in the calendar and the one that most clearly reflects F1's ambitions as an entertainment product as much as a sporting competition.
What Drive to Survive got right (and what it exaggerated)
Drive to Survive introduced more people to F1 than any single event in the sport's history. Its true impact has been in making F1 fans out of tens of millions of people who had never watched a race. The human stories, the paddock politics, the driver personalities: the show is genuinely good television.
What it exaggerated: rivalries were sometimes manufactured or intensified for dramatic effect. Some drivers have been publicly critical of how they were portrayed. The racing itself (which is the actual point) is often better than Drive to Survive suggests, particularly in the midfield where position battles happen on every lap of every race.
The honest recommendation: watch Drive to Survive to get context on the personalities, then watch a race. The two experiences are different enough that one enriches the other.
The legends worth knowing
F1's history is part of what makes it compelling. A few names that come up constantly:
Ayrton Senna is considered by many to be the greatest driver in the history of the sport. Three World Championships, 41 race wins, and a driving style that combined technical precision with something that looked genuinely supernatural. He died at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, which remains the most significant moment in the sport's modern history. If you want to understand why older F1 fans care about the sport the way they do, watch the 2010 documentary Senna.
Michael Schumacher won seven World Championships, a record he shares with Lewis Hamilton. His five consecutive titles from 2000 to 2004 with Ferrari represent the most dominant sustained run of any driver in the sport's history. He was seriously injured in a skiing accident in 2013 and has not been seen publicly since.
Alain Prost won four World Championships and his rivalry with Senna in the late 1980s and early 1990s is the most documented and dissected in the sport's history.
How to watch
In the US, Formula 1 broadcasts on ESPN. Most races run on Sunday with European start times, which means East Coast viewers are looking at early morning slots (typically 9am ET for European races) and West Coast viewers are up even earlier. The US races in Miami, Austin and Las Vegas run at more convenient times for American audiences.
F1TV is the sport's own streaming platform and offers live and on-demand access to every race, every qualifying session, and an archive of historic content going back decades. For anyone who wants to go deep, the archive alone is worth the subscription.
Where Deckorate fits
Once you know who you're following, putting them on your wall makes sense. The Deckorate F1 collection covers the current grid: Verstappen's RB18, Norris's MCL38, Piastri's MCL38, and the legends: the Senna 3-pack covering three chapters of his career, and the Schumacher 3-pack tracing his journey from the Jordan to the Ferrari F2004.
For anyone who wants to represent the sport rather than a specific driver, the Eau Rouge Spa-Francorchamps 3-pack is built around the most iconic corner in motorsport.
