On March 13, the 2025 Formula One racing season will officially kick off in Melbourne, Australia, as the first of the 24 Grand Prix weekends for the sport’s 75th year. Drivers and their teams will compete for the coveted World Drivers’ and World Constructors’ Championship titles on tracks around the world, ranging from the historic Circuit de Monaco to the electric Marina Bay Street Circuit in Singapore, even nearing Santa Barbara in November at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
If watching a small group of rich men — more on this later— drive around and around really fast for hours sounds exciting, and you don’t mind waking up at wicked hours to chase time zones across the globe, this might be the sport for you.
The Who
A total of 20 drivers representing 10 automobile manufacturing teams (also known as constructors) make up the Formula One (F1) grid. This year in particular will be an exciting one, with five rookie drivers: Jack Doohan, Oliver Bearman, Gabriel Bortoleto, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, and Isack Hadjar. Liam Lawson is technically a sixth rookie, as he hasn’t completed a full season in F1 yet, but he’ll be coming into 2025 with 11 F1 races under his belt. In addition to the grid’s fresh faces, several veteran drivers will be racing for new teams: Esteban Ocon for Haas, Nico Hulkenberg for Kick Sauber, Carlos Sainz for Williams and, most notably, Lewis Hamilton for Ferrari.
F1 is regulated by the International Automobile Federation (FIA) — the acronym makes more sense in French, I swear — an organization that oversees the more technical elements of the sport, including funding and planning. The FIA is notorious in the F1 community for its controversial decisions, including the highly contested ruling that ultimately decided the winner of the 2021 drivers’ championship.
what to expect
A typical F1 weekend will include three days of action, from Friday to Sunday. The first day tends to include two Free Practice (FP) sessions, where teams will have an hour per session to test out their cars. This might look like evaluating new upgrades, testing different tire compounds, or just getting a feel for the new track.
On Saturday, the third and final FP session will occur, with Qualifying taking place later in the day. Qualifying is a three-stage elimination process (Q1, Q2, and Q3) that determines the order that the cars will start from in the actual race. After Q1, which is 18 minutes, the slowest five drivers are determined. The 15-minute Q2 sees another five-driver elimination, locking in the bottom half of the grid. 12 minutes later, Q3 determines the front 10 spots on the grid, with the fastest driver in what’s called “pole position.”
If you promised yourself you’d be productive this weekend, however, cash in your study breaks for the actual race on Sunday. Falling somewhere between 1.5-2 hours, save for any weather delays, safety cars (deployed in unsafe racing conditions, often following a collision), or flags (another indicator of unsafe conditions), the unpredictability of the race is thrilling.
Although any driver or constructor can win a race, several components are at play, from race and tire strategy to the mechanics and aerodynamics of the cars. Just like “home team advantage” in most sports, home races in the countries that drivers hail from can even boost their performance. At any given moment, given their precise construction and sensitive maneuvering at high speeds, the performance of the cars can change. Honestly, it’s anyone’s game from the moment the starting lights go out to the waiving of the checkered flag.
It’s also a little bit complicated but, in 2021, the F1 Sprint race was added to the sport to amplify excitement for racing through the entire weekend, not just on Sundays. In a nutshell, the Sprint is like a mini race, where pit stops to change tires are not required, less points are given out to top finishers, and drivers tend to make bolder moves. In the 2025 season, the F1 calendar has six Sprint weekends scheduled throughout the year in Shanghai, Miami, Spa-Francorchamps (Belgium), Austin, São Paulo, and Lusail (Qatar).
Formula one-dering where the women are?
As you might have noticed from the names I’ve listed or the general look of the grandstands at a Grand Prix, F1 is an extremely men-dominated sport. There have only been five women drivers in the sport’s 74-year history, a disappointing statistic coupled with a lack of women in other management positions, such as race engineer or team principal (the boss, just like a school principal).
Excitingly, in 2023, F1 created an offshoot called F1 Academy, dedicated to paving a pathway for more women to enter motorsport. As a bit of extra lore, director of F1 Academy Susie Wolff is married to Toto Wolff, the CEO and team principal of Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team. Both Wolffs were former racing drivers themselves.
This year, F1 Academy will feature six teams and 18 drivers (three more this year than in the past), all women. They will only hold seven rounds of racing, far fewer than F1, and all rounds will align with the dates and locations of the F1 calendar, making it easy to keep track of both series!
lights out and away we go: my experience and where to start
If you ever find yourself at my house on a college football night, you might think you’re in the presence of a head coach. It’s really just my father pacing feverishly around the room, barking play calls at the TV, as my brother, mom, and I watch the screen from behind him. When he isn’t trying to coach the University of Michigan football team remotely from our house 2,000 miles away, he’s doing so at our neighborhood sports bar, family in tow. That was the sports environment I grew up in: passionate, loud, and involving the whole family.
Unlike college football and other sports that I grew up occasionally tuning in for, motorsport was a pursuit of my own interest. I began following F1 from my bedroom in the middle of the night in high school, waking up blurry-eyed to alarms at 5 a.m., just to catch the action across the world. I would spend those early hours on FaceTime with my friends, watching races on our respective devices and cheering quietly — it was still 5 a.m., mind you — as overtakes, pole position upsets, and trivial trackside drama unfolded.
I have a small confession: my incessant complaining about early race times has been a bit deceptive. At several points throughout the season, F1 races are held on our side of the world, taking place in the late morning, midday, or just before bedtime. But I’ll be up regardless, repping McLaren for my favorite constructors team or Williams Racing for my favorite driver, Alex Albon, if you need some inspiration on who to root for.
If you’re game to get into F1, you can typically find races officially broadcasted on ESPN or with an F1 TV subscription. Ready yourself a snack, set an alarm so you don’t miss it, and go watch some racing!