1950–1958 · The European founding
The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile set up the Formula 1 World Championship for Drivers in 1950, partly to follow the European Championship of the 1930s and partly to give post-war motor racing an international structure. The first championship Grand Prix was held at Silverstone on 13 May 1950 and won by Giuseppe Farina of Alfa Romeo, a 43-year-old Italian who went on to win the first title. The grid was almost entirely European: Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Maserati and Talbot-Lago.
Juan Manuel Fangio of Argentina won five championships in the 1950s with four different teams (Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes and Ferrari), a record that stood for 46 years until Michael Schumacher broke it. The 1955 Le Mans disaster killed 83 spectators, and Mercedes withdrew from racing at the end of that season. Britain's first world champion, Mike Hawthorn in 1958, died in a road accident three months later.
1959–1968 · The mid-engine revolution
Cooper's rear-engined cars won the championship in 1959, and within a few seasons every team had copied the layout. The era produced Jim Clark's two titles (1963 and 1965), and he is widely seen as the most naturally gifted driver of the sport's first three decades, as well as the rise of Colin Chapman's Lotus as the leading constructor. Clark died at Hockenheim in 1968 in a Formula 2 race, most likely after a tyre deflated.
The South African Grand Prix joined the world championship in 1962 at the Prince George Circuit in East London, which held championship rounds in 1962, 1963 and 1965. The race moved to Kyalami, outside Johannesburg, in 1967. Kyalami became one of the best-loved circuits on the calendar: fast and sweeping, with the famous Crowthorne and Sunset corners.
1969–1981 · The commercial era
Sponsorship arrived, and cigarette brands replaced national racing colours. Bernie Ecclestone, who bought the Brabham team in 1971, went on to take control of F1's commercial side and turn it from a sporting series into a commercial product. The Lotus 78 of 1977 introduced ground effect, and the Lotus 79, which took Mario Andretti to the 1978 title, made aerodynamic downforce the key to performance.
The South African moment came in 1979. Jody Scheckter, born in East London in 1950, won the World Championship driving for Ferrari. The decisive race was Monza, where Scheckter won the Italian Grand Prix to clinch the title. He remains the only African driver to have won the F1 World Championship in the sport's history, and his run with Gilles Villeneuve (who finished second in the standings that year) is one of the most respected partnerships in Ferrari history.
Niki Lauda's crash at the Nürburgring in 1976, his return six weeks later still bandaged from his burns, and his loss of the title to James Hunt by one point at the rain-soaked Japanese finale was the defining story of the era, and one of the great stories in motor racing.
1982–1993 · The turbo years and the safety crisis
Renault introduced turbo engines in 1977, and by the early 1980s the technology had taken over. Qualifying engines produced over 1,400 horsepower for single laps. Williams, McLaren, Ferrari and Brabham shared the titles across the decade, and the cars became visibly faster every season. Ayrton Senna entered F1 in 1984; Alain Prost was already there. The two would define the late 1980s and produce some of the most controversial championship battles in the sport's history.
The South African Grand Prix at Kyalami was held from 1967 to 1985 (the 1981 race was a non-championship event), stopped during the apartheid sports boycott, and returned in 1992 and 1993 after apartheid ended. Nigel Mansell won in 1992 and Alain Prost in 1993, both for Williams. The 1993 race is still the last F1 Grand Prix held in Africa.
Senna died at Imola on 1 May 1994, the day after Roland Ratzenberger was killed in qualifying at the same circuit. The two deaths in one weekend led to the biggest safety overhaul in the sport's history: changes to car design and circuits, new medical procedures and, eventually, the compulsory HANS device. No F1 driver died at a race weekend for two decades after Senna.
1994–2000 · The Schumacher rise
Michael Schumacher won his first two titles with Benetton in 1994 and 1995, then moved to Ferrari for 1996, a team that hadn't won the drivers' title since 1979 (Scheckter) or the constructors' title since 1983. The rebuild took five seasons. Schumacher was disqualified from the 1997 standings after colliding with Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez, finished second to Mika Häkkinen in 1998, broke his leg at Silverstone in 1999 while teammate Eddie Irvine fought Häkkinen for the title, and finally won the 2000 title at Suzuka against Häkkinen and McLaren.
Häkkinen's back-to-back titles in 1998 and 1999 deserve more credit than they usually get. He won them against Ferrari and Schumacher as their dominance began, in a McLaren that wasn't always the fastest car.
2001–2008 · The Ferrari–Renault–McLaren era
Schumacher won five titles in a row with Ferrari from 2000 to 2004, dominating as no driver had since Fangio in the 1950s. Fernando Alonso ended the run in 2005 and 2006 with Renault. Kimi Räikkönen's 2007 title for Ferrari was decided at the final race, and so was Lewis Hamilton's first in 2008, when Timo Glock slowed on the last lap and Hamilton passed him for the fifth place he needed.
The 2007 "Spygate" scandal, in which McLaren was found to have Ferrari technical documents, brought a record $100 million fine and McLaren's exclusion from the constructors' championship. It marked the arrival of close legal scrutiny in F1's once-casual technical world.
2009–2013 · The new aerodynamics
Brawn GP, built from the remains of Honda's team after its 2008 withdrawal, won the 2009 championship in its only season, a story with no equal in modern F1. Jenson Button won the title in a car using a double diffuser that rivals hadn't anticipated. Mercedes bought the team for 2010, brought Schumacher out of retirement and began building the team that would dominate the next decade.
Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull won four titles in a row from 2010 to 2013, with Adrian Newey designing some of the most aerodynamically advanced cars of any era. Vettel ended 2013 with nine straight wins, a record at the time, later broken by Verstappen in 2023.
2014–2021 · The Mercedes hybrid dynasty
The 1.6-litre V6 turbo hybrid rules arrived in 2014. Mercedes had the best engine and chassis and won every constructors' title from 2014 to 2021, eight in a row, a record in the sport's history. Lewis Hamilton won six drivers' titles in that time (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020), and Nico Rosberg won in 2016 before retiring immediately. One team dominated so completely that the sport's worry shifted from competition to staying relevant.
The 2021 season provided the era's exit: Hamilton vs Max Verstappen, a year-long fight settled at the Abu Dhabi finale by a controversial safety-car restart that has been the subject of FIA review, multiple books, and continuing argument. Verstappen won. Hamilton has not won a championship since.
2022–2025 · The Verstappen reign and the Norris title
New ground-effect regulations in 2022 reshaped the technical hierarchy. Red Bull and Adrian Newey produced the dominant car. Verstappen won three consecutive championships from 2022 to 2024 in increasingly emphatic fashion: 2023 in particular featured 19 race wins out of 22 events, a level of single-driver dominance comparable to Schumacher's 2002–2004 peak.
The 2025 season broke that pattern. Lando Norris won McLaren's first drivers' championship since Lewis Hamilton in 2008, ending Verstappen's run of four titles. Teammate Oscar Piastri led the championship for most of the year; Norris took over only in the closing rounds and beat Verstappen by two points at the Abu Dhabi finale.
2026 onward · The new era
The 2026 rules are the sport's biggest technical reset in more than a decade: new power units on 100% sustainable fuel, smaller and lighter cars, active aerodynamics instead of DRS, and two new manufacturers (Audi has taken over Sauber, and Cadillac is the eleventh team). The rules are set to stay stable until at least 2030. Mercedes has made the best start, winning 12 of the first 18 races, and 20-year-old Kimi Antonelli leads the championship by 123 points with five rounds left. See our 2026 hub for the rule changes, teams and drivers of the new era.
The South African chapter
South Africa's F1 story has three parts: a Grand Prix of its own, a world champion, and recurring talk of a return.
Kyalami: 1967–1985, 1992–1993
Kyalami hosted 20 world championship rounds in three spells (1967 to 1980, 1982 to 1985, and 1992 to 1993). The first era coincided with the circuit's golden age: a fast 4.1km layout on the high-altitude veld, with a long main straight into the high-speed Crowthorne corner. Many drivers of the 1970s counted it among their favourite circuits. The race stopped after 1985 as part of the sports boycott of apartheid South Africa.
F1 returned in 1992 and 1993, when the circuit had been shortened to 4.26km in a 1988 reconfiguration. Nigel Mansell won the 1992 race, Alain Prost the 1993. F1 has not returned since.
Jody Scheckter: the 1979 World Champion
Born in East London in January 1950, Jody Scheckter started karting at age six, progressed through South African Formula Ford, and won the 1971 Driver to Europe scholarship that took him to the UK. Scheckter raced in Formula Ford and then Formula 3 in Europe, made his F1 debut with McLaren in 1972, and signed for Ferrari in 1979.
Scheckter clinched the 1979 title at Monza on 9 September 1979, winning the race with teammate Gilles Villeneuve second. Villeneuve chose not to challenge him, one of the most respected teammate decisions in F1 history. Scheckter retired from F1 at the end of 1980 after a difficult defence of his title. He went on to build a firearms-training simulator business in the United States, sold it, and now runs an organic farm in Hampshire, England.
He remains the only African F1 World Champion. His son Tomas raced in IndyCar in the 2000s. No South African driver has started a World Championship race since Scheckter in 1980 (Desiré Wilson entered the 1980 British GP but did not qualify).
The return rumour
Talk of F1 returning to South Africa has surfaced and faded repeatedly since 2018. In 2025 the FIA accepted Kyalami's design plans for the Grade 1 upgrade a Grand Prix requires, covering run-off, barriers, debris fencing, kerbs and drainage, with three years to complete the work. F1 management has publicly stated interest in returning to Africa as part of the sport's geographic expansion strategy.
As of October 2026 there is no race contract. The 2027 calendar, published in September, has 24 races and none in South Africa, and sports minister Gayton McKenzie has said a bid is being prepared for 2028 or 2029, when several existing race contracts end and slots may open. Until then, South Africans follow F1 on television, with plenty of enthusiasm but from a distance.