1950–1958 · The European founding
The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile established the Formula 1 World Championship for Drivers in 1950, partly as a successor to the European Championship of the 1930s and partly to give post-war motor racing a coherent international structure. The first Grand Prix counting for the championship was held at Silverstone on 13 May 1950, won by Giuseppe Farina of Alfa Romeo — a 43-year-old Italian who would also win the inaugural title. The grid was European almost without exception: Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Maserati, Talbot-Lago.
Juan Manuel Fangio of Argentina won five championships across this decade with four different teams (Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Mercedes, Ferrari) — a record that stood for 46 years until Michael Schumacher broke it. The Le Mans disaster of 1955 killed 83 spectators and ended Mercedes' first F1 programme. The first British world champion was Mike Hawthorn in 1958 — and he died in a road accident three months later.
1959–1968 · The mid-engine revolution
Cooper put the engine behind the driver in 1959 and won that year's championship. Within four seasons every team had copied the layout. The era produced Jim Clark's two championships (1963, 1965) — widely regarded as the most naturally gifted driver of the sport's first three decades — and the rise of Lotus under Colin Chapman as the dominant constructor. Clark died at Hockenheim in 1968, killed by suspension failure on a meaningless Formula 2 race.
The South African Grand Prix joined the World Championship in 1967, hosted at Kyalami outside Johannesburg. The race had a previous non-championship history at Prince George Circuit in East London (1934–1965). Kyalami became one of the most loved circuits on the calendar — fast, sweeping, with the iconic Crowthorne and Sunset corners.
1969–1981 · The commercial era
Sponsorship arrived. Cigarette branding replaced national colours. Bernie Ecclestone took over the constructors' commercial rights in 1971 and began the transformation of F1 from a sporting series into a commercial product. The Lotus 78 of 1977 introduced ground effect, and the Lotus 79 of 1978 — driven by Mario Andretti to the championship — established aerodynamic downforce as the dominant performance variable.
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 1976 Nürburgring crash, his return six weeks later still bandaged from facial burns, and his subsequent championship loss to James Hunt by a single point at the rain-soaked Japanese finale, was the era's defining narrative — and one of motor racing's great stories of any era.
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. Five different teams won championships across the decade — Ferrari, Williams, McLaren, Brabham — 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 continuously from 1967 to 1985, paused during the apartheid sports boycott era, then returned for 1992 and 1993 as part of the post-apartheid normalisation. The 1992 race was won by Nigel Mansell, the 1993 race by Alain Prost — both for Williams. The 1993 race was the last F1 Grand Prix held in Africa to date.
Senna died at Imola on 1 May 1994 — the day after Roland Ratzenberger had been killed during qualifying at the same circuit. The two deaths in a single weekend triggered the most comprehensive safety overhaul in the sport's history: car design changes, circuit modifications, medical-response protocols, the eventual mandating of the HANS device. No F1 driver died in a race weekend for two decades after Senna.
1994–2000 · The Schumacher rise
Michael Schumacher won his first two championships with Benetton in 1994 and 1995, then moved to Ferrari for 1996 — a team that hadn't won a drivers' championship since 1979 (Scheckter) and a constructors' since 1983. The rebuild took five seasons. Schumacher finished second in the standings in 1997 and 1998, lost the 1999 title to teammate-substitute Eddie Irvine after breaking his leg at Silverstone, and finally won the 2000 title at Suzuka in a contest with McLaren's Mika Häkkinen.
Häkkinen's back-to-back titles in 1998 and 1999 deserve more recognition than they typically get — they were won against Ferrari and Schumacher at the start of the latter's dominance, in a McLaren that wasn't always the fastest car on track.
2001–2008 · The Ferrari–Renault–McLaren era
Schumacher won five consecutive championships from 2000 to 2004 with Ferrari, dominating the early-2000s in a way no driver had since Fangio in the 1950s. Fernando Alonso broke the streak in 2005 and 2006 with Renault, ending the Schumacher-Ferrari era. Kimi Räikkönen's Ferrari title in 2007 — won on the final lap of the final race — was followed by Lewis Hamilton's first championship in 2008, also decided on the final lap of the final race, when Timo Glock's slow final corner allowed Hamilton to pass for fifth place and the points he needed.
The 2007 "Spygate" scandal — McLaren found in possession of Ferrari technical documents — produced a record $100 million fine and a McLaren disqualification from the Constructors' Championship. The episode marked the formal arrival of forensic legal scrutiny into F1's previously cavalier technical relationships.
2009–2013 · The new aerodynamics
Brawn GP, the team built from the wreckage of Honda's 2008 withdrawal, won the 2009 championship in its only season of existence — a story that has no equivalent in modern F1. Jenson Button's title with the team came in a car that exploited a double diffuser the other teams hadn't anticipated. Mercedes purchased the team for 2010, signed Schumacher out of retirement, and began the build that would dominate the next decade.
Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull won four consecutive championships from 2010 to 2013, with chief designer Adrian Newey producing what was widely considered the most aerodynamically advanced car of any modern era. The 2013 season ended with Vettel winning nine consecutive races — a record at the time, since broken by Verstappen in 2023.
2014–2021 · The Mercedes hybrid dynasty
The 1.6L V6 turbo hybrid regulations were introduced in 2014. Mercedes had built the dominant engine and chassis, and won every Constructors' Championship from 2014 to 2021 — a record run of eight consecutive titles, unprecedented in the sport's history. Lewis Hamilton won six drivers' titles in that period (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020) and Nico Rosberg won the 2016 title before immediately retiring. The era was so dominated by one team that the sport's commercial concern shifted from competition to relevance.
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 the Verstappen run after three titles. Norris's win came in the final three races after teammate Oscar Piastri had led the championship for most of the year — one of the more dramatic late-season recoveries in the sport's recent history.
2026 onward · The new era
The 2026 regulations represent the sport's most comprehensive technical reset in over a decade — new power units running on 100% sustainable fuels, smaller and lighter cars, active aerodynamics replacing DRS, and the addition of two new manufacturers (Audi takes over Sauber; Cadillac becomes the eleventh team). The regulations are stable through 2030 at minimum. See our complete 2026 hub for the rule changes, teams and drivers competing in this new era.
The South African chapter
South Africa's F1 history has three components — a hosted Grand Prix, a World Champion, and an ongoing rumour about the return of both.
Kyalami: 1967–1985, 1992–1993
Kyalami hosted the South African Grand Prix as a World Championship round in 19 years across two distinct periods. The first run (1967–1985) coincided with the circuit's golden age — a 4.1km layout through high-altitude veld, with the long Mineshaft straight followed by the high-speed Crowthorne corner. Many F1 drivers of the 1970s named it among their favourite circuits. The race was suspended in 1986 as part of the sports boycott of the apartheid regime.
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.
The 1979 title was won at Monza on 9 September 1979. Scheckter won the race; teammate Gilles Villeneuve finished second and chose not to challenge him — one of the most respected teammate decisions in F1 history, and a partnership of mutual loyalty rarely matched since. Scheckter retired from F1 at the end of 1980 after a difficult title-defence season. He went on to run a paintball-equipment business in the United States, sold it for a substantial sum, and now owns an organic farm in Hampshire, England.
He remains the only African F1 World Champion. His son Tomas raced in IndyCar in the 2000s; his nephew Tony Schumacher has had a long NHRA drag-racing career. No South African driver has appeared on the F1 grid since 1980 (Desiré Wilson's brief involvement in non-championship rounds notwithstanding).
The return rumour
Talk of F1 returning to South Africa has surfaced and faded repeatedly since 2018. Kyalami was upgraded to FIA Grade 2 status in 2015, which would require only minor further work to meet F1 (Grade 1) requirements. F1 management has publicly stated interest in returning to Africa as part of the sport's geographic expansion strategy.
As of mid-2026, no contract exists, no formal FIA inspection has been completed, and no public announcement is imminent. The most plausible window for a return is 2028 or 2029, when several existing contracts expire and calendar slots may open. Until then, F1 in South Africa is a viewing relationship — a deep and engaged one, but indirect.