Formula 1
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
This F1 trivia quiz has 95 free questions with answers and runs from the first World Championship race at Silverstone in 1950 to the current grid. It covers the champions (Fangio, Lauda, Prost, Senna, Schumacher, Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton, Verstappen, Norris), the teams (Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, Williams), the circuits (Monaco, Monza, Spa, Suzuka, Silverstone), and the rules and technology every fan argues about: points, DRS, tyre compounds, the safety car and the halo. Roughly a third of the questions are easy enough for someone who found the sport through Drive to Survive, a third are medium, and the rest are for people who know Fangio's win percentage and which corner at Imola is called Tamburello. Every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 95 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The first Formula One World Championship race was held on 13 May 1950 at which circuit?
Silverstone
Silverstone had been an RAF bomber base only four years earlier, and its perimeter road served as the track; King George VI came to watch that first championship race.
Q 02Which Italian beat Alfa Romeo teammate Juan Manuel Fangio to the first Formula One world title in 1950?
Giuseppe Farina
Giuseppe Farina arrived at the final race four points behind Fangio, but won it while Fangio retired twice, once in his own car and once in a teammate's, and so took the title by three points.
Q 03With which marque did Fangio win his fifth and final world title in 1957?
Maserati
Maserati's 250F took Fangio to the 1957 title at the German Grand Prix, where a slow pit stop dropped him to third and he chased down both leaders, passing them on the second-to-last lap.
Q 04In February 1958, Fangio was kidnapped from a Havana hotel by gunmen loyal to which rebel leader?
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement seized Fangio on the eve of the Cuban Grand Prix to embarrass the Batista regime; he was freed unharmed the next day and said his captors had treated him well.
Q 05Which driver beat teammate Lewis Hamilton to the 2016 Formula One title, then retired five days later?
Nico Rosberg
Nico Rosberg took the 2016 title by five points, then announced at the FIA prize-giving in Vienna that he was quitting at 31, saying he had reached the peak of his career.
Q 06Michael Schumacher's record five consecutive titles came with which team?
Ferrari
Ferrari had gone 21 years without a drivers' champion when Schumacher won the 2000 title, the first of his five in a row.
Q 07In 2013, Michael Schumacher suffered a traumatic brain injury while doing what?
Skiing
Skiing off-piste at Méribel in the French Alps, Schumacher fell and hit his head on a rock; doctors kept him in a medically induced coma for months.
Q 08Lewis Hamilton took his first Formula One win at which 2007 Grand Prix?
Canadian
Hamilton won the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix from pole in only his sixth race, staying clear of the chaos as the safety car came out four times, once for Robert Kubica's violent crash.
Q 09Which seaside circuit staged the Dutch Grand Prix from 2021, packed with Max Verstappen's orange-clad fans?
Zandvoort
Zandvoort, laid out in the dunes beside the North Sea, went 35 years without a Grand Prix after 1985; a rebuilt track and Verstappen's popularity brought the race back in 2021.
Q 10Max Verstappen races under the Dutch flag, but in which country was he born?
Belgium
Belgium: Verstappen was born in Hasselt to a Belgian mother, kart racer Sophie Kumpen, but took a Dutch licence like his father Jos, saying he felt more Dutch.
Q 11Who was the race director at the centre of the dispute over the 2021 Abu Dhabi safety-car restart?
Michael Masi
Michael Masi let only the five lapped cars between Hamilton and Verstappen unlap themselves, setting up a one-lap dash that decided the title; the FIA removed him as race director in February 2022.
Q 12Which driver won the 2025 World Drivers' Championship?
Lando Norris
Lando Norris took the 2025 title by just two points, sealing it with third place in the Abu Dhabi finale while runner-up Max Verstappen won the race.
Q 13Who became Formula One's youngest world champion in 2010?
Sebastian Vettel
Q 21The Grand Prix through the streets of Monte Carlo is the only one exempt from which FIA rule?
The 305 km minimum race distance
Monaco is exempt from the 305 km minimum race distance and runs about 260 km instead; even so, the rain-hit 1997 race ran into the two-hour time limit and was stopped after 62 of its 78 laps.
Q 22Which Japanese circuit has a figure-of-eight layout, crossing over itself on a bridge?
Suzuka
Suzuka's back straight passes over the front part of the lap on a bridge; long one of the last races of the season, it has decided numerous world championships.
Q 23The Raidillon de l'Eau Rouge is the most famous corner sequence at which circuit?
Spa-Francorchamps
Sebastian Vettel, 23, won in Abu Dhabi while championship leader Fernando Alonso spent the race stuck behind Vitaly Petrov and finished seventh, losing the title by four points.
Q 14Vettel took his first Grand Prix win at a wet Monza in 2008 for which team?
Toro Rosso
Toro Rosso was Red Bull's junior team, yet Vettel's win from pole gave it a victory before the senior team had one; Red Bull's first came in China in 2009, also with Vettel.
Q 15Which driver is the only Formula One world champion to have been crowned posthumously?
Jochen Rindt
Jochen Rindt was killed in practice at the 1970 Italian Grand Prix; his Lotus replacement Emerson Fittipaldi then won in the United States, where rival Jacky Ickx's fourth place put the title out of reach.
Q 16Niki Lauda returned to racing just six weeks after his fiery 1976 crash at which circuit?
Nürburgring
At the Nürburgring on 1 August 1976 Lauda's car crashed and caught fire; he missed only two races and finished fourth at the Italian Grand Prix six weeks later, his burns still bandaged.
Q 17Which four-time champion was nicknamed 'The Professor' for his calculating approach to racing?
Alain Prost
Alain Prost earned the name with an economical style: he began races conservatively, went easy on his brakes and tyres, then mounted a late challenge.
Q 18At which Imola corner did Ayrton Senna's car leave the track on 1 May 1994?
Tamburello
Tamburello was a flat-out, bumpy left-hander with a concrete wall close behind it, which Senna's car struck on lap seven; after 1994 the corner was rebuilt as a slower chicane.
Q 19Which driver holds the record of six wins at the Grand Prix run through the streets of Monte Carlo?
Ayrton Senna
Ayrton Senna's six wins included five in a row from 1989 to 1993; in 1988 he had crashed at Portier while leading and went straight home to his flat in the principality.
Q 20Along with Monaco, which two races make up motorsport's Triple Crown?
Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500
Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500 join Monaco in the Triple Crown; Graham Hill is the only driver to win all three, and Fernando Alonso skipped Monaco in 2017 to try Indianapolis, where his engine failed.
Spa-Francorchamps: Eau Rouge is the stream the track crosses at the foot of the hill, and Raidillon the steep, blind climb that follows, so the corner carries both names.
Q 24The Circuit of the Americas, opened in 2012, is in which US city?
Austin
Austin's Circuit of the Americas borrows famous corners from other tracks: parts of its lap echo Hockenheim's stadium section and Istanbul's long Turn 8.
Q 25From 2019 to 2024, what earned a top-ten finisher one bonus point?
Fastest lap
Fastest lap paid a bonus point until the rule was dropped for 2025; in 2024 Daniel Ricciardo, 18th in his final Grand Prix, set the fastest lap but couldn't score the point from outside the top ten.
Q 26Which colour of flag, shown with a car's number, tells a Formula One driver they have been disqualified?
Black
Black is the disqualification flag; Nigel Mansell ignored it in Portugal in 1989 after reversing in the pit lane, drove on until he collided with a title contender, and was banned from the next race.
Q 27DRS let a driver open a rear-wing flap when within what gap of the car ahead at a detection point?
One second
DRS could be used when a car was within one second of the car ahead at a detection point; used from 2011 to 2025, it was replaced by active aerodynamics under the 2026 rules.
Q 28Which British driver won six of the first seven races of 2009 on his way to the title with Brawn GP?
Jenson Button
Jenson Button's team lost its carmaker owner in the financial crisis and was rescued by its boss Ross Brawn only three weeks before the opening race, which Button then won.
Q 29Which company has been Formula One's sole tyre supplier since 2011?
Pirelli
Pirelli replaced Bridgestone with a mandate to build tyres that wore out faster, forcing drivers to make more pit stops.
Q 30What colour sidewall marks a full wet-weather tyre in Formula One?
Blue
Blue marks the full wet, but it comes with a catch: when it rains hard enough to need it, the problem is visibility rather than grip, so the race can be stopped or held behind the safety car.