F1 FAQ

I know nothing about F1. Where do I start?

Welcome! Our yearly Preseason Primer episode assumes no prior racing knowledge, and is designed to be the perfect introduction to the F1 newcomer (if we do say so ourselves)!

How can I watch F1 in the United States?

Two ways:

1) On ESPN.

Every race is broadcast commercial-free (!) on ESPN, EPSN2, or ABC, with practice and qualifying sessions occasionally drifting onto ESPNEWS.

This means you can also watch live (or a replay) using the ESPN app on various supported devices by logging in with the account you have through your TV provider. Note: some versions of the ESPN app remove the replays after a few weeks.

ESPN is also included with many streaming providers like Hulu (with live TV), Sling, YouTube TV, etc., though each provider has quirks about how long replays are available and whether they are available on-demand or must be explicitly set to record. In some cases, your login for these services can be used to log in to the ESPN app, which does provide on-demand viewing.

2) With F1 TV.

F1 TV is Formula 1's official subscription video service. There are two tiers:

  • F1 TV Pro ($10 per month or $80 per year)

  • F1 TV Access ($3 per month or $27 per year)

F1 TV Pro provides full, live sessions with no commercial breaks. It also allows you to switch between the live feed and any of the 20 cameras onboard the cars. Full race replays (with camera switching) are available if you want to watch later.

F1 TV Access is a lower tier that provides live timing and radio commentary (through the F1 mobile app), and full current-season race replays (published up to two days later depending on your region), but not live video or onboard camera-switching.

Both tiers provide access to an archive of historical races dating, as of this writing, back to 1981. Currently, not all races are available from every year, but races are supposedly being added all the time.

F1 TV is currently available on these platforms.

3) By finding an F1 meetup in your city!

How can I watch F1 outside the United States?

For television, RaceFans.net has a crowdsourced list of methods here.

F1 TV is available in these countries, in various mixes of Pro and Access, with varying time delays for replays.

What if I don't want to pay anything?

The official Formula 1 YouTube channel uploads "highlight" versions of each session. They'll also occasionally pull particularly juicy segments from the races. It's not as exciting as watching the full sessions, but they are well-edited, free, and give a good sense of most of the things that happened.

Another option is to find an F1 meetup in your city!

If reading words is more your thing, Motorsport Magazine does exhaustive race-weekend recaps in excellent prose.

When are the races?

You can find all the session times in your timezone at F1Calendar.com. There you can also add all the sessions (or just the races) to your personal calendar.

How do you tell who is who on track?

The teams are generally pretty easy to tell apart since each team wants a distinctive-looking car. As for distinguishing drivers on the same team, one driver (usually the one who has been with the team the longest) has a black camera pod (positioned on top of the intake above the driver's head), while the other driver has a fluorescent yellow pod. From there, it's just a matter of remembering which driver has which color pod.

User RookSeven on Reddit creates spotter’s guides which can help clear things up!

I have a technical question about rules, cars, etc.

You can always send us an email over here!

Chain Bear F1 on YouTube does great technical deep dives.

I am very online and want to follow everything on Twitter.

Excellent! Might we suggest following @shiftf1podcast? We’re usually pretty good about posting show updates and retweeting the best F1 news.

Here’s a list of all the current F1 drivers and teams. Formula 1’s official account is also good.

Who is Pastor Maldonado?

A legend.