How the Formula 1® Points System Works

Formula 1® awards points to the top 10 finishers at every Grand Prix and the top 8 at every Sprint race. The driver with the most points at the end of the season wins the Drivers’ Championship, and the combined totals of each team’s two drivers decide the Constructors’ Championship.

Simple enough on paper. But those points carry serious weight. Championships are settled on the finest of margins, and a team’s final position in the Constructors’ standings directly determines its share of the prize money. Here’s how the whole system works, from the 25 points on offer for a race win down to the tie-breakers that would decide a dead heat.

How F1 Grand Prix Points Are Awarded

At every Grand Prix, the top 10 finishers score points. The winner takes 25, second place earns 18, and the scale runs down to a single point for 10th. Finish 11th or lower and you leave with nothing.

Look closely at the top of that scale and you’ll spot something deliberate. The seven-point gap between first and second is the largest anywhere in the table. F1 designed it that way to reward winning over merely collecting places.

The maths makes the point nicely. A driver who wins two races and finishes second in a third banks 68 points. A rival who finishes second in all three collects 54. Same podiums, same consistency at the front, but a 14-point swing to the driver who took the chequered flag. Over a 24-race season, that difference decides titles.

How F1 Sprint Race Points Are Awarded

A Sprint is a short-format race of around 100 kilometres, run on the Saturday of selected Grand Prix weekends, with no mandatory pit stops and a running time of roughly 30 minutes. There are six Sprint weekends on the 2026 calendar.

The top 8 finishers score, from 8 points for the winner down to 1 point for 8th.

The crucial thing to understand: Sprint points count fully towards both the Drivers’ and the Constructors’ Championships. They are not a separate competition or a novelty sideshow. A driver who won every Sprint in a season would pick up 48 points, which is nearly the equivalent of two Grand Prix victories, and comfortably enough to swing a tight title fight. When commentators talk about a championship being won on a Saturday, this is what they mean.

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The Constructors’ Championship: How Team Points Work

While drivers chase their own title, every point they score also goes into their team’s total for the Constructors’ Championship. Both cars count. If one driver wins a race (25 points) and their teammate comes home fifth (10 points), the team banks 35 points from that afternoon. The maximum available to a single team from one Grand Prix is 43, for a one-two finish.

The Constructors’ is where the money lives. A team’s finishing position in the standings directly determines its share of F1’s prize pool, and tens of millions of dollars can separate one position from the next. That’s why a midfield team will fight as ferociously over seventh versus eighth in the standings as the front-runners do over the title itself.

It’s also why the two championships don’t always go to the same garage. In 2024, McLaren won the Constructors’ Championship while Max Verstappen took the Drivers’ title for Red Bull. Verstappen was the year’s dominant individual, but McLaren’s two drivers scored heavily and consistently as a pair, and in the Constructors’ race, two strong scorers beat one brilliant one.

What Happens If Drivers Finish Level on Points?

If two drivers end the season tied, the championship goes to the one with the most Grand Prix wins. Still level? Second-place finishes are compared, then thirds, and so on down the order until the tie breaks. Sprint wins don’t count here; only Grand Prix results are used.

Remarkably, this countback has never been needed to decide the Drivers’ Championship itself in more than 75 years of racing. The closest call came in 1984, when Niki Lauda beat Alain Prost by half a point, the smallest title margin in F1 history, with no tie-breaker required. The countback has, however, been used to separate drivers further down the final standings.

What Are Half Points and When Are They Awarded?

Half points (and other reduced allocations) come into play when a race is stopped early and less than a set distance has been completed. Under the current rules, full points are only awarded if the race leader has completed 75 per cent or more of the scheduled laps. Below that threshold, points are awarded on a sliding scale that shrinks with the distance covered, and a minimum amount of genuine racing must have taken place for any points to be given at all.

The rule exists because of one infamous afternoon. At the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix, torrential rain meant only a couple of laps were ever completed, all of them behind the safety car. Under the regulations of the day, half points were still awarded and the result stood, with Max Verstappen declared the winner of a race in which nobody made a single racing overtake. The backlash was immediate, and the FIA tightened the rules afterwards to require meaningful green-flag running before any points can be handed out.

It’s a corner of the rulebook most fans never think about until the skies open. Then it decides everything.

The Fastest Lap Point: Removed for 2025

From 2019 to 2024, the driver who set the fastest lap of the race earned a bonus point, provided they finished in the top 10. That rule is gone. It was abolished from the 2025 season onwards because teams had learned to game it, pitting drivers for fresh tyres in the closing laps purely to hunt the bonus, regardless of any competitive logic.

The practical effect: the maximum a driver can now score in a single Grand Prix is 25 points, down from 26. If you see an older article quoting 26, it’s out of date.

A Brief History of the F1 Points System

The scoring system has been rewritten many times across F1’s 75-year history, and even seasoned fans are often surprised by how different it once looked.

When the World Championship began in 1950, a race win was worth just 8 points, only the top five scored, and only a driver’s best four or five results counted towards their total. Drivers could literally throw away bad weekends. The long-serving 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 scale carried the sport through the 1990s and 2000s before the current 25-point structure arrived in 2010, built for larger grids and closer championships.

Why Late-Season Races Often Decide the Championship

Here’s the beautiful consequence of all this arithmetic. With 24 Grands Prix and six Sprints on the 2026 calendar, there are up to 648 points available to a single driver across the season, and the margins at the top are almost always tighter than that number suggests. Time and again, the title fight compresses into the final three or four rounds.

Think of Abu Dhabi in 2021, when Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton arrived at the last race dead level on points and settled a season on the final lap. Or the closing stretch of 2023, when Las Vegas staged its first night race with the whole sporting world watching. The runs home in 2024 and 2025 went deep into the calendar too. When the maths gets tight, every late-season Sunday becomes an event in its own right.

Those final rounds are, in our experience, the best weekends of the year to be at the circuit. The stakes are at their highest, the paddock is electric, and you’re watching a season’s worth of points converge on a single afternoon. If that sounds like your kind of Sunday, our F1 travel packages cover the races where championships get decided, with the access and on-ground support sorted so you can focus on the racing.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many points does an F1 race winner get?

An F1 Grand Prix winner earns 25 points. Second place receives 18 and third gets 15, with the scale running down to 1 point for 10th. Drivers finishing 11th or lower score nothing.

How many points does the winner of an F1 Sprint get?

A Sprint race winner earns 8 points. The top 8 finishers all score, on a scale of 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Sprint points count fully towards both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships.

Is there still a fastest lap point in F1?

No. The fastest lap bonus point was abolished from the 2025 season. It ran from 2019 to 2024, awarding one point to the driver with the race’s fastest lap if they finished in the top 10.

How many sprint races are there in the F1 season?

There are six Sprint weekends on the 2026 F1 calendar. Sprints are roughly 100-kilometre races held on the Saturday of selected Grand Prix weekends, with points awarded to the top 8 finishers.

What happens if two F1 drivers tie on points at the end of the season?

The driver with the most Grand Prix wins takes the championship. If still tied, second-place finishes are compared, then thirds, and so on. This countback has never been needed to decide the Drivers’ title.

How are points awarded if an F1 race is stopped early?

If the leader has completed 75 per cent or more of the scheduled laps, full points are awarded. Below that, points are reduced on a sliding scale, and a minimum amount of racing must have occurred for any points to count.

Do F1 drivers get prize money for winning races?

Not directly. F1’s prize money is paid to teams based on their Constructors’ Championship position. Drivers earn through team salaries and performance bonuses, which are often linked to wins, podiums and championship results.