Formula One, abbreviated to F1, is the highest class of open-wheeled auto racing series administered by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), motorsport's world governing body. The "formula" in the name alludes to a series of rules set by the FIA to which all participants and vehicles are required to conform. The F1 World Championship season consists of a series of races, known as , usually held on purpose-built circuits, and in a few cases on closed city streets. A points scoring system is used for each Grand Prix held over the course of the F1 season to determine the outcome of two annual championships, one for drivers (World Drivers' Championship) since , and one for constructors (World Constructors' Championship) since . Each driver accumulates championship points individually in the World Drivers' Championship and collectively for the team they compete for in the World Constructors' Championship. Both championships are formally awarded at the end-of-season FIA Prize Giving Ceremony to the driver and team with the most points.
351 drivers have scored Drivers' Championship points, and 70 out of 170 teams have scored Constructors' Championship points, in 1,098 World Championship races. Lewis Hamilton has the highest Drivers' Championship points total with , Sebastian Vettel is second with 3098 and Max Verstappen is third with . Scuderia Ferrari holds the record for the highest Constructors' Championship points total with , Mercedes is second with , and Red Bull Racing is third with . Drivers received an equal points distribution share if they shared a car with another or set the same fastest lap as another between 1950 and . Second drivers of teams who officially entered only one car were ineligible for points on two occasions involving three drivers.
Records and achievements
The most dominant Drivers' Champion in terms of points scored is Jim Clark, who scored the maximum of 54 points (7 and 6 wins, respectively) in both and . More recently, Michael Schumacher finished on the podium in every race of the season to score 144 of a maximum 170 points. The most dominant Constructors' Champion in recent times was McLaren in , scoring 199 of a maximum 240 points and finishing 134 points ahead of its nearest rival. In , Ferrari scored 221 points, as many as all the other teams combined.
Robert Kubica has the longest time between two successive points-scoring results: 8 years and 256 days (between the and the ). Michael Schumacher has the longest time between his first and last points-scoring results: he scored his first points in the 1991 Italian Grand Prix and his last at the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix, a span of 21 years, 2 months, and 17 days. Hamilton holds the record for most consecutive points-scoring results at 48 : from the to the . Max Verstappen is the youngest driver to score a championship point; he finished seventh at the when he was 17 years and 180 days old. Philippe Étancelin is the oldest driver to score a championship point; he was 53 years and 249 days old when he finished fifth at the .
History
The points scoring has been changed several times throughout F1 history. Participants in every season until could only achieve Drivers' Championship points for their best-placed finishes in a specified maximum number of races. Up until , most years saw only the highest-scoring participant in each Grand Prix for each constructor contributing points towards the Drivers' title. From to , the top five finishers of each race plus the fastest lap setter tallied points. The format was expanded to include the first six finishers of each event between and but with no point for fastest lap. In , the FIA revised the structure to the top eight finishers of each race. The FIA extended the system again to include the first ten Grand Prix finishers in . Each Grand Prix winner tallied 8 points from to , 9 from to , 10 between and , and 25 since .