The Formula One World Championship was launched in 1950 at the Silverstone circuit, which straddles Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire in Britain. Silverstone remains at the heart of the sport: seven of the ten teams in the 2025 championship are based fully or partly within a 100km radius of the circuit. Cadillac, owned by General Motors, will start competing in 2026 and has already set up shop nearby, bringing the tally to eight. Audi is also looking for premises in the area.
In the slipstream of the teams are more than 4,000 companies, from parts suppliers to PR firms. The industry employs 50,000 people and generated revenues of £16bn in 2023, up by around a quarter in real terms since 2012, according to figures from the Motor Industry Association (MIA). The British Grand Prix is the most-attended paid sporting day in the country.
Andy Cowell, the CEO of Aston Martin F1, talks about the "motorsport mindset": engineers identify problems, design solutions, and make and test prototypes in the days between one race and the next. McLaren Applied, which McLaren sold in 2021, works on deploying racing technology into other industries. The MIA is spearheading initiatives in defence and aerospace. The Silverstone Technology Cluster, a non-profit group founded by Pim van Baarsen, applies motorsport prowess to engineering, electronics and software businesses elsewhere.
Motorsport teams helped design and manufacture breathing equipment during covid-19. Co-operation with the defence industry dates back further: a firm supplying brakes to F1 redesigned the braking system of a patrol vehicle struggling with extra armour, producing a solution far more rapidly than the usual defence contractors.
Liberty Media acquired Formula One in 2017, ousting the sport's long-time impresario Bernie Ecclestone. Under the new ownership, F1 launched the Netflix docu-series "Drive to Survive", which generated $290m in revenue between 2020 and 2024 and brought an estimated 360,000 new American viewers to the sport. Liberty also expanded with F1 TV Pro (a streaming service), podcasts and a heavy social-media push.
New Grands Prix have been added in Las Vegas and Miami. Average race viewership on ESPN in America has more than doubled since 2018, reaching 1.3m. Cadillac will join the grid in 2026. Despite the growth, F1 still trails NASCAR and the major American team sports in audience size.
Since Liberty took over, F1's revenues have more than doubled, to $3.9bn in 2025. Operating profits (before depreciation and amortisation) have also doubled, to $950m. F1's stockmarket value has surged to more than $21bn. The three main revenue sources are race fees (~$1bn), media rights ($1.2bn, the biggest slice) and sponsorship. Eighteen circuits are contracted until at least 2030. The number of races has risen to 24 (from 20 in 2017), with a maximum of 25 agreed with teams. Stefano Domenicali is F1's boss.
In October 2025 F1 signed a deal with Apple TV worth $750m over five years for American broadcast rights. Apple has also struck a deal with Netflix to share live broadcasting of races and "Drive to Survive" in America. F1 now claims a global fanbase of 827m, up by three-fifths since 2018, including 115m social-media followers (a six-fold increase). F1's roster of official "global" sponsors has grown to ten (from six in 2020), including LVMH (said to have paid $1bn for a ten-year deal), Disney and Lego.
In 2025 Liberty paid €4.2bn ($4.9bn) for 84% of MotoGP, the motorcycling equivalent of F1.
Everyone is more or less mad on one point.