Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Auto

How fast do Formula 1 cars really go?

Bruce Brown
By
Max Verstappen driving a Red Bull F1 race car.
Randonwinner / Pixabay

How fast do Formula 1 cars go? When you watch F1 races, it’s easy to adapt visually to the speeds, and depending on subjective factors and the scale of the circuit section you see, it’s common to lose all sense of how fast F1 cars can go. To answer the question fairly, it’s important to qualify any answer about how fast Formula 1 cars go.

For example, the fastest speed for any F1 car anywhere anytime is 246.908 miles per hour in a 2006 Honda RA106 F1 race car, but that speed wasn’t during a Grand Prix or any F1 event. Instead, the record-setting speed was recorded at the Bonneville Salt Flats, which is hardly a normal context for the question. Also, the Honda’s aerodynamics, engine, and tires were modified for the Salt Flats speed test.

Recommended Videos

Fortunately, there are more reasonable answers to the speed question. One accurate and easy answer is that, during Grand Prix, F1 race cars often exceed 200 mph on straight sections of race tracks.

Alfa Romeo final 2023 season Formula 1 race car rear view against a silver background that appears to be an F1 race pit lane garage.
Courtesy Stellantis / Stellantis

Why how fast F1 cars go matters

F1 race car speeds matter because Formula 1 racing is considered the elite motorsport, the top tier of professional racing. Indy 500 cars regularly drive at higher top speeds than Formula 1 cars, but Indy cars run on one large 2.5-mile oval track with rounded, banked corners. F1 races, however, take place at racetracks and on street circuits in different parts of the world with varying distances, left and right turns with different cornering angles, and at different elevations.

Related

F1 teams can modify F1 race cars for each race. However, with many of the races each year only one week apart (this year, there are 24 Grand Prix), the teams have only a few days to make changes. Any modifications must be in strict compliance with rigorously enforced FIA F1 Regulations.

Formula 1 cars winding their way down a track.
Picture Credit By Rick Dikeman / Wikimedia Commons

FIA F1 Technical Regulations

The FIA, the governing body for Formula 1 and most other professional motorsports issues three regulations each year. The combined documents number in the 100s of pages. The F1 Sporting Regulations stipulate the rules for the behavior of drivers and teams during races. The F1 Financial Regulations cover most aspects of financing and budgets, focusing on annual spending caps for each team.

The FIA F1 Technical Regulations, the longest and most complex of the three sets, stipulate in fine detail how F1 race cars are constructed. Those regulations are key to how fast Formula 1 cars go.

Yuki Tsunoda driving a Formula One racecar for Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda.
Randomwinner / Pixabay

This year so far in F1, top speeds with 2024 cars

Another way to answer the F1 race car speed question is to address the fastest lap speed. In addition to earning Championship points for themselves and their team based on the order of finishing a Grand Prix, F1 drivers can win an extra point by driving the fastest lap in the race.

So far in the 2024 season, at the Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix 2024, Max Verstappen, driving for Red Bull, had the fastest lap with an average speed of 130.7 mph. However, Verstappen’s speed is nowhere near the record F1 lap speed.

The current fastest F1 lap speed record of all time was set by Lewis Hamilton, driving for Mercedes at the Italian Grand Prix in 2020, when his average for the lap was 164.267 mph.

The record for the fastest maximum speed during a race was set by Valtteri Bottas driving for Williams in the 2016 Mexican Grand Prix when Bottas hit a top speed of 231.46 mph.

Editors' Recommendations

Bruce Brown
Bruce Brown
Digital Trends Contributing Editor Bruce Brown is a member of the Smart Homes and Cars teams. He also writes technology news…
How do Formula 1 teams make money?
Prize winnings alone don't to cover F1 team costs
Pirelli F1 racing tires on Red Bull Racing Formula 1 race car.

F1 team budgets aren't public information, but the $140.4 million budget cap for the 24 races in the 2024 F1 racing schedule is one indication of the costs of fielding two cars for the season. However, the cost cap doesn't include all financial outlays, including driver salaries, which run to eight figures for top drivers. The F1 Budget Cap and exceptions are spelled out in detail in the FIA F1 Financial Rules and Regulations. The massive expenses of F1 teams beg the question: How do Formula 1 teams make money?
Why the way F1 teams make money matters

The FIA instituted cost caps for F1 teams in 2021 to prevent the richest teams from essentially buying championships with their ability to outspend other teams on race car development. If that happened, F1 racing would suffer from fan boredom. The 2024 season reportedly is already losing spectators who are bored by Red Bull's Max Verstappen's unchallenged success and disappointed not by Red Bull or Verstappen but by the failure of other teams to offer serious competition to the three-time World Championship driver.
F1 team funding sources - Formula 1 payments

Read more
A new poll suggests F1 2024 has a viewership problem — here’s why
Red Bull's Max Verstappen's domination bores some fans
Max Verstappen driving a Red Bull F1 race car.

The 2024 F1 Grand Prix racing season has barely begun, but a recent F1 viewership poll by Race.com suggests fans are less enthusiastic now than before the season began. Citing nearly 150,000 votes, the poll results claim 61% of respondents voted they were less excited about the rest of the F1 season than during the pre-season, with only 7% more excited and 32% unchanged. More recent events might swing a new poll in the opposite direction.

According to the poll report, the most common reason for fan disenchantment was Red Bull's Max Verstappen winning the first two races virtually unchallenged, continuing a winning phenomenon of the past two seasons. Well, Max didn't win the third race, the Australian Grand Prix, on March 24. In fact, he didn't even finish the race but retired the car when his right rear brake caught fire.
Why F1 viewership matters

Read more
How much do F1 drivers make?
Verstappen and Hamilton each likely earn more than $100 million
Max Verstappen driving a Red Bull F1 race car.

Do you mean they get money, too? During the Formula 1 racing season, F1 drivers travel to exotic locations, get treated like superstars, and drive incredibly fast cars to compete with some of the world's top drivers. They also get paid salaries estimated to start at $1 million per season and may earn a lot more in bonuses, prizes, endorsements, and sponsorships.

From the live event spectators' and TV viewers' perspectives, it may appear that F1 race car drivers lead glamorous lives, but the reality for even the best drivers is a relatively short career training, practicing, and performing under constant pressure. Aspiring F1 drivers start young, usually under 10, and focus on racing, hoping that by the time they reach the minimum F1 driving age of 18, an F1 team will want them. If a driver succeeds in getting a seat in an F1 race car, then the scrutiny of the intensely data-centric F1 world commences. F1 driver performance is measured in many ways, including salaries and overall income.
Why F1 driver salaries matter

Read more