Motorsport is the part of the site where the table is the sport. There is no league to win on a Saturday: there is a number that grows over a year and a calendar that says when it next changes. Formula 1 gets a schedule and a standings page, while NASCAR and IndyCar have calendars with their race winners. All of it comes from ESPN's public data feed.
Reading the race calendar
The schedule opens on Formula 1. Buttons above the list switch the series: Formula 1, NASCAR Cup, IndyCar, NASCAR Xfinity and NASCAR Trucks. Each one is its own calendar, because mixing them would invent a championship that does not exist. Three counters give the number of races in the chosen series, the number of series and the number of months the season spans, and the bar above the list adds how many of the races are done.
Races are grouped by month. A row shows the dates (UTC dates, and a Formula 1 weekend runs from Friday to Sunday), the name of the race, a line for the venue when the data feed supplies one, and, once the race has been run, a Winner label with the name. A race that was called off is left out of the list. The calendar names the winner of each race; the points those results produce are on the standings page.
The two championship tables
The standings page has two tables, Driver Standings and Constructor Standings. Each row gives the rank, the name and the points, in a column headed Pts, and both tables update after each race weekend, with sprint points included. They list every driver and team the data feed carries, so the bottom rows read 0 until a driver or team scores. NASCAR and IndyCar have no standings table here, only their calendars.
Points are the whole story, so the useful way to read the tables is to compare the gap with what is left to win. The scale is the same for every driver:
| Finishing position | Grand Prix | Sprint |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | 25 | 8 |
| 2nd | 18 | 7 |
| 3rd | 15 | 6 |
| 4th | 12 | 5 |
| 5th | 10 | 4 |
| 6th | 8 | 3 |
| 7th | 6 | 2 |
| 8th | 4 | 1 |
| 9th | 2 | 0 |
| 10th | 1 | 0 |
The bonus point for the fastest lap was dropped from 2025, so only finishing positions score. A driver can therefore add at most 25 points for a Grand Prix win and 8 for a sprint win, and with a given number of races left the most anyone can still collect is 25 times the Grands Prix plus 8 times the sprints. If the leader's lead over the next driver is bigger than that, the title is decided whatever happens in the races that remain.
A worked example: with three Grands Prix and one sprint left, the most a driver can add is 3 x 25 + 8 = 83 points, so a lead of 84 or more is enough to be champion. The same arithmetic works for the constructors' table, where the ceiling is higher because a team has two cars scoring in every race.
How a race weekend is built
A standard weekend has three practice sessions, two on Friday and one on Saturday, then qualifying later on Saturday in three parts called Q1, Q2 and Q3. The slowest drivers are knocked out after Q1 and again after Q2, and the ten who remain fight for pole in Q3. With 20 cars, five drivers were eliminated in each of the first two parts; with 22 cars it is six. The race is the smallest number of full laps that exceeds 305 km (260 km at Monaco), and it generally lasts up to two hours.
On a sprint weekend the schedule changes. Friday has one practice session and Sprint Qualifying, and Saturday starts with the sprint, a race of about 100 km that pays points to the top eight finishers, followed by qualifying for the Grand Prix. Sunday's race and its points are unchanged. The schedule page shows a weekend as one row and does not list the sessions.
Constructors, tiebreaks and clinching a title
A team's total in the constructors' table is the sum of the points scored by both of its cars across the season. A team may use up to four drivers in a year, and all of their points count. If two drivers finish level on points, the one with more wins ranks higher, then the one with more second places, and so on down the order. A title is clinched when the lead is bigger than the points still available, which is the check described above.
Related reading
- What winning an F1 title costs: how many points a championship takes, season by season.
- F1 sprint results: every sprint winner since 2021, and whether sprint points ever decided a title.
- How often pole position wins: the win rate from pole, by season and by circuit.
The motorsport blog holds the rest. Nothing on these pages is simulated or predicted, because a calendar and a points table are records. How the simulators work for the leagues that have one is explained on the methodology page.
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