A Formula 1 weekend is a three-day build-up to roughly two hours of racing on Sunday. The schedule is the same almost everywhere, so once you know the shape of it you can follow any round on the calendar.
Practice and qualifying
A standard weekend opens with three free-practice sessions: FP1 and FP2 on Friday, FP3 on Saturday morning. These are for the teams: they run different fuel loads and tyre compounds to learn how the car behaves and lock in a setup. Lap times in practice rarely mean much on their own.
Saturday afternoon is qualifying, which sets the starting grid. It runs as a knockout over three segments. In Q1, all 22 cars run and the slowest seven are eliminated; they fill positions 16 to 22. The remaining 15 go to Q2, where the slowest five again drop out into positions 11 to 15. The final 10 contest Q3 to decide the front of the grid, with the fastest lap taking pole position.
Sprint weekends
Six rounds a season swap the format for a sprint weekend. There is only one practice session, FP1, followed by a separate Sprint Qualifying (SQ) that sets the grid for the Sprint, a short race of around 100 km with no mandatory pit stop. After the Sprint, normal qualifying runs to set the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix as usual. The order is FP1 → SQ → Sprint → Qualifying → Race, which packs two competitive grids and two results into one weekend.
The Grand Prix
The main event is Sunday’s race, run over a distance of about 305 km (the number of laps varies by circuit length) or a two-hour time limit, whichever comes first. Drivers score championship points based on where they finish, and most races require running at least two different tyre compounds, which is what makes pit strategy such a big part of the show.