History of Betting in F1

In 1998, a Peterborough man was out watching his son race karts. So, inspired by one of the other racers on the track, the father soon went into a local bet shop and placed £100 and £200 wagers that the then-13-year old boy he saw would go on to win a Formula One race by the time he was 23, and an F1 Championship by the time he was 25.

About 10 years later, the man was £165,000 richer, because that 13-year old boy just so happened to be Lewis Hamilton.

Stories like that are truly one-in-a-million and the odds of winning on F1 are small. Still, respectable amounts of money can be won on Formula One, making it one of the most popular sports to bet on in the world.

The Beginning

While it's hard to say when the first 'official' Formula One bets were accepted, money was probably being wagered on F1 back in the sport's infancy in the 1950s. Wagers back then were simpler and often didn't involve much more than predicting the winner of a race, a far cry from the near-infinite amount of betting options you can find at today's bet shops and online sportsbooks.

As the sport's appeal grew to a larger and larger audience over the decades, so too did the popularity of betting on it. The legalisation (or already-existing legality) of sports gambling in places like the UK, Monaco, and other nations that host Grand Prix races only added to the betting interests of F1 fans.

Betting on F1 Today

Today, Formula One is by far the most popular auto sport in the world. A popularity boom in the late 90s through the mid-2000s coincided perfectly with the rise of online sports betting with sports betting guides popping up everywhere. Although the sport has had some recent struggles with attracting fans to the tracks, F1 remains as convenient as ever to follow online.

Most major online sportsbooks now offer betting lines for every race of the season, and long gone are the days of only being able to wager on your predicted winner or constructor. Now from a variety of platforms you can wager on if you think a racer will finish in the top six, finish higher than a specific opponent (a 'race match' bet), or even on Mercedes versus the field. Many books even offer live betting, meaning the win probabilities for particular drivers and results will fluctuate throughout the race, sometimes resulting in tremendously valuable odds to jump on.

Predicting the Future

Fans in the grandstand.
Mexican Grand Prix, Saturday 29th October 2016. Mexico City, Mexico.

Formula One has not been immune to the data revolution that has swept through the sporting world over the past decade. Teams, fans, and punters alike all now have access to enormous amounts of info and statistics that wouldn't have been thought possible just years ago. This allows many to not only make a good amount of money betting on F1 online (and other sport), but enough for some to make it their full-time job.

Given the marketability of huge stars like Hamilton and the sheer amount of money involved in the sport today, we expect online F1 betting to only continue to grow, too. And as it does, so too will the technology allowing fans to find and wager on the next big star.

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