F1’s 10 longest-running teams – and why most of them have been lost

As the most popular sport on the planet, soccer has many established clubs whose histories span far more than a century.

From Notts County, Glasgow Rangers or even Wrexham, fans of many European domestic clubs can trace their team’s unbroken lineage back to the 1800s in a lot of cases.

The same cannot be said for Formula 1. Not just because the world championship itself only officially began in 1950, but because not a single one of the entities who participated in that first race at Silverstone all those years ago remains active in the sport today.

Instead, F1 teams have much more in common with the franchises that comprise the major North American sports like the NFL, NBA and MLB. There, teams regularly change identity or even move from the cities they’ve called home for decades, relocating thousands of miles away in some cases.

But that does not mean that there are not teams on the current grid with decades of heritage and storied histories in the sport. In fact, several of the longest-running teams in the sport’s history are still active on the grid today.

Tracking the teams that have enjoyed the most sustained time in Formula 1, there are some surprising names that appear. It is also partly a subjective exercise.

Even the likes of Ferrari, the only team to have competed in every season of the world championship, did not take part in every race. Some teams entered only a handful of a races over several years before becoming regular entrants. Others have come and gone, such as Honda, Renault and Sauber.

The following 10 teams had the longest periods of unbroken competition under the same identity in Formula 1, as of the end of last season, based on whether they started at least half of the races in a championship.

10. BRM – May 18th 1958-Sept 7th 1975 (17 years, 116 days)

The tale of BRM – British Racing Motors – is a complicated one. Formula 1’s first British team first competed in a 1951, racing in the British and Italian grands prix, with BRM constructed cars also racing in 1956 and 1957.

But from the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix to the penultimate grand prix of 1975 in Monza, at least one BRM car was entered in at least one round of the world championship – aside from the Indianapolis 500s that counted. BRM cars were entered in a handful of one-off grands prix after 1975, however, this was their longest continuous stretch, allowing them to just squeeze inside the top ten.

BRM took 17 grand prix victories in their extensive stint in the sport, the majority of which with Graham Hill at the wheel. Hill and BRM took both championships in 1962 – the only year in which they would win the constructors’ title.

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9. Red Bull – March 6th 2005-present (18 years, 328 days)

The current world champions and one of the most dominant and successful forces the sport has ever seen, Red Bull Racing embark on their 20th season this year. With 369 grands prix participations, Red Bull also sit ninth for the most races by a team in history.

After Ford purchased the Stewart team and transformed them into Jaguar for the 2000 season, the team never achieved the level of success their owners had hoped for. Pulling out at the end of 2004, the Milton Keynes-based squad were at risk of disappearing off the grid entirely. However, Red Bull bought the team to turn them into Red Bull Racing – and one of the sport’s most successful teams was born.

Over their 19 seasons in the sport, Red Bull have won the constructors’ championship six times, with Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen winning seven drivers titles between them. Red Bull’s 2023 campaign was the most dominant the series has ever seen, winning all but one of the 22 grands prix, while Verstappen set all-time records that may never be matched.

8. Minardi – April 7th 1985-Oct 16th 2005 (20 years, 197 days)

Minardi’s final team principal, Paul Stoddart, famously once described the plucky Italian underdogs as “everyone’s second-favourite team”. And with how many fans still hold such a fondness for the Minardi name almost 20 years after it left the sport, it seems he was right.

Founded by Giancarlo Minardi in the mid-eighties, the Minardi team spent their entire existence in the sport punching above their weight. With one of the smallest budgets and modest set of resources on the grid, Minardi were almost always towards the back of the grid, never finishing higher than seventh in the constructors’ championship and only scoring a single point in the six seasons between 1996 and 2001.

Stoddart purchased the team in 2000, but kept the Minardi name. Five years later he sold up to Red Bull, which transformed it into their second team, Toro Rosso. It has changed names twice since then, first to AlphaTauri and now RB. Starting the F1 careers of drivers like Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber, Giancarlo Fisichella and more, Minardi may never have taken wins or even podiums, but they contributed more to the sport than the vast majority of teams ever have.

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7. Ligier – Jan 25th 1976-Oct 13th 1996 (20 years, 267 days)

The longest continuously-running French Formula 1 team, the Ligier name has a very strong history in the sport. Although never constructors’ champions, they took nine grand prix victories in 326 races and a total of 50 podium finishes.

Ligier’s best season came in 1980, when the team finished a distant second in the championship to Williams thanks to the efforts of drivers Didier Pironi and Jacques Laffite, who took a win each in Belgium and Germany, respectively. But by the late eighties, Ligier were struggling to score any points at all.

The team picked up in the early nineties to become a solid midfield outfit once again – not too dissimilar to Alpine today. However, following the 1996 season, in which Olivier Panis took the team’s final victory during an infamously wet Monaco Grand Prix, four-times world champion Alain Prost bought Ligier to transform it into his own team. However it folded before the start of the 2002 season.

• 1996 Monaco Grand Prix: Panis scores Ligier’s final win as three cars stagger to the flag

6. Tyrrell – Sept 20th 1970-Nov 1st 1998 (28 years, 49 days)

Among the most famous race team founders in Formula 1 – Ferrari, Williams, McLaren – Tyrrell sits comfortably in that illustrious company. The team of Ken Tyrrell technically entered Formula in the late sixties as Matra, having an immediate impact when the Tyrrell-ran Matra team won the world championship with Jackie Stewart in 1969 with six wins from 11 grands prix that year.

For 1970, Tyrrell became the official entrant for the team with the debut of the Tyrrell 001 for the final three rounds. The team won the championship in their ‘first’ full season in 1971, Stewart’s second world title. But although they remained contenders throughout the seventies, with Stewart winning his third title in 1973, they never won the constructors title again.

Tyrrell won their final grand prix in Detroit in 1983 with Michele Alboreto, but by the time the nineties rolled around, occasional podiums was as good as it got for the previous world champions. In 1997, Tyrrell sold his team to Craig Pollock, paving the way for the debut of the British American Racing team for the 1999 season – the entity that would ultimately go on to become the Mercedes team today.

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5. Brabham – Oct 7th 1962-August 16th 1992 (29 years, 320 days)

Back in the early sixties, then-two times world champion Jack Brabham left the Cooper team which he had won both title with to enter into Formula 1 with his own team. The Brabham Racing Organisation first entered in the 1962 German Grand Prix and then the final two rounds of that year in the USA and South Africa, eventually competing continuously in the sport over the next three decades.

Brabham became the first and only world champion ever to take the title driving a car his own team built in 1966, powered by a Repco engine. But even once the team’s founder had ceased racing in Formula 1, the team he created continued to keep winning races.

Although Brabham only won the constructors’ championship twice in 1966 and ’67, they were a top three constructor on eight further occasions. Bernie Ecclestone purchased the team in 1970 but kept the Brabham name. By the time Ecclestone sold the team in the late eighties, Brabham was floundering team. The team was forced to wind up its racing operations in 1992 due to financial reasons after almost 400 grands prix of participation.

4. Lotus – May 18th 1958-Nov 13th 1994 (36 years, 188 days)

One of the most famous names in Formula 1 history, Lotus were, at times, one of the most imposing teams ever to race at grand prix level. Their seven constructors’ titles, 81 grand prix victories and over 100 pole positions still makes them one of the most successful entities ever to compete in F1.

First competing in the second round of the 1958 season in Monaco, Team Lotus became one of the most formidable teams of the next decade. Under the leadership of Colin Chapman, the team would win six drivers’ championship titles between 1963 and 1978 as well as taking the constructors crown seven times.

By the eighties, Lotus began to follow a similar story to many other teams on this list. The team faded out of the championship picture and fell into a gradual downward spiral. With financial problems mounting up, the team fell int administration in 1994, bringing their 36 year history in Formula 1 to an end.

The Lotus name returned to the grid in 2010 with a new team, but a messy legal row over the rights to the title resulted in that team being renamed to Caterham, with the Lotus name instead being adopted by the then-Renault team. The 2015 season was the last time the Lotus name featured on the grid, as Renault revived its factory team the following year.

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3. Williams – January 12th 1975-present (49 years, 18 days)

The top three on this list are all teams who will again line up on the grid in Bahrain in just 33 days’ time. The first is Williams – a team who have been fighting to try and return to the same level of success they enjoyed decades ago.

Frank Williams first entered cars into world championship races in the late sixties, running Brabham built cars. The first Williams built car was not even that of Williams Grand Prix Engineering, but of Frank Williams Racing Cars in 1973 and 1974, which ran Iso Rivolta chassis. The team’s first designed car, the FW01, ran in the 1975 season, before Williams Grand Prix Engineering was formed and first entered in 1977, starting the continuous run in the sport that is still ongoing today.

Over almost half a century since then, Williams reached the top of the mountain in Formula 1 on multiple occasions, taking the likes of Alan Jones, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill to world championship titles. Their over 100 grand prix victories placed them third overall by the end of the 1997 season, behind only McLaren and Ferrari.

Once again, the team fell into mediocrity in the 2010s, until US company Dorilton Capital purchased the team in 2020. Under new ownership but with the Williams name and Grove factory intact, the team continues to race today and had their best season since 2017 last year, finishing seventh in the championship.

2. McLaren – May 22st 1966-present (57 years, 252 days)

Founded by New Zealand racer and grand prix winner Bruce McLaren in the mid sixties, McLaren have evolved a long way from that plucky ‘garagiste’ team from their early days. But in that time, the team have gone onto become one of the most iconic in the sport’s history.

Racing for the first time in the world championship in the 1966 Monaco Grand Prix, McLaren continued following the tragic testing accident in 1970 that killed its founder to achieve eight constructors’ championship titles – all of which coming before the turn of the millennium. The list of drivers who won drivers’ titles in McLarens feature some of the very best of the very best – Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Mika Hakkinen and Lewis Hamilton.

From the highs of their dominance in the late eighties under the leadership of Ron Dennis to the lows of their troubled recoupling with Honda in the mid-2010s, McLaren have enjoyed a recent resurgence under CEO Zak Brown. Last year, they had one of their best seasons for many years with new team principal Andrea Stella and young drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri – both of which know the team they race for can trace its driver history all the way back to McLaren himself.

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1. Ferrari – May 21st 1950-present (73 years, 273 days)

Unsurprisingly, Formula 1’s most famous and historically successful team is also the one whose history runs almost as long as the start of the world championship itself. In fact, of all the grands prix Ferrari have competed in, the only one in which they have not entered – outside of the Indianapolis 500 – was the very first grand prix at Silverstone in 1950.

Named after founder Enzo Ferrari, Formula 1 has been central to Ferrari’s brand identity from the very start. No other team has competed in as many grands prix, won as many races, taken as many pole positions or won as many championships as Ferrari.

The only team to have started over 1,000 world championship rounds, Ferrari’s history is that of Formula 1 itself. Every regulation change or power unit formula, Ferrari have produced cars for. Every circuit the world championship has raced on, Ferrari have too.

The Prancing Horse may have been without a drivers’ champion since Kimi Raikkonen in 2007 or without a constructors’ title since 2008, but they remain contenders at the front of the field, being the only team to prevent Red Bull from a perfect season of victories in 2023. With over 70 years of history, no team can boast a heritage in Formula 1 quite like Ferrari.

More of F1’s longest-running teams

Benetton (15 years, 209 days) and Jordan (14 years, 224 days) changed owners too soon to make this list. Toro Rosso (13 years, 267 days) simply changed identities – it became AlphaTauri and has just been rebranded again, as RB.

Other current teams have spent longer periods in the sport if their previous appearances were included. These include Mercedes, who at the end of last season had been in F1 for 13 years, 246 days continuously as a full constructor, but also competed in 1954-55.

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