Formula 1
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Although most drivers earn their seat on ability, commercial considerations also come into play with teams having to satisfy sponsors and suppliers. Most teams also have a spare driver, whom they bring to race weekends, in case of injury or illness to a main driver. All competitors must be in possession of a FIA Super Licence.
Each driver is assigned a number. The previous season's champion is designated number 1, with his team-mate given number 2. Numbers are then assigned in order according to each team's position in the previous season's constructors' championship. The number 13 is not used.
There have been exceptions to this rule, such as in 1993 and 1994, when the current World Drivers' Champion (Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost, respectively) was no longer competing in Formula One. In this case the drivers for the team of the
previous year's champion are given numbers 0 (Damon Hill, on both occasions) and 2 (Prost himself and Ayrton Senna—replaced after his death by David Coulthard and occasionally Nigel Mansell–respectively). The number 13 has not been used since 1976, before which it was occasionally assigned at the discretion of individual race organisers. Before 1996, only the world championship winning driver and his team generally swapped numbers with the previous champion–the remainder held their numbers from prior years, as they had been originally set at the start of the 1974 season. For many years, for example, Ferrari held numbers 27 and 28, regardless of their finishing position in the world championship.
Jochen Rindt is the only posthumous World Champion after his points total was not overhauled despite his fatal accident at the 1970 Italian Grand Prix.
Michael Schumacher holds the record for having won the most Drivers' Championships, with seven.
Feeder series
Most F1 drivers start in kart racing competitions, and then come up through traditional European single seater series like Formula Ford and Formula Renault to Formula 3, and finally the GP2 Series. GP2 started in 2005, replacing Formula 3000, which itself had replaced Formula Two as the last major "stepping stone" into F1. Most champions from this level graduate into F1, but 2006 GP2 champion Lewis Hamilton became the first F2, F3000 or GP2 champion to win the Formula One driver's title in 2008. Drivers are not required to have competed at this
When required, the safety car (above, driven by Bernd Mayländer) will lead the field around the circuit at reduced speed, until race officials deem the race safe to continue.