Formula 1 racing has evolved from a sporting competition started in the 1940′s to a billion dollar truly international business. For the 2012 season 20 World Championship events are scheduled, each in a different country. These truly span the globe from US and Canada and Brazil, over to England, Spain, Germany, and France – to China, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, and of course The Indian Grand Prix.
In India, F1 racing has become a well followed sport that many Indians routinely wager on. The boom in popularity first started in 2007 when Indian businessmen Vijay Mallya and Michiel Mol purchased the Spyker F1 team for €88 million and renamed it Force India F1. India having a team helped draw attention to the sports two Indian drivers Karun Chandhok and Narain Karthikeya. With an Indian circuit added to the F1 schedule in 2011, and reappearing on the 2012 F1 Schedule, no doubt the sport’s popularity will only continue to grow.
On this page I’ll cover Formula 1 betting in detail. First, if you’re looking for a place to wager – I strongly suggest www.bet365.com. Here you’ll be welcomed with a 100% up to Rs. 2500 initial sign up bonus. While the free cash is nice, it’s not the primary reason to choose Bet365. At Bet365 Indians are allowed to register using their home address and can make deposits, wager and withdrawal in Indian Rupee. Bet365 also offers more F1 betting markets than any other site. If you’re not familiar with betting online, see our pages how to deposit and how to withdrawal for further advice.
Betting Formula 1
Online bookmakers offer far more opportunities for F1 betting than just who will the race. In fact, wagering first opens with qualifying markets. As you’re probably aware, the day before a race teams spend an hour competing to determine the next days starting positions. At online betting sites you can wager on qualifying times as well as who will win the Pole spot.
Come race time there are a lot of way to bet on Formula 1 and it’s also possible to select multiple drivers in a given race and still win both bets. These include wagering on head to head, matchups, podium finishers, top-6 and prop bets. For anyone serious about betting, while www.bet365.com is our top recommendation, you’ll want to shop odds at multiple sites. I’ve covered which sites are best in an article titled F1 Betting Sites.
Another F1 wagering option sports betting sites offer are future bets. These can be made on who will the World Drivers Championship and who will with the World Constructors Championship. With these bets there are many options, large vig, and long odds, so it is extremely important for even recreational bettors to shop odds. This will help increase your payouts greatly.
Race Winners: This is the simplest way to bet on F1 racing. Shop the odds at multiple online bookmakers and look for anything that appears to have significant value. From here you can research the bet further using Google search and visiting any of your favourite stat sites. If you decide to make a bet on the race winner, it’s a win or lose proposition. If your driver fails to win you lose the bet. If he wins you’ll be paid a handsome return.
Head to Head: The majority of betting sites offer head to head wagering. This is bet on which of two divers finishes better. (These odds are a huge help to savvy punters who are attempting to cap the market for the overall race).
Matchups: Similar to head to head, match up wagers pit several drivers together and your wager is on which will have the best finish.
Podium Bets: These are wagers one whether a driver will finish in the top three. The finish position of the driver you backed is irrelevant so long as he’s in the top 3, meaning third, second and first all payout the same odds. If he finishes fourth place or lower your bet is loss.
Winning Margin: This is a wager on how many seconds the winner will win by. At some betting sites this is a simple over under bet, while at others it is a multi-way market.
Formula One Futures Bets: Again as I already covered, these are wagers on who will in the Drivers Championship and who will win the Constructors Championship. As the season progresses the odds change.
Propositions Bets: Betting sites offer all sorts of F1 prop bets such as which driver will drop out first, and how many laps will the eventual winner lead for. Most of these have a very large juice making it tough to find value. As a result, unless you have a strong opinion, you’ll probably want to avoid F1 props.
F1 Betting Strategy
Formula 1 is one the tougher sports to handicap and therefore requires a ton of research to gain an advantage. In fact, some serious punters take it as far as breaking down minor little details such as tyre management. This probably too advanced for most of us, myself included. The things those of us without all day and week to research F1 most want to look at is starting position, past results, circuit characteristics and rule changes. From there we also want scour the web looking for any news related to team strategies and also check the weather report. With this information, as well as some simple math and time spent handicapping the market, we stand a good chance at finding bets that have positive expected value. Keeping in mind, it’s quite advanced for the casual punter, if you’re interested in learning more on this – see my page: how to handicap F1 races.
F1 Betting Tips
Although I can’t give you exact picks for the F1 Schedule, if you’re looking for quick advice that’s far less detailed than my article on F1 handicapping here are some bullet point tips.
- Avoid Steep Favourites – Too often you’ll find a situation such as 2011 Grand Prix Singapore where Sebastian Vettel was 5/6, Lewis Hamilton 7/2, Fernando Alonso 9/2, Jenson Button 15/2, Mark Webber 15/2 and everyone one else was 50/1 or greater, with most of them between 100/1 and 5000/1. As much as you want to avoid the favourites avoid the large underdogs as well – these steep dogs don’t win F1 race. Generally speaking if anyone is going to have value it will be 3rd, 4th or 5th favourite. Yes, that’s vague, but as a general rule of thumb it will be the case.
- Shop the Odds – No matter if you’re wagering the race winner, match ups, podium or anything else – shopping the odds at multiple betting sites is key. There’s an old saying that’s appeared on sports betting forums for years “I know far more winning price shoppers, than I do winning handicappers”.
- Focus on Head to Head – Top 6 is generally only available for lesser drivers, and Podium finish doesn’t have the best odds. If you really want to get good at F1 betting, Head to Head is absolutely the place to focus. It also has the lowest juice, so gaining an advantage here will be more profitable than with other types of wagers.