So You Became an F1 Fan. Time to Learn the Formula 1 Lore
10 F1 documentaries and series on Tubi for when watching the race is no longer enough.
You know the drivers. You know the teams. You’ve developed opinions about tire strategy you absolutely did not have six months ago. Then someone mentions Senna, Schumacher, or Hunt vs. Lauda and suddenly you realize: oh, there’s lore. A lot of Formula 1 lore.
Formula 1 is officially back from summer break, and the final Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort certainly made sure everyone was paying attention. Now the 2026 season rolls on toward Monza, which means there are plenty more races ahead and plenty of time to realize that knowing the current grid is only the beginning.
Luckily, Tubi has the study guide. From Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen to Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, and one of F1’s most legendary rivalries, these Tubi picks dig into the personalities and history that made Formula 1 what it is. Because eventually every casual F1 fan reaches the same stage: “Okay, wait. Explain the lore.”
The Fast Lane
Formula 1 has never existed solely between lights out and the checkered flag. The Fast Lane digs into the money, controversies, and personalities surrounding the sport, with episodes covering everyone from Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher to Sebastian Vettel, Nico Rosberg and a very young Max Verstappen. It even gets into celebrity appearances, driver relationships, and the famous Hamilton-Rosberg friendship-turned-rivalry.
That makes it a particularly fun entry point into Formula 1 history and paddock culture because it explains the context that lap charts can't. Knowing who won the race is one thing. Knowing the friendships, feuds, and history that make two drivers sharing a podium suddenly interesting is when watching F1 becomes a full-time hobby.
The Front Row
Once you've learned the drivers and the rivalries, The Front Row tackles another very important piece of Formula 1 lore: how F1 actually works. Across two seasons, the documentary series gets into driver training, Formula 1 superteams, pit stops, car design, track design, safety, the business of F1, and even what makes a great driver.
That range makes The Front Row especially useful for new Formula 1 fans who are ready to graduate from knowing who they're rooting for to understanding what's happening around them. Why does shaving tenths off a pit stop matter? How does an F1 team design a car within the rules while also looking for every possible advantage? Consider this the part of your F1 education where the technical jargon finally starts making sense.
Lewis Hamilton: The Winning Formula
Lewis Hamilton: The Winning Formula traces the career that took Hamilton from a young racing prodigy to seven-time Formula 1 world champion and one of the most recognizable athletes in the world. His records are part of the story, but so is the determination that made him such a dominant force across multiple eras of the sport.
Hamilton is also one of the clearest examples of F1 becoming bigger than F1. Racing made him famous, but fashion, activism, and celebrity status made him recognizable far beyond the paddock. If Lewis was the reason you started paying attention to Formula 1 in the first place, the documentary fills in exactly how he became the “Billion Dollar Man”.
F1 2023: Champion Becoming a Legend
There are dominant seasons, and then there is Max Verstappen's 2023 season. F1 2023: Champion Becoming a Legend revisits the year Verstappen secured his third consecutive Formula 1 world championship while Red Bull controlled the season, alongside storylines like Fernando Alonso's resurgence and Formula 1's splashy Las Vegas debut.
After a difficult final home race at Zandvoort, there’s something especially interesting about looking back at the season that helped cement Verstappen as the defining driver of his F1 generation. The documentary captures Max at the height of a historic run, when winning stopped feeling surprising and started feeling almost inevitable. Four world titles later, that 2023 season looks less like a hot streak and more like the making of an era.
The Ayrton Senna Story
Ayrton Senna's name still carries enormous weight in Formula 1 decades after his final race, and The Ayrton Senna Story gives newer fans an accessible way into why. The Ayrton Senna documentary follows the three-time world champion's career, extraordinary speed, and lasting legacy before his death at Imola in 1994.
Senna isn't simply a piece of F1 trivia you're expected to know. His driving, rivalries, and death shaped how generations of fans and drivers understood the sport. If you've heard his name referenced approximately 400 times since becoming an F1 fan, here's the context everyone assumed you already had.
Hunt vs Lauda: The Next Generation
One of Formula 1's most famous rivalries gets an unexpected sequel in Hunt vs. Lauda: The Next Generation. Decades after James Hunt and Niki Lauda’s legendary 1976 F1 championship battle, their sons Freddie Hunt and Mathias Lauda climb behind the wheel and revisit the competition that permanently linked their family names.
Rather than simply retelling 1976, the film explores what it's like to inherit a racing legacy that fans already know by heart. The fathers made the rivalry famous. Watching the sons reckon with that history gives one of F1's most repeated stories a much more personal second chapter.
1
Before Formula 1 became the technologically advanced sport we know today, racing at the highest level came with terrifyingly little margin for error. 1 looks back at Formula 1's dangerous early history, telling the stories of drivers who raced on the edge while pushing the sport toward the safety standards that eventually transformed it.
Narrated by Michael Fassbender and featuring F1 legends including Niki Lauda, Michael Schumacher, and Jackie Stewart, the documentary gives newer fans a much deeper understanding of what earlier generations of drivers were actually risking every time they climbed into the car. The old footage alone makes modern F1 safety feel considerably less like background technology and more like the hard-earned legacy it is.
Beyond Driven
Beyond Driven turns toward a part of Formula 1 and motorsport history that still feels unfinished: women trying to reach its highest levels. The documentary follows racers including Tatiana Calderón, Carmen Jordá, and Beitske Visser while examining the barriers women face building careers in an overwhelmingly male sport.
The F1 connection carries real weight. Lella Lombardi remains the only woman to score points in a Formula 1 World Championship race, meaning understanding the sport's history also requires asking why so few women have been given the opportunity to add their names to it. For newer fans wondering why the current grid still looks the way it does, Beyond Driven gives that question somewhere meaningful to go.
The Formula One Drivers
Want to understand how different Formula 1 used to be? The Formula One Drivers drops directly into the 1973 F1 season with Jackie Stewart, François Cevert, Peter Revson, Mike Hailwood, and a young Niki Lauda competing during one of the sport's most dangerous eras.
Seeing the cars, circuits, and risks of 1970s F1 makes modern racing look almost futuristic by comparison. But that's exactly what makes the documentary valuable: you can actually see the version of Formula 1 that produced so many of the legends, rivalries, and safety changes the sport still talks about today.
Michael Schumacher: The Red Baron
Before today's generation started rewriting Formula 1's record books, Michael Schumacher set the standard everyone else was chasing. Michael Schumacher: The Red Baron looks at the skill, discipline, and relentless competitiveness behind the seven-time F1 world champion's rise to the top.
More importantly, it helps explain why Schumacher and Ferrari are almost inseparable in F1 memory. His dominance in red defined an entire era of the sport and created records that once looked untouchable. If you've ever wondered why seeing a Ferrari at the front makes longtime fans start reminiscing, Schumacher is a very large part of the answer.