In Formula One racing, the terms "constructor" and "entrant" have specific and differing meanings. An entrant is the person or corporate entity that registers a car and driver for a race, and is then responsible for preparing and maintaining that car during the race weekend. As a result of this preparation role and active involvement in the running of the race, the term "team" has become commonly applied to an entrant organisation.
Under Article 6.3 of the FIA Sporting Regulations, "A constructor is the person (including any corporate or unincorporated body) which designs the Listed Parts set out in Appendix 6." These "listed parts" include the survival cell, the front impact structure, the roll structures and bodywork. If the chassis and engine are made by different entities, the constructor comprises both, with the name of the chassis constructor being placed before that of the engine constructor. As both chassis and engine are included in the constructor name, chassis run with different engines are counted as two separate constructors and score points separately. This occurred for the last time in the 1985 season when the Tyrrell team ran their chassis powered by both Ford and Renault engines, scoring points with both and finishing 9th as Tyrrell-Ford and 10th as Tyrrell-Renault in the World Constructors' Championship.
Under article 6.2 of the FIA sporting regulations, "The title of Formula One World Champion Constructor will be awarded to the competitor which has scored the highest number of points." From the inaugural season of the World Constructors' Championship in 1958 up until the 1978 season, only the highest-scoring driver in each race for each constructor contributed points towards the championship. Since the 1979 season, points from all cars entered by each constructor have counted towards their championship total.
Ferrari holds the record for the most Constructors' Championships won with sixteen. Ferrari also holds the record for the most wins by a constructor with 248, the most pole positions with 254, the most points with 10869, and the most podiums with 840. Ferrari has also entered more Grands Prix than any other constructor with 1129 entries and maintains the record for the most Grand Prix starts with 1127.
As of the 2026 Canadian Grand Prix, there have been 174 Formula One constructors who have raced at least one of the 1,154 FIA World Championship races since the first such event, the 1950 British Grand Prix. The most recent constructors to make their debut were Audi and Cadillac, who debuted at the 2026 Australian Grand Prix.
The FIA's International Sporting Code states that teams competing in the FIA Formula One World Championship shall compete under the nationality of their parent National Automobile Club that issued their FIA racing licence. On the basis of this regulation, despite the fact that most current teams are based in the UK, only the teams licensed by the British National Sporting Authority - Aston Martin, Williams, and McLaren - represent Great Britain in Formula One.
Teams take the nationality of their parent National Automobile Club that issued their licence for the period of validity of that licence, and a change of nationality is allowed. Several teams changed their nationality during their competition in Formula One, some of them even twice. For example, Shadow changed in 1976 from American to British, Benetton in 1996 from British to Italian, Red Bull in 2007 from British to Austrian, and Renault in 2011 from French to British and in 2016 back to French. At the 1997 German Grand Prix, Benetton became the only team to have achieved victories while racing under two nationalities.
Before the arrival of sponsorship liveries in the 1968 season, the team's nationality also determined the colour of a car entered by the team. Italian teams' cars were rosso corsa red, French were bleu de France blue, and British were British racing green, with several exceptions. Since the licence is given to a team and not to a constructor, privateer teams entering cars built by constructors from another country before the 1968 season painted cars in the national colour of their home country.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.