Arguably the biggest sport within auto racing, Formula One (F1) has found success and popularity in all corners of the world. Though it is predominantly more popular in Europe, the sport is gaining new fans on every other continent every single day (except maybe Antarctica but who knows). While watching the sport is an absolute rush, betting on it can make things a lot more exciting and potentially profitable if you know what you’re doing.
One of the biggest decisions that you must make when betting on F1 racing is where you’re going to bet. Your options used to only include a local casino or sportsbook (if you lived by one) or your cousin Vinny’s shady bookie friend who would break your legs if you didn’t pay. Thankfully, with the advancement of the internet, there are a ton more options for you to choose from that bring a whole lot more to the table.
We won’t hit you with all the benefits, but convenience, better bonuses and rewards, ease of use, the ability to line shop and the fact you don’t have to wear pants to bet if you don’t want to are just a few of the perks. These perks, however, can only be realized if you use a top-notch sportsbook to take your F1 betting action.
Sadly, finding the best of the best when it comes to online sportsbooks is no easy task. There are literally hundreds of options, and a lot of them may look great on the surface but are actually garbage. So how do you find the best options available to you? Well, you came to the right place.
We’ve put together a comprehensive guide to help you identify and get signed up at the best sportsbooks online that offer F1 racing action.
I’ve Got a Hot Tip! Get Me Betting NOW!
For a lot of you, this is probably only a quick pit stop on your way to make your first wager. Maybe you have a hot tip, or you’re just ready to get down on the action for today’s race. Either way, we wanted to lead off by giving you our top list of recommended F1 online betting sites. These sites are the most trustworthy, reliable, and offer the best action on Formula One racing.
Now, it’s important to note, sportsbooks can NEVER pay to be listed on our recommended list. They can NEVER pay us for better reviews or any favorable treatment. The only way that we allow sites to make this list (and stay there) is by providing an incredible product and an all-around awesome experience for customers. Period. End of story. No excuses. What good is a recommendation or a review if it’s really just an advertisement?
What’s Important in an F1 Betting Site
For those of you that aren’t in a hurry to get your bets in, we wanted to walk you through exactly how we came up with those recommendations and what criteria we deem the most important.
Trust and Integrity
If there were a pole position for important criterion when selecting a betting site, this would be the winner 100% of the time. The number one thing that you must look at when selecting a new site is the level of trust and integrity that the site offers. You HAVE to know that your money and your personal information are safe and secure from internal and external threats.
Figuring this information out is not always easy. Just because a site has gorgeous graphics and says they are on the up and up does not mean they are telling you the truth. You have to pop the hood and take a look at what the site is really working with. Specifically, we like to look at the following things to make our determination about a site’s trust and integrity:
Company History
- Management Team
- Industry Reputation
- Customer Complaints
- Licensing and Regulations
- Terms of Service
- Payment Processing Issues
We compile all of this information and anything else we can find to make our ruling on how much a site should be trusted. If there are ANY red flags/black flags/yellow flags, we immediately will discard the site as one that should be avoided. There are some areas that we will bend, but this is not one of them. You work too hard for your money to have it ever be at risk.
Betting Options
Since F1 is not considered one of the big four sports (basketball, baseball, football, and soccer), sometimes sites will only offer limited or even no action on F1 races. For this reason, it becomes incredibly important to find a site that offers adequate F1 betting options.
Particularly, we are looking for sites that offer betting action on all of the races and not just the bigger ones. We’re also looking for sites that offer more betting options than only your standard win bets.
Betting and Transaction Limits (Professional Bettors Only)
This guide would probably be considered complete without this note because it will probably not affect 99%+ of the people that are reading it. However, we always like to be fully complete in our reviews and guides, so we’re adding it anyways.
If you are a massive money bettor, you may want to make sure that the site’s betting limits and transactional limits are adequate for handling your action. Most sites (and the ones we recommend) already have very high limits that should be plenty for even the most serious of professional bettors.
Website and User Interface
Any good race fan knows that the track design is important for making a great race. If the drivers struggled to make it around or find their pit stalls, we would say that the track was terrible. This is the same when it comes to online sportsbooks offering F1 action.
We love speed. And we need to be able to place our bets quickly and in a simple to follow manner. While we may be stretching trying to make this analogy work, the point is still valid. The user interface of a site NEEDS to be well laid out, clean and set up with the end user (you) in mind.
The problem is that a lot of sites don’t put the time and resources into building out the user interface. This creates issues with placing bets, making mistakes, and the overall user experience. If it takes you 10 minutes to get a bet placed and you aren’t even sure if you made the correct one, you’re not going to have a great experience at all.
A good interface SHOULD be simple. Bets should be easy…information should be clear…the site should be easy to navigate. It baffles us why this is so hard sometimes, but it’s definitely important.
Different “Levels” of F1 Betting Sites
As we stated above, the number of bet types and number of races you can bet on are important when selecting a new online sportsbook to take your action. While online sportsbooks never “identify” themselves as being a certain “level” of F1 betting site, there are about three rough categories that they seem to fall into.
The first level or category are your sites that have the fewest betting options available. These sites will offer win bets only on only the biggest races of the season. Maybe just the Grand Prix of Monaco and that’s it. These sites usually aren’t the best if you want to place more than one or two bets per season on F1 racing.
The next level up is comprised of sites that offer win bets on most or all of the races during the season. These sites are great for casual bettors who don’t want to risk getting confused with any prop bets or other bet types. The final and top level sites are the all inclusive sites that offer every bet type under the sun. They’ll have win bets, prop bets, season long bets, Championship bets…you name it, they will have it.
With some sports, these top level sites can be overwhelming for new or unseasoned bettors. The good news with F1, though, is that there really aren’t THAT many different bet types that are confusing, so the all-inclusive sites really work well for bettors of all skill levels. You’ll see that all of our recommended sites fall into this category.