1992 Formula One World Championship

The 1992 Formula One World Championship was the 46th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 1992 Formula One World Championship for Drivers and the 1992 Formula One World Championship for Constructors, which were contested concurrently over a sixteen-race series that commenced on 1 March and ended on 8 November. Nigel Mansell, in what would prove to be his final full season in Formula One, won the Drivers' Championship and Williams-Renault won the Constructors' Championship.

Mansell won the first five races of the season and went on to become the first driver in Formula One history to win nine World Championship races in a single season. He sealed the championship at the Hungarian Grand Prix in mid-August, with five races still to run, becoming the first British driver to win the championship since James Hunt in 1976. Reigning champion Ayrton Senna won three races for McLaren-Honda but could only manage fourth in the championship, with Mansell's Williams teammate Riccardo Patrese finishing second and young Michael Schumacher third for Benetton-Ford.

This was the first season in which all teams had two regular drivers, a trend that has remained the same ever since. Although champion Mansell would start a combined six more Formula One Grands Prix across 1994 (with Williams) and 1995 (with McLaren), he would never contest a full F1 season again.

The following teams and drivers competed in the 1992 FIA Formula One World Championship. All teams competed with tyres supplied by Goodyear. This was the first season in which all teams ran two cars.

The season started off in South Africa at the newly rebuilt Kyalami circuit near the high altitude city of Johannesburg where Mansell took pole ahead of Senna, Berger, Patrese, Alesi and Schumacher. At the start, Patrese overtook both McLarens and Berger lost out to both Alesi and Schumacher as well. The order was: Mansell, Patrese, Senna, Alesi, Schumacher and Berger.

Mansell quickly pulled away from Patrese who was under no pressure at all from Senna. Brundle spun off on the first lap in the Benetton and then retired with a broken clutch. Alesi was well behind Senna and had a comfortable gap to Schumacher, whom Berger could do nothing about. The pit stops left the order unchanged, and it held until Alesi's engine failed on lap 41. Andrea de Cesaris was sixth and in the points for one lap until his engine failed as well.

Mansell won the race easily with Patrese making it a Williams 1–2 ahead of Senna, Schumacher, Berger and Johnny Herbert. Mansell had also won the previous South African Grand Prix, held in 1985, in a Williams-Honda.

The cancellation of the United States Grand Prix on a street circuit in Phoenix, Arizona, originally scheduled for 15 March left a 3-week gap between the first two races, and there was some controversy surrounding the next race in Mexico: the venue for this race, the Hermanos Rodríguez Autodrome in Mexico City (an even higher altitude city) had an appallingly bumpy track surface, thanks to the circuit being located on a geologically active area. It also had a dauntingly fast final corner called the Peraltada which was 180 degrees and banked. Although the banking had been eased from the previous year, making the corner slightly slower, the bumps were still disastrous as Ayrton Senna hit a nasty bump in the Esses and crashed into a concrete wall, receiving severe bruising. He was cleared fit enough to race.