How to Build a Drivers' Championship Standings Table

✅ Included in All Plans

The standings endpoints are included at no additional cost.

Plans differ only in leagues and API call limits.

Compare plans →

This guide shows you how to retrieve driver standings for a season and shape the response into a ranked championship table.

When to use this

Use the driver standings endpoints when you want to:

• Display a live or historical drivers' championship table

• Show a driver's current position and points total

• Build a comparison view between drivers across a season

How to retrieve the data

Use the GET Driver Standings by Season ID endpoint to fetch all driver standings for a specific season:

GET https://api.sportmonks.com/v3/motorsport/standings/drivers/seasons/{season_id}
?api_token={your_token}

To enrich the response with driver details, add the participant include:

GET https://api.sportmonks.com/v3/motorsport/standings/drivers/seasons/{season_id}
?api_token={your_token}&include=participant

The participant include returns the driver entity directly on each standing object, so you do not need a second request to resolve driver names or images.

You can go one level deeper to include the driver's nationality:

GET https://api.sportmonks.com/v3/motorsport/standings/drivers/seasons/{season_id}
?api_token={your_token}&include=participant.country

The maximum include depth on this endpoint is 2.

Working with the data

Each object in the data array represents one driver's standing for the season:

{
  "id": 253776,
  "participant_id": 37920805,
  "sport_id": 2,
  "league_id": 3468,
  "season_id": 25273,
  "stage_id": 77476104,
  "position": 1,
  "points": 234,
  "participant": {
    "id": 37920805,
    "display_name": "Oscar Piastri",
    "image_path": "https://cdn.sportmonks.com/..."
  }
}

To render a sorted standings table, sort the array by position ascending:

const API_TOKEN = 'your_token';
const SEASON_ID = 25273;

const response = await fetch(
  `https://api.sportmonks.com/v3/motorsport/standings/drivers/seasons/${SEASON_ID}?api_token=${API_TOKEN}&include=participant`
);
const { data } = await response.json();

// Sort by position in case the API returns entries out of order
const sorted = data.sort((a, b) => a.position - b.position);

// Calculate the gap to the leader
const leaderPoints = sorted[0].points;

const table = sorted.map(entry => ({
  position: entry.position,
  driver: entry.participant.display_name,
  points: entry.points,
  gap: entry.points === leaderPoints ? '-' : `+${leaderPoints - entry.points}`
}));

console.table(table);

Common pitfalls

The response is not always ordered by position. The API does not guarantee position-ascending order. Always sort by position in your application before rendering.

participant_id refers to a driver, not a team. On the driver standings endpoints, participant_id resolves to the Driver entity. Use the participant include rather than making a separate request to the drivers endpoint.

result, group_id, round_id, and standing_rule_id are not used in the Motorsport API. You can safely ignore these fields in your data model.

Advanced usage

To display standings mid-season and show how they changed after the last race, store a snapshot of the previous response and compare position values between snapshots to calculate position changes.

To display standings for a historical season, simply change the season_id in the URL. Use the GET All Seasons endpoint (/v3/motorsport/seasons) to find the ID for a specific year.

Common errors

Status	Likely cause
401	Missing or invalid api_token
404	The season_id does not exist in the Motorsport API
429	Rate limit exceeded for your plan

See Also

Standings endpoints

• GET All Driver Standings

• GET Driver Standings by Season ID

Related entities

• Standing

• Driver

• Season

Related guides

• How to Build a Constructors' Championship Standings Table

FAQ

Which season ID should I use for the current Formula 1 season? Use the GET All Seasons endpoint to retrieve all available seasons and their IDs. The is_current field on each season object indicates the active season.

Can I retrieve standings for a single driver only? No. The standings endpoint returns all drivers for the given season. Filter the response client-side by participant_id if you only need one driver's entry.

Does the standings data update in real time during a race? Standings update after each race concludes, not lap by lap. For live race positions, use the livescores endpoint with the results or lineups.details includes.