Formula One will celebrate its 1,000th world championship race this weekend at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, one of the sport’s newer tracks, but the milestone requires careful wording.

The sport has often had a problem with anniversaries and this one is no exception.

The fact is that some of the 999 championship races have been questionable grands prix and several past race winners didn’t drive an F1 car.

From 1950 to 1960, 11 editions of the Indianapolis 500 were included as part of the championship even if very few F1 drivers crossed the Atlantic to compete as homegrown racers took all the points and raced to their own rules.

Bill Vukovich finished seventh in the 1953 F1 championship, and sixth in 1954, after winning the Indy 500 in those years but racing in no other rounds.

His death in the 1955 Indy technically made him the first driver to be killed while competing in an F1 championship race.

Yet Vukovich never drove an F1 car.

In 1952 and 1953 the world championship was run to Formula Two rules because there were not enough F1 cars to fill the grid after Alfa Romeo pulled out.

That means that 26 races included in the championship tally since the first at Silverstone in 1950 did not actually feature F1 cars.

Hungarian driver Ferenc Szisz is generally regarded as the first winner of a grand prix, at Le Mans in 1906, while the Monaco GP, glamour race of the current calendar, dates back to 1929.

Silverstone, in central England, hosted grands prix in 1948 and 1949 before Giuseppe ‘Nino’ Farina won the first F1 world championship race there on May 13, 1950.

Calling China the 1,000th F1 race would be similarly inaccurate since there have been numerous non-championship F1 races staged down the decades.

The last was at Brands Hatch in 1983 when reigning world champion Keke Rosberg stood on top of a podium that featured American Danny Sullivan and Australia’s 1980 F1 champion Alan Jones.

While it is often stated that only two women have raced in the F1 world championship, South African Desire Wilson won a round of the British F1 championship in a Wolf at Brands Hatch in 1980.

So the Chinese GP in 2019 will be the 1,000th race to count towards the official FIA drivers’ world championship standings?

More accurate perhaps, if not exactly catchy.