F1 – Who is winning online?

I've been tracking conversation about the exciting F1 2011 season and the results are rather interesting. Amongst consumers the biggest online hype surrounded McLaren-Mercedes’s Jensen Button. Prior to the Singapore night race, Button was who most fans were betting on to take the number one spot on the Singaporean podium. 

 

This specific track had previously been dominated by Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, who won the Singapore Grand Prix in 2008 and 2010. He seemed rather optimistic to gain his third Singaporean win, when interviewed prior to the race. Alonso is certainly a favourite and many are backing him out of loyalty but failing to secure a top-three position at last week’s Singapore Grand Prix has left him in Vettel’s dust. 

 

BrandsEye extracted relevant information to show significant online trends within this season’s F1 Championship. The general online consensus illustrates that although most people are incredibly impressed by the young Vettel’s performance this season many remain loyal fans and are backing their driver’s and their respective teams to the very end (possibly in denial of the inevitable). 

 

Formula 1 reaches a vast international audience with a conversation distribution mostly coming from the USA (34%), followed by Italy (20%), the United Kingdom (16%) and the Netherlands (8%), with France, Brazil, Germany and Singapore following close behind. 

 

On the social media front, Twitter dominates with 10% of online conversation; which explains why 68% of online conversation comes from consumers, of which English (69%), Italian (23%) and Spanish (3%) are the predominant languages.

 

The drivers most talked about so far are Jensen Button, with mostly positive sentiment, and McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, with Hamilton receiving much disappointing online conversation by saddened fans. These two drivers, together with Alonso and Webber, would have to pull out all the stops to prevent Vettel from achieving the one point needed to secure the F1 World Championship 2011 title. A form of collusion I would suggest! 

 

The Japanese Grand Prix is up next and fans bite their nails in anticipation to see who will achieve pole position and who will truly manages to give Vettel a run for his money. All online bets are on Jensen Button, who is under tremendous pressure to win the remaining 5 races in order to take the title and deprive Vettel of that final point. And let’s not overlook the superb engineering under the Ferrari hood to produce a stellar performance and create possible uproar.

 

 Whether these drivers can pull amazing tricks out of their suits to overthrow Vettel remains to be seen, all eyes are on Button!