Formula 1 Top 10 – March 2019

Top Formula 1 Drivers With the Highest Social Interactions Among Fans

The 2019 Formula One World Championship season kicked off in March with two races complete and the 1000th World Championship race coming up in China this weekend. This F1 season also features the youngest ever line up of drivers since the championship began in 1950. Hookit’s March rankings for Top 10 F1 drivers features an equal number of up-and-coming and experienced drivers, such as current F1 leader Valtteri Bottas and 2018 champion Lewis Hamilton, along with  younger drivers such as Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen. One more interesting thing of note was that both the competing drivers from Scuderia Ferrari, Red Bull Racing, Mercedes AMG Petronas Racing and McLaren occupied spots among the top 10 by social media interactions.  

Key Insights

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari’s prodigy, takes the number one spot

Competing in his second F1 season, Charles Leclerc is already making waves with his performance on track. He might have placed 5th at the Australian Grand Prix and missed his maiden GP title at Bahrain, but he gets the top spot this month on social media with 2.5M interactions. He gained the most new followers (381k) on social media for March, an impressive 46% increase in new followers across his social channels. With 2.3M interactions from 109 social media posts, second placed Red Bull driver Max Verstappen was not too far behind by social media interactions, but Leclerc secured the top spot with just one-third the quantity of social media posts (38 posts) as Verstappen.

Instagram was the primary driver of interactions – 96% of interactions for Leclerc were from Instagram, followed by Twitter (130k social media interactions).

Max Verstappen gets podium position on and off the track

Max Verstappen rose to fame in 2016 as the youngest driver to win a grand prix when he was 18 years old. With a podium finish at the Australian GP and 4th place at Bahrain last month, he is still a significant presence on the track. In March, he had 2.3M interactions across his social channels, 87% of which was primarily driven through Instagram. He also has 3.7M social media followers, the second highest number of social media followers for an F1 driver. His instagram post featuring the podium finish at Australian GP had the highest number of interactions in March.

2018 World Champion Lewis Hamilton catching up fast

Widely considered one of the best drivers of this generation, Lewis Hamilton now has two podium finishes in 2019 and is well on his way to becoming the World Champion again. In March, he had 750k interactions across his social channels, primarily through Twitter. His huge fan base on the track also follow him on social media – he has over 10M social media followers, which is 40% more followers than the other top 5 drivers combined.

Social media standings

With 4 podium finishes, Mercedes may lead the constructors standings on track, but with 3M combined social media interactions of its drivers, Ferrari dominates the social media rankings. Red Bull Racing is second with combined driver interactions of 2.7M, followed by Mercedes AMG Petronas racing with 2.1M interactions on social media. However, Mercedes drivers lead in social media followers (12.6M combined followers) followed by Red Bull Racing (4.3M combined followers).

Note: All data is from official Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram Business accounts. Any personal Instagram account data is not included in these rankings.
 

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