Digital GP: Verstappen and Red Bull left in the dust on social media

Posted 24 November 2023

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While Lewis Hamilton has more followers, Charles Leclerc and Ferrari show performances that place them as the best digital work of the year

With 20 victories in 21 races – 18 by Max Verstappen and two by Sergio Perez – Oracle Red Bull Racing dominated the 2023 Formula 1 season. However, this dominance seen on the tracks is not reproduced in the digital world. With 273 million interactions on its official Instagram page in 2023, the Austrian team is only the 3rd with the best digital performance, behind Scuderia Ferrari and Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team.

The same also happens when we analyze the Drivers’ World Championship digitally. While Max Verstappen has almost three times as many points as Monegasque Charles Leclerc – 2.92x more points to be exact – in the digital world, the Ferrari driver performs 2.58 times better, with 106.2 million interactions on his official account on Instagram, against 41.1 million from the Dutch, who has even shown himself to be averse to innovations. An example is his recent criticism of the documentary Drive to Survive, produced by Netflix, which presented the “Formula 1 circus” in a new way to an audience with different preconceptions about the sport.

Despite these criticisms and a more, let’s say, conservative profile of the Dutchman – son-in-law of Brazilian Nelson Piquet, three-time champion of the sport in the 80s – the difference between Leclerc and Verstappen until November 21st, the day this material was produced, was just three posts. This indicates that Max, despite being averse to modernity, does not present discrepant behavior in the digital work strategy of his individual brand.

Lewis Hamilton is the most followed

With 35.4 million followers, Lewis Hamilton is the driver with the largest number of followers, far surpassing all his competitors.

To give you an idea, the closest to the Englishman is Charles Leclerc, who has 13.1 million followers on Instagram.

In 2023 alone, Hamilton shows a 14% growth in followers, despite not having won a single race this season. In total, there are 4.4 million new followers. This would already place him as the 11th driver with the most followers, ahead of his former teammate Valteri Bottas, who has 3.9 million followers.

Interestingly, Brazil, where Hamilton claims to feel at home, is the country with the highest % of followers: 18.19%. In other words, 6.44 million Brazilians follow the British driver, fan of the iconic Ayrton Senna, who died 29 years ago after a tragic accident at the San Marino GP, held in Imola, Italy.