Data & Insights

Formula 1 Social Analysis: The 2022 Australian Grand Prix

April 14, 2022 | by

For the first time since 2019, Formula 1 returned to the land down under for the Australian Grand Prix. Now on the third race of the year, teams, fans and drivers are settling in for the season. As for us, each race means more social data to analyze and more insights to share.

Off Track Social Standings

With season-starting hype dying down and a tough time zone shift for many fans, overall engagement this weekend was lower than previous weekends this season. Still, each week is an opportunity for team socials to reach their fans around the world, even if they can’t tune in to the live race.

Scuderia Ferrari finally took the top team spot for engagement per 1K fans with Charles LeClerc’s second win of the season and despite a DNF from Carlos Sainz. They also gained the most followers of any team, accumulating over 64K new followers across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Even though Mercedes is lacking the pace of season’s past, they’ve still been consistently performing on social. Mercedes fans seemed satisfied with their third and fourth place finishes in Melbourne, which included George Russell’s first podium with the team, landing them the second spot in this week’s rankings.

Despite the dip in engagement for most teams, McLaren benefited from driver Daniel Riccardio’s homecoming and their best finish of the season (P5 & P6) with their highest engagement per 1K fans of the season.

Let’s not forget about the underdogs. With Alex Albon’s P10 finish in the points, Williams racing also saw their highest engagement yet, earning 131% more engagements per 1K fans compared to Saudi Arabia. This simple celebration Tweet was the top team Twitter post for the entire weekend.

Following The Race On Twitter

With certain big markets like Europe and North America struggling to watch the weekend’s events live, Twitter activity dropped around 26% from the last race, but still saw 103% increase compared to the third GP of last season in Portugal.

This week, the winner of the race was the winner for Twitter mentions too. Not only was Charles LeClerc the most mentioned driver, his post-race trophy pic had the most engagement on Twitter for the entire weekend.

Brand Performance

With Scuderia Ferrari back on top in Melbourne, so were their major sponsors. Compared to the last GP, overall brand value was pretty consistent for top brands, peaking at a little under $900K again.

Even with just one car finishing the race, it was a P1 finish, so Ferrari’s major sponsors like Santander and Shell won big. Pirelli, Puma, Richard Mille, Amazon Web Services and Ray-Ban were other Ferrari partners that benefitted from the weekend’s exposure.

Race sponsor Heineken ranked 7th for brand value for the weekend, earning exposure from various logo placements on track and around the paddock. Of the three races thus far, Heineken is the only Grand Prix title sponsor to make it in the Top 10 for logo brand value. Other race sponsors, take notes. Rolex also snuck into the top 10 with prominent on-track signage.

Audience Adjusts To Australian Time

One of the cool things about Formula 1 is that they travel all around the world, which means all fan bases get races catered to their time zones. This week, Australia and surrounding countries were able to enjoy an appropriately timed weekend of Formula 1. Combined with the excitement around their home grand prix, the Australian audience on Twitter was up 244% from the last race. During the race, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia (whose time zones are within a few hours of Melbourne) had their highest engagement percentage of the season.

Not only did Heineken earn significant brand value across the weekend, the social audience of the Australian Grand Prix showed 60% higher affinity for beer than the average global sports fan, another win for the race title sponsor.

Next on the agenda, Formula 1 is headed to the first European race of the season, the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix (Imola) in Italy.



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