F1 fans and their origins - the ultimate survey aka where do you come from and why do you cry after that particular blorbo every other weekend Introduction few words to start Hello. My name is Maïna and I happen to be a stats nerd sometimes in my spare time. I fully emerged myself in the F1 community over the last year and I wanted to know about all of you fellow fans, where do you live, how did you get here, why did you stay, how did that influence your choices. Does every new fan comes from DTS? Do people go for their fellow countrymen? Are winners more likely to be followed first? We are about to find that out. This survey was conducted via google form from the 7th of January to the 27th of January 2023. The answers were mainly collected on Tumblr and Discord. The results are being posted on the 1st of March 2023 Note : English isn’t my first language and we use commas instead of dots for our numbers. That’s why you will find commas in the graphics. Otherwise, I tried my best to be consistent. Any mistake remaining is my own. I am not a professional in Data or a journalist or anything remotely close to someone whose job could be doing this and while this is mostly an objective piece (duh, it’s numbers), I do give my opinion every now and then. 2 Thank you Note Alright, I know this is not a thesis (might as well feel like one, I will submit this in my application files when I finally get into Data Analytics) (this is a joke, for the most part) but anyway, I still wanted to do a thank you note so here we are. I am grateful for every person who took the time to answer to the survey (and spread the word through reblogs/retweets), couldn’t have produced this without you. Thank you to the Discord friends (I’m sure you will recognize yourselves) who I’ve shared some pages with along the way and who hyped me up and discussed the numbers with me, which occasionally prompted me to add to the next and look into making more graphics. That was very useful, as much for the final result of this as for my motivation to actually go through with the whole thing. I spent a certain amount of hours working on redacting the results (putting this whole thing together) and I will appreciate a lot every single reblog (post here) but also every comment you may have on this. I would love to discuss those results furthermore or even look at more numbers if you have ideas. NB : In case anyone was wondering, I did this on Google Slides and I think that, with how much I used the following sites, this thing could be sponsored by Pinterest, FlatIcon and the datawrapper app. 3 Table of Contents the program I. About people who answered the survey II. Geography III. Getting into F1 IV. The Favorites V. F1 & Media VI. Motorsports VII. Miscellaneous 4 5 10 14 25 36 39 42 I. About people who answered the survey who are they Female 77.7% Male 4.1% Non-Binary Spectrum 16.6% Prefer not to say 1.6% Gender Age Average of 24.4 years old As evidenced by Figure n°1, half of the people surveyed falls into the 18-24 category age. Another quarter is in their late twenties. Figure n°1 : Age of people surveyed - Repartition by Categories (%) Figure n°2 : Age of people surveyed - Repartition by Age (Number of People) 6 where do they come from Map n°1 : Number of people who answered the survey per country 53 countries represented USA (65 - 20.7%) Ireland (11 - 3.5%) Netherlands (18 - 5.7%) Germany (16 - 5.1%) Australia (13 - 4.1%) France (12 - 3.8%) UK (56 - 17.8%) Italy (9 - 2.9%) Canada (8 - 2.5%) Brazil (8 - 2.5%) 7 repartition by continent I do believe (and as you will see in the following sections, the data supports it) that the geographical origin** of someone will be of influence towards their experience of F1. In order to make proper comparaison, I needed to create proper groups to be compared. I settled for three of them and here is my reasoning for each of them : - Europe : crib of F1, place where a majority of the GPs happen (and where a majority of the drivers come from). Bigger exposure to F1, for a longer time. Easier access to the sport. - Americas (North America + Central & South America) : In some super preliminary study of the results, I left North America on its own because, you know (or, to be more professional : cultural differences, not having stars the way Brazil & Argentina did for example, etc) but in the end I put everyone together because they do share the same time zones and the fact that there is one GP per country but the countries are immense (and I didn’t want to complicate it too much). - Asia - Oceania : Pretty much the same reasoning as for the Americas, but in a new time zones area. While Americas has to get up early for Euro GPs, this is the getting action at night gang. Also a couple of GPs but not many of them. I received 5 answers (1.6%) were people said Africa for their continent of origin. In terms of timezones, they’re close to Europe, but the access to F1 is not the same at all (among other things, the last race in Africa (Kyalami, South Africa) was 30 years ago (1993)). For these reasons, I didn’t include those answers with another group or create a new one to look into. These answers are of course taken into account in the general stats. I’m sure there were other ways, probably better ways even, to deal with this but this will be what we will be rocking with. **I’m conscious that both the ideas of country/continent “of origin” is not perfectly ideal. Perhaps we need a new wording or instead ask people where do they live (but then you lose that connection with what was available to you/in your environment when you were a kid). Another thing I’ll try to work on for potential future works. Figure n°3 : Continent of origin - Numbers of answers per continent Figure n°4 : Continent of origin - Relative % 8 have they ever assisted to a GP Map n°2 : Location of circuits which have been used for an F1 race at least once during the 2018-2022 seasons Globally, about one in four person surveyed has attended a GP We’re closer to one in five for the Americas and one in three for Asia - Oceania. I will admit that those are not necessarily the results I expected. As evidenced by Map n°2, the offers/possibility to access a GP are much higher in Europe (in terms of numbers and overall proximity). Of course other factors come into play. Having a GP close to you doesn’t mean that you have the money to attend it or manage to obtain tickets for the event. In the next part, we’ll take a closer look at the difference between countries. Figure n°5 : Comparison of the % of people who attended a GP by group 9 II. Geography attending GPs Is there an F1 circuit in your country** ? **where there has been at least one GP in the last 5 years yes for 76.1% of people surveyed If your country hosts a GP, have you ever been ? yes for 20.4% of people surveyed country size of the sample % of people who went to their home GP % of people who went to a GP (home or not) everyone 314 20,4 24,2 United States of America 65 15,4 21,8 United Kingdom 56 28,6 32 Netherlands 18 22,2 27,8 Germany 16 12,5 28,6 Australia 13 46,2 46,2 Table n°1 : % of people attending their home GP or just a GP - Comparison by countries Table n°2 : % of people attending their home GP or just a GP - Only considering people who have a used circuit in their country - Comparison by zones For the comparison by countries, I only looked at the most well represented because as you can see, the size of the samples go down quite rapidly. 3 out of 4 people ( 75.4% ) who went to see at least one GP, attended their home GP. This % stays relatively similar no matter the geographical group. 12% of people who don’t have a home GP attended at least one GP. country size of the sample % of people who went to their home GP % of people who went to a GP (home or not) everyone 239 20,4 28,2 Europe 133 21 28 Americas 84 15,7 23,8 Asia - Oceania 22 34,3 45,5 11 Is there a team associated to your country ? yes for 52.0% of people surveyed If there is a team associated to your country, do you support them ? yes for 33.5% of people surveyed country number of people teams associated % of people following one of the teams associated Austria 3 Red Bull 33,3 France 12 Alpine 50 Germany 14 Mercedes 35,7 Italy 9 Alfa Romeo, AlphaTauri, Ferrari 77,8 United Kingdom 56 Aston Martin, McLaren, Williams 48,2 United States of America 61 Haas 9,8 Red Bull Alpine Mercedes AR, AT, Ferrari AM, McLaren, Williams Haas Table n°3 : % of people supporting a team associated to their country - Comparison by countries (Numbers) Figure n°6 : % of people supporting a team associated to their country - Comparison by countries I think Red Bull’s case may have caused a few misunderstandings considering the amount of UK people who said “Yes” at supporting a “home” team and had RB as their favorite. Red Bull Racing is a British company that races under an Austrian license so I fully understand where people were coming from. I also had a lot of UK people answering Yes having Mercedes as their favorite team, which I suppose might be because their factory is based in the UK. Every Italian who said Yes was a Ferrari fan. For the UK, the order for favorite team now is : Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren, Williams/Aston Martin. Shootout to Haas, who does not seem to have won over Americans’ heart just yet. supporting the team(s) associated to one’s country 12 supporting drivers from one’s country Map n°3 : Countries represented in the 2023 grid Is you country represented by one or several drivers?** **In the survey, I indicated to people that they could answer Yes if they a driver from their country on the grid back when they started watching the sport. yes for 64.6% of people surveyed Several Drivers - Yes I support all of them One or More Drivers - No I don’t support them Several Drivers - I only support one/some of them One Driver - Yes I support him Hi, this is the part where I tell you how I shot myself in the foot with the setting up of that question. I will let you do whatever you want with the results. The impact of successful athletes on the interest of people in a sport has been studied before and I just wanted to take a look here. Only 28.1% don’t support any of their fellow countrymen. Are the other 77.9% supporting their favorite(s) out of patriotism or by pure coïncidence, I won’t be able to tell right there. Figure n°7 : % of people supporting drivers from their countries 13 III. Getting into F1 when Figure n°8 : Season when people got into F1 Figure n°9 : Season when people got into F1 - Comparison by geographical groups Table n°4 : Season when people got into F1 - Comparison by geographical groups (numbers) everyone Europe Americas Asia - Oceania Will Start in 2023 0,6 0,6 0 2,7 2022 27,5 19,5 38,7 32,4 2021 20,7 20,7 20,4 21,6 2020 8,7 6,3 15,1 5,4 2019 3,6 4 3,2 2,7 2015-2018 7,4 8,6 6,5 5,4 2010-2014 8,7 9,2 5,4 16,2 2000-2009 16,8 21,8 9,7 10,8 Before 1999 5,8 9,2 1,1 2,7 As further evidenced by Figure n°8 at the bottom of this page, a big part of the people who answered the survey started watching F1 recently. Over a quarter did so last season (27.5%) and about half the people surveyed got into the sport over the last two years (48.8%). We also have to keep in mind that 58.8% of people surveyed are 24 years old or under, which limit the possibilities of answers for the earlier years. 31% of Europeans surveyed got into F1 before 2009 against only 10.8% of Americans and 12.5% of people from Asia & Oceania. That’s 1 in 3 people against 1 in 9 and 1 in 8. This has a consequence on the other side of the scale : 74.2% of Americans started watching F1 in the last 3 seasons, against only 40.8% of Europeans. The number goes up to 81.5% if we only look at people from the USA. 15 at which age everyone Europe Americas Asia - Oceania 0-10 20,8 28,4 9,6 13,5 11-15 11,5 14,2 7,4 10,8 16-20 29,5 29 21,3 45,9 21-25 21,2 17,6 28,7 21,6 26-30 10,9 9,7 18,1 0 31-40 5,8 1,1 13,8 8,1 41 and over 0,3 0 1,1 0 Figure n°10 : Age at which people got into F1 Figure n°11 : Age at which people got into F1 - Comparison by geographical group Table n°6 : Age at which people got into F1 - Comparison by geographical group (Numbers) To analyse this results, we have to keep in mind that 58.8% of people surveyed were under 24 years old and 86.3% under 30. On average, Europeans get into F1 much earlier, 42.6% before 15 against 17% for Americans and 24.3% for the Asia-Oceania group. Overall, half of the people surveyed ( 50.7% ) got into F1 between the age of 16 and 25. 78.4% of people who got into F1 before they were 15 started thanks to their family. average age everyone 18,02 Europe 15,76 Americas 22,21 Asia - Oceania 18,62 Table n°5 : Average Age at which people got into F1 - Comparison by geographical group 16 main reason people got into F1 Family (39.8%) Friends (17.8%) Drive to Survive (15%) Social Media (11.7%) Other Reason (9.2%) Prior interest in another motorsport (2.9%) RPF (2.9%) Books (0.6%) A majority of people surveyed started watching F1 thanks to family members (often their dads, sometimes also siblings). On average, they start watching F1 at a much earlier age (12.5) than people who answered something else (21.7). Most popular 1st pairing is Maxiel (40%), then Lestappen (25%), then it’s a mix. Only 2 people chose that option. One was fiction (Throttled), the other F1 books. Seems like the jump is more easily made from F1 to others but people did mention first starting with Formula E, Top Gear, cars in general. This category can work in combination with others (DTS, social media) but I think it’s a good spot here anyway. Whether people got hooked by a PPT or by being forced to watch a race, it all worked in the end. Two fun facts for you : - 2 in 3 person surveyed watches DTS. - 25.5% of people who got into F1 thanks to DTS have Daniel Ricciardo as their first driver followed. A non-exhaustive list : Twitch (especially during lockdown), Youtube videos of the drivers, tiktok edits, posts on Tumblr from other fandoms’ mutuals. Thank you beauty of the Internet. For everything not in the offered list in the survey. Rush (the movie) was mentioned several times, as was Top Gear. Also general curiosity after hearing about a certain driver all around, finding an F1 race on TV randomly. 17 A look into the differences between groups EUROPE AMERICAS ASIA - OCEANIA Family (48.6%) Friends (15.8%) Social Media (11.3%) Family (26.3%) Friends (23.2%) Drive to Survive (22.1%) Family (35.1%) Friends (18.2%) Drive to Survive (16.2%) EVERYONE Family (39.8%) Friends (17.8%) Drive to Survive (15%) 18 Figure n°12 : Main reason people got into F1 - Comparison by Categories Figure n°13 : Main reason people got into F1 - Comparison by Groups Family remains the main reason for people getting into F1, no matter where they come from but it’s much predominant in Europe than in the Americas (with Asia - Oceania falling in the middle). Considering most people who answered Family started watching it with their parents/grand-parents, this highlights the difference between generations and how F1 wasn’t as popular/so accessible outside of Europe before. One in six person surveyed started watching F1 thanks to Drive to Survive. In the opposite way to the Family category, the % goes higher for Americas, it’s more than halved for Europe and then Asia - Oceania is in the middle. 19 year people got into F1 everyone Before 2000 2000-2009 2010-2013 2014-2018 2019-2020 2021-2023 number of answers 314 18 52 22 28 39 155 Family 39,8 88,9 82,7 59,1 50 38,2 16,9 Friends 17,8 0 1,9 9,1 17,9 17,6 26,1 DTS 15 - - - 3,6 26,5 24,6 Social Media 11,7 0 3,8 4,5 14,3 5,9 15,5 Others 9,2 5,6 9,6 22,7 3,6 8,8 8,5 Prior interest to another motorsport 2,9 5,6 0 4,5 10,7 2,9 1,4 RPF 2,9 0 0 0 0 0 5,6 Books 0,6 0 0 0 0 0 1,4 Table n°7 : Main reason people got into F1 - Comparison by year people got into F1 (numbers) Figure n°14 : Main reason people got into F1 - Comparison by year people got into F1 As we can see above in Table n°7, the main reason people got into F1 has evolved with the years. Meanwhile Family was a huge factor for most people in the past, we can see the % drops down with time (nearly 90% for people who got into F1 before 2000, down to 50% in 2014-2018 and only 16.9% in the two most recent years) in favor of other reasons. Friends and Social Media have been much more at play with creating more fans of the sport. The part of friends has been over 17% since 2014 meanwhile social media was responsible for arrival of 15.5% of new fans the last two years. Lastly, Drive to Survive has obviously come to play a huge part in developing the sport across the World. The show came out in March of 2019 but I’m going to assume people chose 2018 as the first season they got interested in F1 because that’s the first season that DTS covers. Since the show came out, about 1 in 4 new fans come from the Netflix show. 20