Lewis Hamilton tops and Max Verstappen fourth in alternative driver social rankings | F1 | Sports

Lewis Hamilton has been made to wait for a record-breaking eighth Drivers’ Championship, facing last-lap heartbreak in 2021 before enduring a W13 nightmare this season just gone. But its roaring popularity remains standing across the F1 community, proven by a recent study.

Zoomph, a digital measurement platform for social audience intelligence, sponsorship measurement and evaluation, have given F1 fans a glimpse of the most talked-about drivers on the grid throughout the 2022 season. Ranked by total engagements on social media, Hamilton is comfortably still at the top of the tree. Ranked by total engagements on social media, Hamilton is comfortably still at the top of the tree.

During the latest F1 campaign, had 114 million engagements, with Charles Leclerc’s 88.3m the next biggest tally. The Mercedes icon posted 268 times with an engagement rate of 6.07 per cent, not near the most, but also tops the charts for impressions (1.9bn) and social value (£48.5m).

The back-to-back world champion, Max Verstappen, is only third in the engagement rankings, behind Hamilton, Leclerc and, perhaps surprisingly, his Red Bull team-mate, Sergio Perez (60.7m). Verstappen had 59.9m engagements, but his 755 posts were the most of any of the top 10.

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The Dutchman was also fourth in impressions with 828.1m, with Hamilton top, Leclerc second (1.1bn), and Lando Norris replacing Perez – fifth with 719.8m – in third with 837.6m. The McLaren star’s success Twitch streaming account will undoubtedly contribute to his social media popularity

Although Verstappen’s 7.23 per cent engagement rate is higher than Hamilton’s, Pierre Gasly sits at the summit among the top 10 with a whopping 9.63 per cent. Regarding engagement totals, fifth to 10th goes: Norris (53.8m), Carlos Sainz 51.1m, George Russell 40.6m, Daniel Ricciardo 37m, Gasly 29.9m and Mick Schumacher 23.3m.

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