SportsLab F1 fans name Jenson Button their favourite current driver, but Sebastian Vettel as the best driver today
Jenson Button and McLaren-Mercedes are the most popular driver and team among the SportLab F1 fans we asked, but Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull-Renault are considered the best driving today. Vettel and Button were named the strongest team in the field this year, while our respondents chose Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher as the ultimate fantasy driver pairing of all time.
Button the favourite for SportsLab F1 fans
Nearly three-quarters of the Formula 1 fans who took our poll support a specific driver, while six in ten back a team. Of this latter group, almost eight out of ten are McLaren fans, and McLaren dominate in the driver stakes too: of those we asked who support a driver, nearly 60% favour Jenson Button, and more than a quarter (27%) rate Lewis Hamilton as their favourite driver.
Ferrari (8% of those who favour a team) and Red Bull (7%) are the next-best supported teams. Of those who support a driver, after the McLaren pair, Michael Schumacher (4%) and Sebastian Vettel (3%) are the best-supported by those who took our survey.
Vettel viewed as the best
However, despite their support for McLaren’s drivers, 58% of our respondents recognise Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, who recently retained the driver’s World Championship, as the best driver currently competing in Formula 1. One in five (20%) claims that Button is the best driver, but fewer than one in ten rate him as the fastest over one lap (only 8%). Hamilton, meanwhile, is considered the fastest driver over the course of one lap by more than a third of those who took our poll (35%, beaten only by Vettel with 48%). 7% rate Fernando Alonso as the best driver, but only 4% consider him to be the fastest over a single lap.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, respondents’ ultimate team based on this year’s field consists of the top two drivers in the World Championship standings, Sebastian Vettel (selected by 63% of those who took our survey) and Jenson Button (67%), racing for Red Bull (49% of respondents, with McLaren second with 39%). One respondent captured the views of many in explaining that Button and Vettel are 'both fast and intelligent, and know how to drag the most performance from a car and [its] tyres.'
Senna and Schumacher the all-time ultimate team
The late Ayrton Senna and still-racing Michael Schumacher are the most popular fantasy driver pairing named by Formula 1 Labs participants when asked to give their ultimate team of all time. Senna, three times World Champion before his tragic death in 1994, and whose life was made into a hit film released this year, featured in more than a third of all ‘ultimate team’ selections. Schumacher, meanwhile, has won seven World Championships, more than any other driver. Other drivers who figure highly on the all-time list include Nigel Mansell, Scots Jim Clarke and Jackie Stewart, five-time World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio, and Stirling Moss.
After Schumacher, Vettel, Button and Hamilton - the three ‘best’ drivers of today in the field according to Sportslab’s F1 fans - received the most nominations from the current crop. Following Vettel’s second title, clinched two rounds ago in Japan, the trio now have four World Championships between them. This figure pales in comparison to the ten titles Schumacher and Senna won between them. Perhaps, however, given time, one of the current generation will pull away from the pack and rise in fans’ estimations to rank alongside the true greats of the sport.
Labs Method statement
YouGovLabs research is anecdotal, with polls being open to all panellists who wish to take part. In contrast to YouGov’s Public Opinion polling, YouGovLabs seeks to understand the attitudes of specific subsets of people: sports fans tell us how they feel about sports and music fans tell us how they feel about music, for example. YouGovLabs results are unweighted, and figures reported do not reflect the attitudes of the population as a whole.
