The Voice of God

[Ciro Pabón]

"Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit." -- Alcuin to Charlemagne, 798 A.D. --

"And those people should not be listened, those who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness."

Is that true? Let's see. You know "our" style around here: don't give me opinions, give me numbers.

So, let's forget Alcuin opinion for a moment and let's find our own numbers.

Here, at F1Technical, our respected webmaster has posted polls for almost every race this year. I just took the results of the polls, put them in a file and started to compare to my heart's content your predictions and the results. Are you "semper insaniae proxima sit", or, on the contrary, is your collective voice the voice of the gods?

Number of races polled this year: 12 out of 13 (not counting Monza, which hasn't happened yet, nor Great Britain, which wasn't polled)
Number of votes: 37580
Average number of votes per race: 3132
Number of winners predicted correctly: 5
Number of winners not predicted: 7

Here you have the percentage of votes for each race. In yellow, the driver with more votes, in red the driver who won.

Well, semper insaniae proxima sit most of the time


What can I say? Maybe that Stafford Beer, the cybernetist, would be delighted by the trend (those studying System Engineer will get my drift). Maybe that Miguel or someone with the same eagle eye will discover that the script I made or the dynamic table I constructed is wrong (who knows, I'm not going to check again).

Anyway, I'll say only this: Hamilton is not the favorite winner of the people.

Why? He's winning.

If I have time, I'll come back to this data.

[guy_smiley]

awesome idea Ciro, i'm glad you put that together. =D> i would have never thought to do that pretty cool results!

could it be that people are also taking the strength of the car/package at a given circuit into consideration when voting?

the hamilton-massa-raikkonen trio has received the majority of votes in each poll, and in the past 4 or 5 races an average of about 80% of people voted for one of the three. using the 'big three' theory (kimi and felipe vs hamilton), the numbers are 60/11 (AUS), 39/21 (MAL), 53/13 (BHR), 58/11 (ESP), 66/10 (TUR), 39/19 (MON), 44/19 (CAN), 62/4 (FRA), 57/17 (GER), 55/24 (HUN), 62/23 (EUR), 72/17 (BEL), 63/23 (ITA).

so people pretty much know that one of those three drivers are going to win (and we've been right so far except twice).

maybe people think "well there are two ferraris versus one mclaren, so i'll pick one of the ferrari drivers," instead of "well i hate hamilton so ill vote for some other guy."

anyway just throwing thoughts out there

[Scotracer]

It's quite interesting to see how Kubica and Hamilton are pretty much equal (and equal by average). Personal bias? Human nature (wanting the underdog to win)? Bit of both I suspect.

[zac510]

I don't know how Kubica came to be the hot tip for Canada, above even Lewis, but he was on the cover of Autosport magazine being tipped to win.

Are you sure people didn't check the poll option after the race?

[lebesset]

if you have a look at other polls on the web you will see totally different forecasts ..that despite the fact that there are really only 3 possibilities for any serious entry

[John Stitch]

I think it's the history of the skeptics.

Ferrari get all the favours so they have the best chance overall.

Kimi was the annoited one in the first half of the season, then people realised that he aint that great and switched to Massa.

Hamiltons blip in the middle was the manifestation of chaos.

[Belatti]

Anyway, I'll say only this: Hamilton is not the favorite winner of the people.

Why? He's winning.

I think the cause is not Hamilton itself, but Ferrari. People in general doesnt vote wich driver they think its gonna win, but wich driver THEY WANT TO SEE winning. The majority of F1 audience is a Ferrari fan. Thus, those results

[Ciro Pabón]

Yes, maybe. Both Belatti and John's arguments seem good enough for me. Perhaps the nationality of the voters influence the outcome. A graphic of the same data:



And, maybe for the gambler in you:



Zac, you have to ask Tomba if he has closed all polls "in time", and, yes, Kovalainen's correct prediction is wild. Perhaps someone tipped the members? I did not received the e-mail, damn.

Guy_smiley, yes, this year the only winners have been Ferrari and McLaren. Same thing (almost) happened last year. And the year before, and the year before... So, what you could find surprising is any people voting for BMW.

I think that four teams (Williams, Renault, Ferrari and McLaren) won all the races in the 2000-2006 "era". If I remember well, Button's odd victory in Hungary ended that dominance but that was just one miss in over 100 races. If you can put a bet on Ferrari or McLaren winning a race, your odds are better than 99%, as Lebesset says.

Lebesset, I'll try to follow your lead if I have some time, that would be interesting. Can you remember any site that had run polls for every race? Frankly, I was as "surprised" as guy_smiley. If hadn't click the link "more polls" in the main page, I've never discovered that Tomba had run polls for almost all races.

Anyway, I'm as intrigued as Scott about only 1 in 6 people thinking that Hamilton would win "the next GP". Perhaps the fans evaluate correctly Ferrari's car strength.