Formula 1 Betting Markets: Part 3 - Top Six Finish

The 'Break Even' odds for each driver in the Top Six Finish market

In previous weeks I analysed the odds you would need to break even if you were to place a bet on a specific driver at every race of the season in the Winning Driver and Podium Finish markets.

It’s probably fair to say that the podium market was generally the easier of the two to predict over the course of the season, and that any big winnings in the Winning Driver market would have had to rely on a larger degree of luck.

The two charts also highlighted that although the bookies tend to rank drivers in a similar order in every market, in actual fact the different place finishing trends of certain drivers mean that a driver who is generally available at long odds in the Winning Driver market, can nevertheless sometimes be a better bet in some of the other betting markets.

Anyway, next up is the Top Six market where once again I’ve used the number of top six finishes to calculate the odds for the ‘break even point’ from a betting point of view.  By this I mean if you were to place a bet on a driver at every Grand Prix of the season, the odds at which the driver would have to be priced at every race to ensure you broke even over the course of the season.

Formula 1 Betting Markets: Part 2 - Podium Finish

The 'Break Even' odds for each driver in the Podium Finish market

Last week I analysed the odds you would need to break even if you were to place a bet on a specific driver at every race of the season in the Winning Driver market.

All in all, despite being understandably the most popular betting market, you would probably have to say that the Winning Driver market was also one of the most difficult to make an educated profit from, especially given the unpredictability at the start of the season.

Next up, let’s take a look at the podium market.  Just to reiterate my point from last week, I’ve used the number of podium finishes to calculate the odds for the ‘break even point’ from a betting point of view.  By this I mean if you were to place a bet on a driver at every Grand Prix of the season, the odds at which the driver would have to be priced at every race to ensure you broke even over the course of the season.

Formula 1 Betting Markets: Part 1 - Winning Driver

The 'Break Even' odds for each driver in the Winning Driver market

For a driver, the only statistic that matters is who finishes first, but from a betting perspective there are several markets to consider.

I noticed last season that bookies tend to rank drivers in a similar order for each betting market, despite the fact that certain drivers can be sporadically brilliant but accident prone (leading to generous prices in the Winning Driver and Podium markets), while other drivers can be consistently solid without ever grabbing the headlines (making them an attractive bet in the Top Six and Top Ten markets).  So the key of course to winning in some of the less popular betting markets is to spot a driver who achieves consistency rather than headline grabbing brilliance.

The other key to winning is to notice a trend or an improvement in form from a particular driver before the bookies do.  Felipe Massa was a perfect example of this, achieving only 2 top six finishes from the first 11 Grand Prix of the year, but then going on to finish in the top six at 7 of the last 9 Grand Prix of the season.  Yet when his late season improvement of form began to take place, it was quite a few races before the bookies cottoned on, and you could therefore find decent odds available on him in the Top Six market.

What Are The Most Popular Worldwide Sports Based On Google Searches?

How does formula 1 compare against the popularity of other sports? 

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve compiled a few tables ranking formula 1 drivers and teams based on their number of monthly Google searches to see which drivers/teams are the most popular with formula 1 fans.  Just to quickly recap, it’s safe to say that all drivers receive significant numbers of Google searches every month, and in some cases certain drivers are being searched for as often as every five seconds!

To carry on the ‘Google search’ theme, I also decided to investigate how the popularity of formula 1 as a whole compares with other sports, by looking up the monthly Google searches for a sample of sports.  In some cases where a sport is known by more than one name (such as athletics/track and field), I’ve added the figures for the two search terms together and then compiled the results into a table.