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.



Here are the results…

Driver	Top Sixes	Break Even Odds
Sebastian Vettel	17	1.18
Fernando Alonso	16	1.25
Kimi Raikkonen	14	1.43
Jenson Button	11	1.82
Mark Webber	11	1.82
Lewis Hamilton	10	2.00
Felipe Massa	9	2.22
Nico Rosberg	6	3.33
Romain Grosjean	6	3.33
Kamui Kobayashi	5	4.00
Sergio Perez	4	5.00
Nico Hulkenberg	4	5.00
Paul Di Resta	2	10.00
Michael Schumacher	2	10.00
Pastor Maldonado	2	10.00
Bruno Senna	1	20.00

As you’d expect, the odds on the top drivers in this market were generally short so although Sebastian Vettel managed 17 top six finishes and Fernando Alonso finished in the top six on 16 occasions, drivers such as Felipe Massa and Kamui Kobayashi would actually have offered better value over the course of the season.

Felipe Massa in particular was an excellent top six bet during the early stages of his late season upsurge in form when he managed 7 top sixes finishes from the last 9 Grand Prix.  For the first few races of this run the bookies were slow to spot Felipe’s improvement in form and were therefore still pricing him quite generously.

Another driver worth keeping an eye on was Kimi Raikkonen who at one stage went on a run of nine consecutive top six finishes.  Obviously the key to taking advantage of this run was to spot his consistency at the start of the run as it wasn’t until towards the end of this run that his odds started to noticeably shorten.

Next week I’ll round things off with the chart for the 'break even odds' for the Top Ten betting market.

Previous posts:
Formula 1 Betting Markets: Part 2 - Podium Finish
Formula 1 Betting Markets: Part 1 - Winning Driver
What Are The Most Popular Worldwide Sports Based On Google Searches?
The 2012 Formula 1 Google Champion!


Follow F1 Tips on twitter:
@F1TipsBlog


SkyBet offer odds on the 2013 Formula 1 Drivers' Championship and are currently offering a completely free £10 bet for any new customer who signs up for a new SkyBet account, so if you want to take advantage of their offer then check out the link below:



Legal note: This page contains affiliate banner links.