All numbers below were as of the morning of October 31, 2011.

I’m about to expose how nerdy I can be.  I love math.  Yes, we Mississippians are taught math and a few of us happen to be pretty good at it.  Luckily for me, my job requires a lot of math, data, and analysis.  Because I often times work with a LOT of important data, I started creating a couple of spreadsheets with “useless” data to experiment with.  If I wanted to try something new, I could use one of the “useless” sheets with no worry of screwing anything up.  One spreadsheet is the daily number of Twitter followers for each Indycar driver.  When I started, it just seemed like easy data to dump into a file that I could track daily and could be manipulated easily.  However, over the course of a few weeks the data started to become more interesting to follow.

I love Twitter and think it is an amazing way to keep up with small bleeps of information.  Instead of taking 5/10 minutes to read some article about Wall Street, I can read the same basic information in 140 characters or less.  Also, the amount of followers someone or something has can be a great indication of relative popularity and how visible someone is on the radar screen of the world.  For instance, Snooki (you know who she is) has almost 3.6 million followers.  The official White House Twitter has just over 2.4 million followers.  Heck, Snooki has more followers than the official Twitter of the NBA, NFL, and MLB.  People are more interested in knowing what a drunk girl from New Jersey is doing than what is going on in their country.  Think about that.

So, who do you think has the most Twitter followers in Indycar?  Well, if you guessed Danica Patrick you would be correct.  With 425,815 followers, Danica has 40,401 more followers than Tony Kanaan, the 2nd most followed driver.  But, TK adds about 595 new followers each day on average versus the 270 average of Danica.  It is also important to note than Danica’s average would be a good bit lower, but she experienced a huge spike in follows the day of her big announcement that she would be moving to NASCAR full-time in 2012.  In the span of a week, Danica added 5,447 followers.

Have I lost you yet or peaked your interest?  Numbers are fun!

More than 340,029 followers BEHIND Kannan in 3rd is Helio Castroneves with 45,385 followers.  This brings up an interesting thing…the strength of the Brazilian drivers.  2011 rookie Ana Beatriz is the 6th most followed driver in Indycar with 23,647 followers (this is omitting Dan Wheldon’s Twitter).  That is a very interesting statistic considering her lackluster results and 21st place in final points.  She has more followers than Ryan Briscoe, Paul Tracy, Will Power, and Graham Rahal among others.  When we see those numbers, it makes a little more sense as to why Indycar races in Brazil and is exploring a second race.

One thing is for certain, any news coverage increases follower counts for a driver whether the news is good or bad.  For example, after the New Hampshire flying fingers incident, Will Power gained 1,831 followers over the course of a week.  His daily average for August, the month of the incident, was 88.74, but his average for September was 38.14.  Before the race at Kentucky, Ed Carpenter had added just over 300 new followers since the end of July, a 2 month span.  Immediately after the Kentucky race, Carpenter added over 350 new followers in a day.  When Justin Wilson was injured at Mid-Ohio, he experienced a 519 follower jump.  However, neither Ryan Hunter-Reay nor Scott Dixon saw those kinds of jumps in followers after their respective wins.  Dixon added 212 the day after his win and Hunter-Reay added only 238 even while his win was mired in controversy.  Are these 2 guys less interesting?  Were those wins not as important to fans?  It is interesting to think that Justin Wilson’s broken back at Mid-Ohio stirred up more interest than Scott Dixon winning the race.

Sadly, after the tragic incident at Las Vegas, drivers had huge jumps in followers easily eclipsing any previous daily totals.  Indycar drivers that were not even participating in the race experienced large jumps in the number of additional daily followers.  Martin Plowman, for example, had previously averaged 4.34 followers per day.  For the 2 weeks following Las Vegas, Martin added an average of 19.14 followers a day.  The number of followers of Dan Wheldon’s official Twitter more than double in a single day after his death going from 15,699 followers to 31,856.  Drivers directly involved in the 15 car pile-up had even more dramatic increases.  Pippa Mann had added only 201 followers in the month of September, but after her injury at Las Vegas, Pippa added 2,296 followers in October.

There are also many other interesting facts.  Pippa, with only 3 starts under her belt, has 8,860 followers.  This is more than full-time rookies James Hinchcliffe (7,960) and Charlie Kimball (4,178) and more than Takuma Sato (7,804), and Kentucky race winner Ed Carpenter (7,862).  Even Katherine Legge, who didn’t even started a race in 2011 has more followers at 2,047 than full-time rookie James Jakes (1,892) and part-timer Wade Cunningham (1,905) who are the 2 least followed of the drivers tracked.

Had enough numbers yet?

In the end, why is any of this important?  Well, at a time when marketing budgets are tight and funding is hard to come by, Twitter can be a gauge to see how much “reach” a driver has for a sponsor.  Just look at Ana Beatriz.  Although on-track performance may not be stellar at this point, she can connect with over 3x more fans than Oriol Servia (7,617 vs. 23,647) who finished 4th in points.  Sadly, popularity in racing isn’t just about results anymore.  I will dub this the Junior/Patrick Syndrome.

Even though when you click “Follow” on someone’s Twitter it may not seem very important, who you follow speaks volumes about yourself and others like you.  It gives a peek into what is popular, what is interesting, and what catches the attention of people.  I’ll continue to track the trends in followers through the offseason and see what else I can unearth. So, get on Twitter and follow away!  Oh, and remember…numbers can be fun and Mississippians can do math!

Ross (@driverswanted07)

Top 15 in followers:

• Danica Patrick – 425,815
• Tony Kanaan – 385,414
• Helio Castroneves – 45,385
• Dario Franchitti – 36,826
• Marco Andretti – 31,313
• Ana Beatriz – 23,647
• Will Power – 19,122
• Graham Rahal – 19,106
• Paul Tracy – 18,851
• Ryan Briscoe – 17,256
• Ryan Hunter-Reay – 17,012
• Scott Dixon – 16,842
• Simona de Silvestro – 13,639
• E.J. Viso – 13,593
• Tomas Scheckter – 12,838