The Twitter outlook

After having a look at the entire field last week, with it being the end of the month, it’s back to the top 10’s this week as we begin June.

Drivers – The Top 10
01 – 966,071 – Jenson Button (McLaren)
02 – 831,893 – Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
03 – 610,868 – Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)
04 – 421,478 – Bruno Senna (Williams)
05 – 350,713 – Mark Webber (Red Bull)
06 – 204,596 – Pastor Maldonaldo (Williams)
07 – 200,715 – Sergio Perez (Sauber)
08 – 160,397 – Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)
09 – 150,303 – Heikki Kovalainen (Caterham)
10 – 135,128 – Pedro de la Rosa (HRT)

Drivers – Biggest Increases
01 – 34,685 – Fernando Alonso
02 – 10,154 – Lewis Hamilton
03 – 9,964 – Jenson Button
04 – 7,278 – Mark Webber
05 – 6,002 – Pastor Maldonaldo

Drivers – Smallest Increases
01 – 440 – Charles Pic
02 – 798 – Jean-Eric Vergne
03 – 934 – Timo Glock
04 – 1,078 – Daniel Ricciardo
05 – 1,183 – Kamui Kobayashi

Two milestones were broken this week. Fernando Alonso broke the 600 thousand follower barrier, while both Pastor Maldonaldo and Sergio Perez broke the 200 thousand follower barrier. The biggest and smallest increases were fairly static and as expected this week, although I think this will be the last week that we see Maldonaldo in the top five for biggest increases. Up at the top, Jenson Button is creeping ever so near the one million follower barrier, and it looks like he shall break that towards the end of the month.

Teams – The Top 10
01 – 279,571 – Ferrari
02 – 194,434 – McLaren
03 – 130,103 – Mercedes
04 – 118,205 – Red Bull
05 – 109,722 – Lotus
06 – 75,483 – Caterham
07 – 65,997 – Marussia
08 – 65,556 – Williams
09 – 65,052 – Force India
10 – 56,109 – Sauber

Teams – Biggest Increases
01 – 4,248 – Ferrari
02 – 2,608 – Red Bull
03 – 1,927 – McLaren

Teams – Smallest Increases
01 – 468 – Williams
02 – 694 – Toro Rosso
03 – 743 – Marussia

Moving onto the teams, no surprises for the biggest increases, but I’m very surprised to see Williams record the smallest increase. Not quite sure why. Clearly as a team they have not had the “Maldonaldo effect” after Spain. They probably needed a good Monaco performance to follow it up with, but did not achieve that. Either way, less than a 500 follower gain in a seven day period is very poor. Force India, for the moment, remain behind them though albeit a cluster of less than 1,000 followers between seventh and ninth.

Driver and Team statistics as of Monday 4th June 2012.

Scheduling: The Canadian Grand Prix

From the streets of Monte Carlo to the traditional June trip to North America as the 12 teams and 24 drivers head to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve circuit in Montreal, Canada. Due to the time difference between the UK and Canada, the majority of proceedings are in primetime. Also, Sky Sports F1 have exclusive live coverage for this weekend, with BBC showing highlights at 22:30 on both days. As with previous years, the GP2 Series and GP3 Series do not travel to North America – their races shall continue in two weeks time in Valencia.

It looks like the Race programme is again at the 4 hours, 45 minutes length it was for Monaco. Saying that, there is a Legends programme featuring Murray Walker on immediately afterwards, which will be worth watching.

As previously reported on this blog, there are several personnel changes on both the BBC and Sky sides this weekend. On the BBC side, Lee McKenzie is replacing Jake Humphrey as presenter, with Humphrey presenting Euro 2012, while for 5 Live, Jonathan Legard replaces James Allen. On Sky Sports F1, Jacques Villeneuve is joining their team for the weekend alongside the usual line-up.

I’ve added the 5 Live F1 schedule below in italics for those without access to Sky Sports F1. Due to test match cricket and Euro 2012, only Practice 2 and the Race will be on 5 Live Sports Extra, with the rest of the sessions online only, hence why they are not listed below. The forum is also listed, but I suspect that will be uploaded to the BBC website at some point on Monday.

Thursday 7th June
16:00 to 16:30 – F1: Driver Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)

Friday 8th June
14:45 to 16:50 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1)
18:45 to 21:00 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1)
18:55 to 20:35 – F1: Practice 2 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
21:00 to 21:30 – F1: Team Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
23:00 to 00:00 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)

Saturday 9th June
14:45 to 16:10 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1)
17:00 to 19:45 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
22:30 to 23:45 – F1: Qualifying Highlights (BBC One)

Sunday 10th June
17:30 to 22:15 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1)
18:45 to 21:00 – F1: Race (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
22:15 to 22:45 – F1: Legends: Murray Walker (Sky Sports F1)
22:30 to 00:30 – F1: Race Highlights (BBC One)
00:30 to 01:30 – F1: Forum (BBC Red Button)

News Articles – Monaco Grand Prix

Rather than do a written summary for the news articles piece, I thought it would be better if I do it in bullet points so it is easier to follow with BBC’s pieces in one section and Sky’s in another.

BBC
– Gary Anderson‘s explains Red Bull’s floor design
– Andrew Benson‘s Post-Race blog
– Gary Anderson‘s Technical Review
– Andrew Benson blogs about Lewis Hamilton’s future
– Jaime Alguersuari‘s Column
– Mark Webber‘s Column

Sky
– Ted Kravitz‘s Notebook
– Mike Wise‘s Diary
– Pete Gill‘s Conclusions
– Mark Hughes analysis on Kimi Raikkonen
– Martin Brundle reflects on the weekend
– William Esler‘s Qualifying comparison

There’s a wider range of viewpoints and blogs on the Sky website, but on the other hand BBC have two blogs from two ‘present’ drivers’, something that Sky lack.