How time flies, 2022 has zoomed past and we are left reflecting on the year past, signing off before Christmas with a stocktake for our readers of what transpired on our site and in Formula 1 during the past 12 incredible months.
It’s been an interesting year for F1 publishers across the board. Although the sport is booming, the reality is, it hasn’t really trickled down to media like us by all accounts. I’m not sure about the big guys, but no one is booming in the motorsport media industry as far as I know.
Many small and medium size sites really work hard to make ends meet to the point that our colleagues, respected Spanish and English language website publishers Motorlat closed down – this is sad, and we wish the crew well in their next chapters.
In terms of traffic, GRANDPRIX247 delivered just over 6-million pages to our readers collectively, which is 500,000 less than last year, we put that down to the Michael Masi-factor, which influenced last year’s traffic immensely, especially at this time of the year when visitor numbers to the site are traditionally low.
Furthermore, I’d like to think that less fake traffic is coming our way, with fewer bots, and fewer fake accounts. This ‘cancer’, I am proud to say we rigorously tackled and continue to tackle, and reverse the trend of social media becoming anti-social media.
So our reality is that although traffic did drop, fortunately, income didn’t and it sustained itself suggesting that the lost traffic, was not really worth anything to us.
Special Mentions for the GRANDPRIX247 team
Editor Jad Mallak – what a find he turned out to be for our site. As Editor for his first full year in F1 media, was simply astounding for an engineer with a passion for writing and an intense love for F1, and this site which he commandeers.
Jad had a hand in just about all the 3000 posts we published this year, he proofed them, vetted them, illustrated them and, of course, wrote a lot himself. Suffice to say, this site would only be half as good if we did not have Jad with us on the team.
Furthermore, our TeamTalk series proved very successful. In fact, of all our in-house instigated columns, TT tended to be the most read. Sean Stevens has been a great addition to our pundit team with his humorous and pointed opinion pieces.
A big shout out to Mark Kay who’s been there for us in terms of the technical side, while actively involved in our Editorial group and also keeping an eye that we don’t get our facts crossed up when it comes to the ‘clever stuff’ while turning the confusion (which rules tend to be for the layman) into something comprehensible.
Michele Lupini, the Red Mist guy, kept us in touch with Ferrari from a true Tifosi perspective. Needless to say, he was not a happy-chappy this past season as his team faltered.
Late this year we welcomed James Fiorucci – our Young Gun amid the Old Timers – to the fold; he will keep us posted on Formula 2 – coverage we sorely missed – and in time provide us with F1 input going forward.
Delivering as she has done for almost half a century of F1 involvement, Agnes Carlier was in the trenches for us, getting some great exclusive stories while constantly providing us, during Grand Prix weekends, with information, interviews etc that we use to great effect for our readers.
Others who have provided input, insights, and support include David Terrien for his TeamTalk contributions – great to have the perspectives of a fantastic racing driver; Kevin Melro who provides us with interesting angles about the sport and keeps us on our toes by keeping an eye on the quality of our content.
It’s always good to have him in a corner as it is to have Joao Gouveia who provides us with behind-the-scenes insights into race direction decisions that have so often captured headlines this season.
To all of you. Big Thanks and more of the same for next year!
The Big Facebook Hack, Twitter Stupidity and other Social Media BS
In terms of our own social media adventures, our Facebook page was hacked and hijacked for a good part of January and February, which all but destroyed our traffic from the platform; and we bid farewell to Twitter for now.
While the FB hack was a blow, things did not really improve because, simultaneously, Facebook fiddled with its algorithm, basically downsizing the impact of news on reader feeds which had a tremendous impact on our traffic, as it did on many other bigger non-motorsport publishers who went belly up this last year, due to Mark Zuckerberg’s Tik-Tok phobia that triggered the change of direction for the monster he created.
But at the same time despite the social media tribulations, traffic for us grew impressively through alternative channels, most importantly, organically and as a result, we had close on 3 million unique visitors to the site during the course of the year.
As for Twitter, I personally changed the date of our account, which had my birthdate as start date for the GRANDPRIX247 page, when I (ignorantly and stupidly) changed it to 2009, when the site began – BOOM we were immediately locked out – the algorithm declared me to be a minor, and that was that. No more Twitter. That all this happened as Elon Musk got a hard-on for the platform.
Thus ten years of our Twitter efforts disappeared in the instance of an ill-advised click. However, instead of it being a blow, it was a relief as we discovered that our Tweets were sending over hardly any traffic to the site, and not worth the effort of one or two likes and a couple of shares.
Thus we went for help from our Twitter expert and partner MSportXtra who has been spreading the word on the platform on our behalf; we will only revisit a new account when Twitter cleans up its act. It is unacceptable that so many fake accounts have been allowed to proliferate.
The Twitter penny dropped for me, in terms of the monster gobbling itself up, when a survey we published determined the following: Max Verstappen has the highest percentage of fake followers, with 43.2%; Mick Schumacher is a close second on 43.1% and Lewis Hamilton has the highest number of fake followers overall, with almost three million (37.5%) of his ‘fans’ non-existent.
Ditto teams with all the followers they ‘bought’ at the time when quantity was king. Buying fake followers is now coming back to haunt the entire social media landscape, and users who spent millions buying fake followers and bot-clicks.
Thus for us, when Twitter verifies every single user through proper identification channels (such as used by PayPal or banks) we are won’t be interested.
It’s very simple, it can be done, there just has to be the desire to fight the source and face reality that social media platforms are bloating their numbers to the point that, according to the numbers, close to 50% of the users are fake, bots or dormant accounts.
Thus the quantity of followers/likes is no longer the end-all and be-all of social media, quality aka real followers are social media royalty now.
I write this because every single day I delight in going onto Facebook and finding half a dozen or so fake accounts that spew nonsense and antagonise our genuine followers. You can spot them, you click on the IDs and they’ve got three or four friends and liked dozens of pages. Clearly imposter accounts.
Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok and Instagram have to prioritize immediately making sure that everyone on their platforms are real and not someone spewing several accounts, behind an IP and a VPN, where they can hide while creating anger and animosity among F1 fans.
Of course, F1 had its controversies during the course of the season, but nothing like the end of the 2021 year…
New leadership at the FIA was a big part of the 2022 year in F1
It was also the first year of Mohammed Ben Salman as FIA president. From my perspective, he’s done as good a job as can be done under the circumstances, with the occasional wobbles and lost-in-translation jokes that backfire. But all in all, despite inheriting the shitshow Jean Todt left behind, Mo and his team are rebuilding F1’s governing body in the right direction.
For me, most of all it was a beautiful season despite the sheer domination by Max Verstappen; he was just absolutely sensational. In a most certain Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton kind of way. I was around when those three greats were in action, in their heyday, photographed them both a lot, and I see in Max the same greatness. I feel it.
I just wish that instead of decrying, finding needless fault, and criticising the Dutch ace, those blinded by their prejudice should savour the fact that we watching genius in action. And he has only got started. He will go to Ferrari, and he will get greater. I predict.
And he is not alone, as F1 fans are gifted an exciting new F1 generation and they are here now.
The great F1 Old Guard of this generation is fast depleting, Sebastian Vettel has left the building, Fernando Alonso is outliving his shelf-life and Lewis Hamilton probably has another couple of years in him.
But we have a beautiful future ahead for F1 with King Max being the man to beat chased by Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris, Carlos Sainz, George Russell, and (I’ve got a very soft spot for) Nyck de Vries who I think is going to impress.
All these F1 Boys have me excited for the future.
Taking stock of the 2022 stats on GRANDPRIX247
Over 3,000 posts in one year is the most we have ever published on this site, thanks to our team as well as Reuters and The Associated Press whose F1 media services back up our editorial efforts.
UK and the USA make up nearly 50% of our traffic which is exactly were we want to be. Below are the numbers from 2022:
Total 3097 posts 6-million views: |
Total Users 2,947,893 from: |
|---|---|
| January 186 posts February 249 posts March 308 posts April 204 posts May 292 posts June 246 posts July 278 posts August 226 posts September 280 posts October 291 posts November 259 posts December 139 posts |
United Kingdom 26.13% United States 20.34% Australia 8.19% Canada 5.84% South Africa 5.06% India 4.71% Netherlands 4.12% Germany 1.48% Ireland 1.43% Malaysia 1.16 |
Top Dozen Posts on GRANDPRIX247 in 2022
It is always a surprise when we look back on the year and get the stats on the most read pages; our traditional April Fool’s effort was the most read story on our site, and it was exactly that a BS story for the 1 April claiming Nico Rosberg was back – suugesting satire is lacking in the modern F1 narrative.
Wolf to Red Bull was the next big thing! The problem is it was Wolf the cyber security guys, not Toto, the Wolff. So here they are our top dozen posts of the year on GRANDPRIX247 as read by you:
1. Our April Fool’s Story!!
2. Go figure why this is second…
3. Netflix triggered F1 Boom
4. The old jewelry saga takes a humorous twist
5. You could have fooled us!
6. Seriously?
7. TeamTalk on Toto was a hit
TeamTalk: Why we are very, very disappointed with Toto Wolff
8. Mirrors were the least of Merc worries, RBR knew it too
9. James Hunt would’ve been proud of Checo…
Perez: A very bad party, apologies to all people who love me
10. Some found this offensive, we didn’t
11. It was a painful year for Lewis in more ways than one
12. This one ain’t over, watch this space!
Red Bull called “cheats” as FIA silent on F1 Cost Cap penalty
If you have reached this far, respect!
In closing, for our readers, we will continue to serve you with content that we believe provides a balanced F1 narrative, with no strings attached to the powers that be and performers on the motorsport’s biggest stage.
We will continue to adhere to our simple slogan: In-depth and independent F1 news all the time
We are always humbled at this time of the year as we audit what our work has achieved and the reach it had and inspired to serve you all well, if not better, in 2023 which no doubt will rush past just as this year did.
In closing, a reminder we are polling the 2022 F1 season for our awards that will be announced on the final three days of this year. Please participate here>>>
Peace and A Sincere Thank You All from all at GRANDPRIX247 and I!
EN 
ES 