F1 Fantasy: 5 Surprising Facts About the Driver of the Day Award

Race Winner Woes

Most importantly, the winner of the race is far from guaranteed to win the DOTD award. In fact, in the last 70 races the race winner has also been voted DOTD just 22 times. That’s only a 30% success rate!

Oftentimes, if a driver is winning too much, it seemingly makes them less popular in the fan vote. In the 2023 season where Max Verstappen won 19 races, he only won DOTD two times from those wins (three times total that season). That trend continued in 2024 with only one DOTD across his nine race wins. Similarly, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri took home only one DOTD each in 2025 when McLaren won 14 races across the pair. 

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Hunter vs. Hunted

While winning may not guarantee a nod from fans, there is an interesting trend one notch down the standings. As it turns out, the runner-up in the World Drivers’ Championship fight is more prone to winning DOTD than the front-runner. For the last two years, the driver that finished second in the WDC has won the most DOTD awards throughout the season—that’d be Norris in 2024 with seven DOTD’s and Verstappen in 2025 with eight. It seems that the fans prefer the hunter over the hunted.

As an aside, that duo has by far the most DOTD awards from the last three years is Norris and Verstappen. Norris has been awarded the honor 13 times and Verstappen 12 times.

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Rookie Rewards

Still, sometimes the DOTD award doesn’t go to a top performer at all, but rather a midfield or rookie driver that’s had an out of place positive race. For example, Zhou Guanyu won DOTD in Qatar 2024 for finishing in 8th place and scoring Kick Sauber’s first points of the season. Each driver that scored their first podium in the 2025 season received DOTD that race (Antonelli, Hulkenberg, Hadjar), and impressive midfield performances also oftentimes resulted in a DOTD award, including Bearman’s P5 drive in Mexico City for Haas.

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Home Race Heroes

People may seem to think that a driver’s home race makes them much more likely to win the DOTD award, but looking at the data, in the last 70 races, a driver has won DOTD at their individual home race less than 10 times. If a driver wins at their home race, the chance becomes higher—Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton both won their home races and won DOTD in 2024. This doesn’t take into account drivers with multiple home races or team home races.

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Reluctant for Russell

As I pointed out at the start, there's no guarantee on race winners winning a DOTD vote, but it’d be remiss of me to finish this article without talking about a driver who is unlikely to win even on his best of days: the Mercedes frontman, George Russell. Despite being on the grid since 2019, Russell has only won the award once, for his maiden win in Brazil in 2022. Since then, Russell has won 5 times and podiumed 16, but he has failed to win the DOTD award on every one of those occasions. Each other driver who has won two or more times between has received DOTD for at least two of their wins. For whatever reason, Russell isn’t as popular amongst fans as his contemporaries.

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Putting It All Together

Now, what does that mean for your F1 Fantasy Team? It’s far from guaranteed, but keeping an eye on potential race winners, the runner-up and any midfielder or rookie expecting an extra strong performance is a good start. This year, the trends we’ve been seeing could mean positive things for Kimi Antonelli. While it’s still early, as he’s a rookie who is currently 2nd in the championship after the Chinese GP, teams with Antonelli on them could be well poised to rake in a bundle of DOTD F1 Fantasy points this season.