Revealed: Your top 100 – and bottom 10 – F1 races

2016 F1 season

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What makes a great grand prix? It’s a question which Formula One never ceases asking itself and one which has inspired some of the sport’s more contentious rules changes.

From DRS to high-degradation tyre to refuelling to aggregate qualifying, Formula One is obsessed with ‘improving the show’, but seems to get it wrong more often than it gets it right.

That’s why F1 Fanatic has asked for your reaction to every round of the world championship since 2008. For how can F1 understand what makes great racing without making a sincere attempt to hear the views of its fans?

Over the past eight years hundreds of thousands of your votes have been counted, producing a fascinating insight into what your favourite and least favourite races. F1 Fanatic is now making this data available over three new pages on the site which will be updated after each race.

Your top 100 F1 races

Interlagos put on a stunning 2012 finale
The nail-biting conclusion to the 2012 season remains your favourite race of the last eight years. This was a grand prix which had everything: rain showers, lead changes, collisions, great overtaking moves and a championship outcome hanging in the balance until the final laps.

Only eight races scored average higher than nine out of ten – find out which they are and what else appears among your favourite races here:

Your bottom 10 F1 races

At the opposite end of the scale three races received scores of less than four out of ten. Two of these were the rounds held on Valencia’s little-loved street circuit.

But the 2010 German Grand Prix continues to prop up the list. Ferrari decision to order Felipe Massa to give up a race victory one year to the day since his near-fatal accident did not go down well.

Your circuit ratings

Montreal tends to produce lively races
Do some tracks produce better races than others? Are there circuits which always satisfy our shared passion for watching the world’s fastest cars in action even if there’s little in the way of overtaking?

This table shows the average score of races broken down by circuits. The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is at the top of the list, followed by the Nurburgring which last held a grand prix in 2013. The next stop on the schedule – Shanghai – has been one of the best-liked of the new generation of circuits and is seventh in the rankings.

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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16 comments on “Revealed: Your top 100 – and bottom 10 – F1 races”

  1. Hooray Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and lucky to have been at three of the top fifteen races in the last eight years. Pretty amazing.

  2. These averages seem to work out quite well. The top 10 circuits really are the core of what is modern F1.

    The only circuit I think is over-rated is the Shanghai International Circuit. Never really liked the layout, nor do I remember lots of good races there. Only the 2011 one springs to mind, which was good, but not great in my oppinion.
    Another circuit creating inner-conflict for me is Monte-Carlo. Qualifying is always great, regardless of the outcome. Seeing the cars so close to the walls, drivers pushing all they’ve got is amazing. Come race day however, more times than not, it’s an utter snooze fest.

    1. Totally agree with you regarding Monaco @me4me. Although how about this; for all the street circuits that F1 visits, they could have two “sprint” races on the Sunday, say 20 laps long each and awarding half points. The grid for the first race is decided by Saturday quali, and the grid for the 2nd race could be the results from the 1st race. Just an idea to make it less of a precession on street circuits which do not encourage overtaking.

      1. Please leave it as is, that idea is just adding complexity where it is not needed.

  3. A lot of people will probably be surprised that the Hungaroring features quite regularly as one of the best races of the season. The last two races feature in the top ten and 2011’s wet-dry race was also rated highly. Nobody expects good racing at the twisty confines but somehow, it usually delivers. It’s one of the most underrated races of the season in my opinion.

    1. James Whiteley
      12th April 2016, 19:53

      True but 2004 brings the overall average score for the Hungaroring tumbling down :P

  4. Brazil 2012 really was special…even though it didn’t have the dramatic end that the 2008 race had, it was just one of those races you see once or twice in 20 years.

    1. Edge of your seat stuff from start to finish. It would’ve been a great race in its own right, but for it to also be the title-decider just made it one of the most exciting races of the modern era.

  5. To this day I still cannot get my head round what was so great about the 2011 Chinese Grand Prix. It wasn’t bad but it certainly wasn’t worth 9.24 surely?

    1. Definitely because Pirelli’s quick degrading tyres offered more variability in strategy than F1 fans were used to the year before. Add into that the race lead changed in the final couple of laps and it surely helped that Hamilton and not dominating champion Vettel won. So much action was relatively new to everyone. Fascinating how we’re used to it by now.

  6. Interesting to see that 3 out of the best 5 races since 2008 were in the hybrid turbo era of F1, so surely there can’t be much wrong with F1. Do you hear me, Bernie?

    Don’t quite understand why the 2010 German GP got so much stick. Yes, the race result was affected by team orders. But I quite get the feeling the voters wanted to punish Ferrari instead of rating the race…

    Also astonishing to see the 2008 Brazilian GP dropped to 12th on the list.

    Of all those years, 2012 surely stands out as a fantastic season and probably one of the best of all times. It speaks volumes that the races in Abu Dhabi and Valencia got excellent ratings that year.

  7. “The next stop on the schedule – Shanghai – has been one of the best-liked of the new generation of circuits and is seventh in the rankings.”

    Therein lies the problem with statistics. It may produce decent races, but I wouldn’t say that it was a well liked circuit.

    1. Sometime stats dispel myths not create them. In this case people have pre ordained opinions of a circuit maybe based on where it is or the 1st few races there and it sticks like mud but when over time many people rate all the races surprisingly some circuits we perceive to be unloved actually turn out to be decent. In some ways it has nothing to do with a circuit as to the quality of race and more with weather or random occurrences on any given Sunday.

      1. I think with Shanghai people are prejudiced against it because it’s so big and empty, and the smog makes everything seem grey and dull. Then the race starts and it’s usually a belter.

  8. Could we have a special list of first races?

  9. For me, the 2011 Canadian GP was the best race i’ve seen in almost 20 years of watching F1. I admit that the rain delays and safety cars made it hard to follow live, but seeing it on-demand after the race (and being able to skip inactivity periods) was absolutely amazing.
    Jenson Button crashing into teammate LH, limping to the pits, then given a penalty for causing the accident put him plumb last, about half-way through the race. Coming back from that, with a final lap overtake of Vettel for the win, effectively made him be in every position for that race, from 22nd to 1st, something you rarely see.

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