Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Red Bull Ring, 2019

Verstappen announced as Driver of the Day winner after Kubica “error”

2019 Austrian Grand Prix

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Formula 1 has announced Max Verstappen as the winner of its Driver of the Day poll after discounting some votes cast in favour of Robert Kubica.

The Williams driver was originally listed as the winner of the poll yesterday before Formula 1 Management confirmed it was looking into a “technical error” in the poll. Kubica finished Sunday’s race in last position, three laps down.

“A technical error resulted in Williams’ Robert Kubica being declared the winner after he was incorrectly allocated a number of votes,” FOM confirmed.

After verifying its data FOM has listed Verstappen as the winner with 74% of the votes ahead of Charles Leclerc on 11% and Carlos Sainz Jnr 7%. It did not indicated how many of the remaining 8% of votes were cast in favour of Kubica.

Verstappen won the race from second on the grid despite making a slow start and having to pass Sebastian Vettel, Valtteri Bottas and Leclec on his way to victory.

The Red Bull racer has now won F1’s Driver of the Day poll three times this year. Two-times poll winner Leclerc is the only other driver to have topped the voting more than once. Kubica is yet to win the poll.

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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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25 comments on “Verstappen announced as Driver of the Day winner after Kubica “error””

  1. Booooo!! F1 rule makers are out of control!!!! This is worse than what happened to Vettel

    1. Can’t you respect Stewards’ decisions?

      Or are you just so important and knowledgeable, that your authority dwarfs that of any Steward, Driver or F1-and Motorsport-associated person?
      And that’s why you dare to say what you say?

      1. Pretty sure @bernasaurus ‘s comment was in jest.

        1. That’s how I read it too @phylyp

      2. GtisBetter (@)
        2nd July 2019, 16:01

        I crown him king of stewards and as such he has total control.

      3. I was just joshing

        1. Lee H (@stopitrawr)
          3rd July 2019, 8:24

          @bernasaurus

          I think the other guy was too.

          Or at least I hope so.

      4. Time to go shopping for a sense of humour.

    2. KUB definitely pushed VER out of the eletronic track.

    3. I’m with you @bernasaurus this is a disgraceful insult and slap in the face to all of the faithful Robert fans.

      The very idea that someone set up a Bot is 100% unfair to people like me who sat up for 12 hours straight creating false E-Mail accounts in order to vote.

      My fingers were bleeding I tell you … BLEEDING!

      I am never going to watch any race of any kind ever again after this farcical ruling!

      1. P.S. please don’t use that picture for the caption competition – I couldn’t possibly think of anything even vaguely printable :)

  2. If I could be bothered, which I’m not, I would be voting for Kubica at the next race, just to make the point that the FOM DotD is a waste of space.

  3. I applaud F1 for quickly determining there was a problem, admitting it, and fixing it.

    Our governments could learn from this.

    1. I’m sure governments and political parties around the world are very interested as to why a barely noticed “back of the field” contender driving for an underfunded team suddenly polled better than a front running contender driving for a well funded team with huge fan support. All to often F1 is accused of being “not real world” relevant, and yet here is an example with real world relevance and implications.

  4. I’m guessing a crazed Kubica fan (we’re not short of them it seems) wrote a bot to cast votes.

  5. I don’t know about you guys but I’m voting for Kubica for the driver of the day for the remainder of the season.

    1. Why? He wasn’t even all that in his first stint in F1, let alone now.

      1. Ha Ha Ha, you’ve got me laughing about your first part of the comment.

  6. Robert McKay
    2nd July 2019, 17:51

    Good job there’s nothing like a temporary speed boost riding on this sort of poll…

  7. “…making a slow start…”
    Spit drink all over my screen. The two guys starting directly behind him passed him before he reached the light bar.

  8. I’m still laughing, one of the few where Max definitely deserved it and it ended up being Kubica.

    Never been a fan of public voting systems but this one just cracked me up.

  9. Hans (@hanswesterbeek)
    3rd July 2019, 7:30

    Right. It took them thee hours to figure out who won the race, but that was nothing compared to the three days needed to understand who won an online poll.

    1. Hans (@hanswesterbeek)
      3rd July 2019, 7:32

      *three hours.

Comments are closed.