Research Identifying the Second-Most Hated NASCAR Driver Adds Insult to Injury, Literally
There’s no sense pulling a Casey Kasem here and making you sit through American Top 40 on the AM radio to confirm a song you hate is at No. 1. Nope, we’re revealing right off the bat that social media research has determined Bubba Wallace is the season’s most hated driver in the NASCAR Cup Series.
But you knew that just as you’re aware that the sun always rises in the East, and the Toronto Maple Leafs are never winning the Stanley Cup again.
It turns out the real battle is for second place, and Kyle Busch isn’t even a contender. We’ll give you a few moments to figure out who it could be while explaining the research.
How a website identified the most and least popular NASCAR drivers
Gambling.com Group Limited is a publicly traded company headquartered off the shore of the French mainland in the English Channel. Though it doesn’t offer gambling services, the company provides digital marketing for others in the industry.
As the NASCAR regular season wound down, Gambling.com used Linkfluence to evaluate reactions on social media to drivers between Feb. 1 and Aug. 31. The tool looked for positive and negative words, hashtags, and emojis associated with each driver.
Injury and insult add up to a bad week for Cody Ware
With everything else that happened Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway, the wreck involving Cody Ware almost constituted an afterthought, though that shouldn’t have been the case because of how close it came to being extremely serious.
As it was, Ware suffered injuries that will require him to obtain clearance from NASCAR to race this weekend at Talladega.
Ware’s No. 51 Ford was getting loose midway through the race at Texas Motor Speedway when the car broke sideways in Turn 4 and took him hard into the outside wall. From there, the throttle stuck, and Ware had no control of the car as it roared toward the pits. The car barely missed the abutment for an opening leading to the infield garages and haulers. Had he struck it head-on, the subsequent ankle injury might have constituted only Ware’s fourth or fifth biggest problem.
So, what news did Ware wake up to on Tuesday?
Gambling.com’s social media research had determined that only Bubba Wallace is viewed more negatively than him among Cup Series drivers on social media. The website reported 30.1% of tweets regarding Wallace expressed negative sentiment. Ware checked in at 18.9%, followed by Ty Dillon (17.2%), Denny Hamlin (15.1%), and Justin Haley (14.7%).
FWIW, Haley’s inclusion is bizarre. At least he’s taking it in stride, joking on Twitter about it being his third top-five showing of the season.
Cole Custer, Daniil Kvyat, Jacques Villeneuve, Kyle Busch, and Austin Dillon rounded out the top 10.
Daniel Suarez scores another NASCAR win of sorts
Trackhouse Racing driver Daniel Suarez scored his first Cup Series win this season at Sonoma, earning him significant attention, and much of it was positive.
It landed him the No. 1 spot in the research to identify the most loved driver. Suarez’s 44.7% score edged rookie Austin Cindric (42.4%), who began the season by winning the Daytona 500, with Kyle Larson (36.6%), Kevin Harvick (35.0%), and Alex Bowman (34.8%) completing the top five.
Rounding out the top 10 were Ryan Blaney, Martin Truex Jr., Joey Logano, Chase Briscoe, and Kurt Busch.
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