You’ll be familiar with the concept of the post-race press conference in Formula 1. You’re probably aware that the first part of that is the TV unilaterals – someone like David Croft or James Allen asks the podium drivers generic questions for the TV feed, starting with the winner and something like: “So, that was a race! Say some words.”

Since the FIA kindly hosts press conference transcripts on their website, I thought it might be quite interesting to go back through the 19 races of 2011 and analyse the answers to these first answers by driver, with a little (lot of) help from IBM’s wondrous Many Eyes visualisation tools.

Sebastian Vettel

With a ridiculous 11 race wins, Sebastian Vettel spouted plenty of words for Many Eyes to churn through to, and produce this word cloud.

He obviously had a lot to think about, primarily the race unsurprisingly, and equally unsurprisingly it was usually good. He often spoke about the car, with which he was probably happy, if not really happy.

He often talked about the gap to those behind him, presumably because a lot of the time that’s all he was racing against. Jenson and Lewis featured significantly more in his thoughts than Fernando or Mark – which nicely reflects their levels of competitiveness in 2011.

But most interesting of all, it appears that Vettel might have a vocal tick in the word bit, which cropped up an awful lot. I’ll keep an ear out for that.

Jenson Button

Moving on to Jenson Button, the analysis gets a bit sketchier with only three wins to look at.

Nonetheless, he too had a lot to think about. He was a touch stronger with the superlatives than Vettel: great and amazing, rather than merely good and the odd fantastic.

But the bigger difference between them is that, while Vettel did credit the car, Button mentioned the team an awful lot. That is the McLaren way, after all – win and lose as a team.

Lewis Hamilton

The only other man to win multiple races was Lewis Hamilton, so let’s look at his three. Oh look, he too had a lot to think about. Inevitable when you ask for an opinion, I suppose.

Like Button, he spoke a lot about the team, but mainly referred to them as the guys. He too pulled out the superlatives: great and fantastic, in his case.

And like Vettel, it looks like Hamilton might have a curious vocal tick too: the word just. Another one to keep an ear out for.

Fernando Alonso & Mark Webber

With a win a piece, the word clouds for Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber are virtually meaningless. But if you fancy a look, they’re on my Many Eyes page, along with the other three and the data behind the lot of them.