However, if we had to pick a winner based on their record on previous tasks, one candidate stands well above the rest: Carina Lepore.
In fact, with nine wins out of 10, the 30-year-old artisan bakery owner is statistically the most successful Apprentice candidate ever. Not only has Carina never been brought back to the final boardroom, but she’s the only candidate in Apprentice history to win three tasks as PM by the end of week 10.
No other candidate this year compares. While Lewis has lost five tasks (two as PM), Lottie has found herself in the final trio twice and Pamela has lost three times in total. Even Scarlett, arguably one of the strongest candidates of the series, has faced defeat in three weeks, once as project manager.
To show just how much better Carina is, imagine if all the candidates were each a football team competing in a single division – an Apprentice version of the Premier League, if you will, complete with the constant threat of managerial firings.
To take into account all the degrees of winning and losing on the show, this Apprentice league requires a points system a little more complex than your average football table. A system that looks something like this…
- +3 points for a win as a project manager
- -3 points for a loss as a project manager
- -2 points for an appearance in the final boardroom
- +1 point for being on the winning side
- -1 point for being on the losing side (and not being brought back to the final boardroom).
Allocate those points to the remaining candidates at the end of week 10 and you get a table that looks like…
Put simply: Carina is miles ahead. To be precise, 10 points ahead of her nearest rivals (Lottie and Pamela).
And Carina doesn’t only top this year’s table. Incorporate every Apprentice ever from the show’s 15 series into one superleague and here are the standings after week 10…
Carina’s closest competition: series seven runner-up Helen Milligan, who went on to become head of retail at Greggs. The top performing-candidates also feature series four winner Lee McQueen and series eight’s Nick Holzherr, a contestant that now works in a senior position in Samsung’s San Francisco base.
Sure, you don’t necessarily need a decent task record to nab a business investment from Lord Sugar (series seven winner Tom Pellereau achieved a score of -10 by week 10), but if this table is anything to go by, we can expect big things from Carina in the coming years.
You heard it here first.
The Apprentice is on BBC One, Wednesday at 9pm
