RIP Dan Weldon. Indy las vegas accident.

I also forgot to mention that they experience substantial G forces for short periods of time, and therefore have to be in excellent shape.
 
Helio Castronevese claims to be able to attach a 50lb weight to his head and lift his head up 300 times without stopping.. I would love to see this kid try that.
 
a typical f1 or indycar drivers off season workout consists of an hour or more workout every day during the off season, so 5 or 6 months of working out over an hour each day, usually a bit more. and the racing itself is usually enough to keep them in shape during the season. its not like its exhausting to drive one, but extremely straining, even your average athlete would leave the car with cramps and sore as shit, and likely not able to handle the mental aspect because of so much focus going towards the physical strain.

as far as mental toughness, racers beat everyone IMO.
 
^that is absolutely nothing to highschool athlete let alone a world class athlete. you are talking out of your ass.

Also, a good highschool linebacker would be able to do the 300 reps with 50lbs. collison sport athletes have crazy strong necks.

the physical toll that a race takes on a driver is vastly overemphasized when compared to the physical toll a normal sport takes on its players(excluding baseball).

HOWEVER...a world class racecar driver has retarded good hand/foot eye coordination and lightning reflexes...and this does make them great athletes.

my pet peeve is people saying how hard physically racing is. It may be hard to your average out of shape fatass, but a freaking walk in the park to a real trained athlete. Seriously, give me something that a racecar driver endures phsically, and ill blow it out of the water with an everyday thing that a "traditional sport athelte" does.
 
lets not get in an argument in this thread ok.. its not he right place. If you want make a thread titled, "Racing is not a sport." I would say racing is a collision sport, instead of it happening at 7mph it happens at 207mph..
 
People dying. Another reason not to watch racing.

That sucks though. I thought those things were supposed to be pretty safe.
 
Not worth completely ripping this apart. But you do realize that Formula 1 drivers train 3 hours a day, 1 hour on race days. In the off season they do military fighter jet training. Ever driven a real race car? I assume not. Race grade clutch and brake pedals are insanely hard to press. Brake pedal, try 2000lbs of pressure to get that bad boy to lock. And with high downforce cars like F1, Indy, or Le Mans Prototypes. Lots of downforce means the car essentially becomes heaver thus making the steering a ridiculous amount heavier than your every day car. Also, the G forces on some of these cars are immense. 6 G under braking in F1 and 4 G in some corners in an indy car. Pretty easy to talk shit when you've never tried it mate.
 
never said it wasnt hard, just said it doesnt compare to the physical toll of a football, basketball, soccer or hockey game.

Oh, and if dude has to apply 2000lbs of pressure to lock his brakes, that means he can effectivly legpress 4000lbs...lol. Ima go ahead and call Bullshit.

and lastly, im not your Mate, Buddy!
 
I would agree with that BS flag. But then you also have to consider the effect adrenaline must have on race car drivers. I'd imagine it's MUCH higher driving 200+ MPH than when making a tackle.
 
I may use mate as I please. it doesn't mean the same thing in every part of the world ya know.

but I know for a fact that Mid Atlantic cars require/required 2000lbs of pressure on the brake pedal to get lock. Why do I know this? A friend of mine has raced in the series before and was told by his engineers that exact number. Why did he ask? Because he wasn't strong enough to get the brake pressure he needed. Go call your bullshit and tell it to leave.

 
its a different kind of physical toll, Ive played team sports all my life, and ive raced all my life, in a car with a decent amount of downfore, only about 2 to 2.5 cornering g's, and in karts, still nothing close to indycar or F1, id say the physical strain you put on your body is more than in something like soccer and football, both which i pretty much played on and off in elementary through highschool. if anything its more of a constant strain in racing. ive gotten more cramps, sore muscles, sore joints etc from racing than i ever did in sports. you have to resist more forces and more constantly. sure its not super hard to turn a wheel but there is a lot of resistance and to do it while under 4+g's and having to make insanely quick tiny inputs, also while braking, and doing it all with a huge amount of finesse and feel. your body is constantly more tense than in anything else ive done. that and the heat can be extremely intense. indycar drivers loose something like 10 lbs of water weight in a single race.where something like soccer is tougher physically is in cardio, sprinting back and fourth down a field, even with the short breaks you get is pretty exhausting.

both take a pretty similar physical effort, just in different ways.

where fitness is important in racing is to assist the mental aspect. racing takes such an insane amount of mental awareness, concentration, feel, etc.. that you have to be able to ignore and not be effected by any physical strain. if your mind is distracted by a straining feeling anywhere in your body, thats concentration thats not going to your driving and can have a HUGE effect.

really you cant know what its like unless you experience it.
 
you have proved you know nothing about anything especially, physics, engineering and the human body. I reallllly hope you arent in college and if you are you are definitely like a communications major or something that doesnt require very high IQ.
 
In addition to having to do the equivalent of a few hundred 50lb reps with their neck, the drivers also have to deal with the cornering force of the wheel, which can also be very strong. Even if 50lbs isn't tough for a football player, an f1 driver is doing this over a period of 2 hours. During those 2 hours, they'll be in a cockpit which can reach upwards of 120 degrees fahrenheit, lose almost 7lbs of weight in sweat, and maintain a heart rate of about 160bpm minimum. If they make any mistakes during this period, such as being a tad too strong on the gas out of the corner or moving the wheel too early, they risk injury or death by colliding with another car or hitting a barrier, or at the very least running off the track and losing a few positions. Probably not a walk in the park to a "real trained athlete", not even an f1 driver.
 
the physical part is what i am talking about. The mental part is harder than anything i can think out except being a denard robinson type quarterback.

Play SEC football in 100 degree heat 100% humidity, while exerting yourself to the max, while being chased by huge, angry, black guys from the ghetto who are trying to win a job in the NFL by hitting you as hard as they can.

And btw, the 2000lbs of force needed to lock the brakes is not how hard the driver must press the pedal. Its how much force must be exerted on the brakes for them to lock. there is a huge mechanical advantage that allows the driver to lock the brakes.
 
And in football, you get 30 second breaks in between plays to calm down ect ect. You don't get that break in a race car. Not even on long straights. You are still constantly doing things, discussing strategy with the team, monitoring the gaps between the car in front and behind. And in the case of Formula 1, you have KERS, DRS, Brake Balance changes, throttle mapping changes, all in the straights.

I'd love to see you take the 3 day Skip Barber school and see what you think after that. That's easy stuff to me, since I do this sort of stuff almost every weekend, but for the average person (even athletes), they always earn respect for how physically and mentally challenging the sport is.
 
yeah its not 2000 lbs of force from your leg, but you still dont have power brakes and theres a shit ton more grip allowing you to brake much harder. i think its around 300-350 lbs on the brake pedal, not sure if thats the initial spike or after, either way, even if it is the initial spike (looking at a graph it would be look like a sudden spike up then down, then a gradual slant as they bleed pressure) braking with the amount of finesse and feel as they have is so much harder than just pushing at 350lbs of pressure then letting off, it doesnt even compare. its like everything in racing, no single task is hard to do or takes a ton of strength, its not that hard to steer and brake an f1 car through a corner physically. but it takes a shit ton of strength to be able to finesse/ feather the car through the corner and be constantly giving tiny inputs and reactions while experiencing around 6 g's in braking and 4-5 in cornering g's, you have to understand that your body is using pretty much every single muscle at its limit for 2 hours to drive one of those things. theres a HUGE difference between cranking the wheel and slamming the brakes, and driving an F1 car at its complete limit.

drivers wouldnt need to spend every day of their off season working out a couple hours a day atleast. i thought i remember hearing that some drivers work out their entire off season, but the driving during the season is enough to keep them in shape. so if driving on average 3 or 4 days a week (just a guess) is enough to keep them in the same shape as they would be working out for hours every single day, its gotta be pretty damn physical.

nobodys saying football and other sports arent extremely physical, because they sure as shit are. but racing can be just as if not more physical as most of these sports.
 
you never played quarterback, or center, or middle linebacker did you? especially in/facing a hurry up offense.

Again, im not saying its not physically demanding, just saying its not nearly as physically demanding as a soccer, football, basketball, or hockey game.

And dont bring crashes into the physically demanding argument, Dudes crash twice a season, are rarely injured, let alone catastrophically injured. If you get through an NFL, NBA, NHL, or EPL season without missing a game or two from injury, you are one of the lucky ones. just because the POTENTIAL for death is higher in racing doesnt mean that it is harder physically.
 
Where did I bring in death?

I'd really just love to see you get in a Go Kart. I'd be willing to bet that you would be crying that your ribs hurt, your neck will be jello, and that you thought you were going fast when you were going slow. It's of equal physical demand as any other sport. It just takes different physical strengths.
 
I dont think he can grasp the concept of DIFFERENT PHYSICAL STRENGTHS. Probably not worth arguing with a child anymore.
 
I still remember when Dale Earnhardt died. RIP Dan, Dale and the other countless racers who passed doing what they lived for.
 
It's incredible all of the work that the Rahal family, and more specifically, Graham is doing with the auctions on ebay. Well done to him.

Found this today. My other picture with Dan. This was at RoboPong 3 years ago I believe. In fact I believe I qualified ahead of him for this event. We ran into some mechanical failures though around lap 120 and were not able to keep our top 10 position :(

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