You’re thinking of the CART race at Texas Motor Speedway in 2001 that was canceled because the track’s banking was creating such high G-loads that the drivers began getting dizzy and having vision problems. Cite.
I wouldn’t agree with the OP’s colleagues’ characterization of racecar drivers as stated, but I would claim that driving a top level racing car (e.g. F1, Champ Cars (CART), Indy Racing League, NASCAR, and some sports car series) is arguably one of, if not the, most challenging forms of athletic competition in the world, taking into account not only the physical, but also the mental aspects.
The physical difficulty is far greater than is generally understood by people who’ve never driven or ridden in a racecar. There are the G forces and other strength requirements Fridgemagnet spoke of, and the fact that, unlike almost any other sport, except marathon running and long-distance bicycle racing, a racecar driver must keep that effort up for two hours or more with virtually no breaks. (BTW: pit stops are not relaxation breaks: most drivers’ heart rates are higher in pit stops than in any other part of the race except the start and the finish. Besides, they only last between 6 and 20 seconds.)
So from a physical standpoint, a driver needs greater endurance than a player of almost any ball sport, none of which (IIRC) requires more than 20 minutes of continuous play.
Furthermore, a car moving at 220+ MPH (350 KPH) is travelling a the length of a football field every second. To make a turn at precisely the right point requires faster reactions than are needed in any other sport.
Oh, and the cockpits of these cars can easily get to 130-140 degrees F. For two hours.
On the mental side, a driver needs to be an engineer, capable of determining from feelings, sounds, sights, even smells, what his car is doing, and which of the hundreds of possible engine, transmission, suspension, or tire adjustments might be needed to make it perform even better. He needs to communicate these to his team so they can be ready to execute them in the next pit stop.
He* needs to know strategy not just against one other team, as a ball sport player does, but against a dozen or more teams, represented by 20 or 30 other drivers. He has to know the abilities of every other driver, who is safe to run side-by-side with, who is unpredictable, whose teams’ equipment may be more likely to break, etc., etc.
He needs to maintain laser-sharp mental focus for the entire length of the race. A tiny slip of concentration can put him into a wall.
And that’s the bottom line: unlike virtually any other sport, if a racecar driver doesn’t do everything right, he could DIE. Fortunately, safety systems are constantly improving, and fatalities are now much rarer than in the bad old days, but they still happen. (It’s been said that up through the 1960s, as many as one-third to one-half of all pro racecar drivers died on the track!:eek: )
So I think race drivers are certainly among the best athletes in the world, and pro level racing is among the most challenging athletic competitions going.
*I’m using the generic “he” here, but as the talented Danica Patrick, and many other female drivers, have shown, women are quite capable of being top level drivers.
How about we put Mark McGwire, Tiger Woods, Shaq, and some other ball players in open wheel racecars and have them go up against Jeff Gordon, Michael Schumacher, Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon, Danica, and some other drivers? Who do you think would win?
(Well, now that I look it up, Superstars was back in the 1970s and '80s, and NASCAR drivers were definitely not as fit back then. I’m pretty sure they would do much better now.)
