But is it possible to drive an Indy car with no brain? :dubious:
How many of your loses can you attribute solely to other drivers having a lower weight than yours? And can it be demonstrated that you have consistently placed better than all drivers with a greater weight than your own? It should go without saying that a difference in weight is not automatically a disadvantage. How does the rules committee know that your losing streak is not simply because you suck as a driver? If changes were made, and you still failed to place, what then?
Unless the indication is that weight differences alone contribute significantly to one’s performance (or lack thereof) within the sport, there is no justifcation for changing current rules and regulations.
See, here’s the thing: if a 40-lb weight difference is an advantage, than so is a 2-lb weight difference. Or a 1-lb. And if we’ve learned anything from my namesake, it’s that even small differences matter. Over a lifetime carreer of racing then, it should be easily seen that the bestest Indy racers are always lightest, if your argument holds. Any stats gurus have the Straight Dope on that?
Can a skeleton drive a car?
Pff. Plenty of people are capable of recognizing that she’s a hottie without losing respect for her driving ability.
So how do you explain NASCAR’s rule? They’re a bunch of dumbass rednecks who don’t understand the finer points of racing as well as you? Heavier cars, same oval, and yet they weigh the drivers.
I like people with opinions just fine, though I do reserve the right to challenge the opinion that women have somehow sullied their good name if they choose to do modeling.
The drivers, including the guy who won, so it can’t be written off as pure sour grapes. Remember the article?
Hey, look at that, I have a cite for my position. Do any of you guys have a cite for the “strength” argument?
As an added bonus, my argument doesn’t reduce to “the poor widdle wimmin simply aren’t strong enough to be able to compete fairly.”
Something occured to me while I was obsessing about this debate in the shower.
I actually felt the same way when you posted this, though it is untrue. Kanaan had just as little gas as she did. Remember, he ran out of gas doing his victory lap. She will be a great one, but is still working out some rookie kinks. Kanaan was just too much for her in that particular situation. I have a feeling the outcome will be different should they find themselves in the same situation next year, even if they start weighing drivers.
First, as a Noth Cackalack cracker myself, I’m calling no one a dumbass redneck. Moreover, I know that there’s quite a lot of number crunching that those guys do to optimize for weight, fuel usage, tire wear, and even track conditions. What I said was that it is certain that there are advantages to the driver being heavier; that it is unclear how much the advantages of the driver being lighter outweigh the advantages of being heavier; and that if you add weight to the car with the lighter driver to equalize the total weight that you will effectively be putting the lighter driver at a larger disadvantage than the heavier driver. NASCAR has their rules because they feel that equalizing the total weight is the lesser of the two evils.
This isn’t a “poor widdle wimmin” argument. This is saying that a competitors strength and endurance are significant to their driving performance and that they’re related to a person’s weight. A “poor widdle wimmin” argument would be that if a man and a woman each weighed 130 pounds, then the man’s car should be weighted to make up for an expected difference in upper body strength.
Cite?
What?
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The drivers are strapped in so tightly that nobody is shifting their weight around to try to help the handling of their car. They pull the belts so tight that the torso is not going anywhere. The hands are on the steering wheel or the gearshift, and the feet are on the pedals. And even if one of your limbs wasn’t urgently needed at the moment, there’s no place to move it to.
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Who said anything about reactive weights or changing the moment of inertia? An object can change its moment of inertia by drawing mass toward the axis of rotation (like a figure skater drawing her arms close to her body to speed up a spin), but I see no indication that a driver would want to make that change as a means of controlling the car. Making the moment of inertia as small as possible would make the car more responsive, and then you control it by steering the front wheels.
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A lighter driver will still have an advantage, even if dead weight is added to compensate. The teams can put that dead weight wherever they want; most likely in the center of the car (to minimize moment of inertia) and as low as possible (to keep the center of gravity low and minimize weight transfer during acceleration, turning and braking). A heavier driver has no option where they carry the weight.
Yeah, but not, apparently, the Indy Racing League. You know, the guys who set the rules. If they choose not to factor in driver weight, that’s their choice. That decision is just as arbitrary as any of the other decisions that go into deciding how people should be allowed to race.
I don’t need a ‘cite’, because I’m not trying to prove anything. I don’t care whether her lower weight gives her a 1 mph advantage.
There are two ways of looking at this. One is that the contest should be merely a contest of driving skill. Another is that the contest should be to find out which human is the best driver. That means the human gets to bring all his/her advantages or disadvantages to the table. If you’re small, you do better, all else being equal. Just like the 300lb lineman will have an advantage over the 200 lb lineman, even if they are both equally skilled at football.
In almost all sports there is an element of strength, or height, or reach. Men tend to dominate these sports. If a woman demanded entry to the sport, and also said, “but because the men are stronger, I should get extra advantages to even the playing field”, would you have a problem with that? How about short people playing basketball? Because they are at a disadvantage, they have to be better, faster, more skilled than their taller counterparts to compete. But hey, that’s the way the game is played, so suck it up and start training harder if you’re a little guy and you want to be in the NBA.
So here’s a sport in which driver weight is NOT a factor according to the rules, and along comes a woman who can compete. But now suddenly we’re all about, “Hey! She has a natural advantage! No fair! She must put weights in her car!”
Screw that. Finally a woman gets to compete against men in a sport in which for a change she has a (very slight) natural advantage. Good on her. The men will just have to try a little harder, just like the women do in many other sports.
No, it reduces to, “the poor big men simply aren’t small enough to be able to compete fairly! Make the woman wear some weights!”
In this instance, my position is that they set the rules unfairly, and that they should look into it.
In the interests of disclosure, I mixed up the drivers. Kanaan was the pole sitter, not the winner. Wheldon was the winner, who made the move to pass Danica despite having rouglhly no fuel in his vehicle either. My apologies.
Well, to use a different example, just because MLB doesn’t have a salary cap, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t.
My argument has nothing to do with women at all. If we pretend for a moment that Danica never joined the league, I stand by my argument. It is an unfair advantage for the smaller guys. Small as the advantage may be, it is still there, and the small competitive imbalance it creates doesn’t need to be there, as it is easily correctible.
Again, gender plays no part in my argument, But interestingly, it appears to be a vital factor in yours.
Look, pointing to existing rules as some sort of sacrosanct example of perfection is not really the best way to address issues of competitive balance.
Simple different racing series, different rules. If you want to race Indy you play by the IRL rules. If you want to race Daytona you play by NASCAR’s rules.
Now as I have said before in this thread, a simple wing adjustment can have a greater effect on the car’s top speed than the weight of the driver.
Also how do you reconcile the difference in HP between the different brands of engines? Ellis Dee won’t somebody think of the Foyts? (see post #129 page 3)
This is really the key to the debate. Some apparently feel that sports don’t need a level playing field. That issues of fairness are secondary interests.
I believe that fairness, and having a level playing field, should be of the highest priority in all sports. Otherwise, what’s the point of competing?
The attitude that fairness is irrelevant is truly mind-boggling to me. I’m thinking this debate isn’t really about IRL at all; rather it is a much broader debate perhaps best suited for a different thread.
I concede that there are sometimes legitimate* reasons for institutional bias against a subset of competitors or teams. To say that smaller men somehow need this advantage to overcome the disadvantage of being weaker is not one of them.
- Parity in the NFL, and the subsequent popularity thereof, has shown several of those reasons to be false.
On preview:
To answer the first point, I never claimed that driver weight was the only factor that affects speed. Can’t the lighter drivers make that exact same wing adjustment, and now you’re back to competitive imbalance?
Regarding the Foyts, I would rather see a fixed amount of money available for each team, and the ingenuity of the engineers to use that money would be an element of the sport. However, being that the sport relies on sponsorships of individual teams, (right? I’m not positive…), then this would be an example of one of those legitimate reasons for imbalance. It’s just the fiscal reality of the situation.
Many? I can’t think of a single sport – not one – where the women are at an inherent disadvantage to the men they compete against. In every case, they form their own, segragated leagues.
Interestingly, in many such sports, (the LPGA comes to mind), they explicitly disallow men from competition. Whereas the the gender with the advantage, the PGA, is open to all.
Well, a lot of folks don’t think that this particular set of changes are what makes the race interesting. As has been said before, not even all the drivers want this change.
Well, it’s about time. Since you seem to be unaware of what drive this particular sport, I was wondering about that. As in most of the sports like this, the guys with the $$$$$ do have a lot of say in how it is to be played. Kinda like that in most of the world.
Actually, there are a lot of contests that I would not like to see as being so controlled that there is no bragging rights in winning.
The ‘under dog’ is a time honored icon and what a lot of spectators go to see. You remove that and you lose a big base of fans.
If a $$$ cap is put on a sport like car racing at the Indy or F-1 level, you will kill it dead. The Money guys won’t play. And the bottom line is about $$$$$$.
YMMV
I don’t understand this. (I don’t disagree, I just don’t understand what you mean.)
Agreed, and I have no problem with that.
They shouldn’t.
Ellis Dee babbles on about making things as fair as possible, but I fail to see how Danica’s advantage is any more unfair than, say, Shaq’s height advantage. And the argument that IRL should adjust for weight because NASCAR does is not exactly compelling.
Yeah, it’s just me and that asshole Gordon babbling on. Oh yeah, and Kanaan. Oh, and hey, look who else is babbling on:
WHELDON SAYS DANICA HAD UNFAIR ADVANTAGE: (free reg may be req)
(Emphasis added)
Gee, he must be an asshole to. Or, and here’s a crazy thought, maybe all you guys are wrong.
I can’t for the life of me figure out why that article never mentions the steering advantage that all larger drivers benefit from on a perfectly linear scale. Maybe it’s because that theory is complete crock of steaming shit. Just a guess.
I’m also confused why he would make such an uninformed statement about equality in engine and chassis manufacture. Doesn’t that simpleton have access to the wealth of information you guys have?
It’s almost like he wants his sport to be fair. What a ridiculous concept! If only he were as enlightened as you folks.
I think the difference between car racing and basketball is the inherent attempt by the racing league to make the playing field level between competitors. There are very strict rules about how an IRL car can be setup, weight, engine size and design, tire size, suspension, wing design, etc. Are there ANY rules whatsoever regarding the height of a player in NBA basketball?
If you had height rules in basketball, like a <6’ league, and someone with an anatomical oddity measured under six feet but played like a seven footer (just work with me here), maybe one would think it unfair.
If Danica has a 50 lb weight advantage, her car measures 1550lb but performs like one weighing 1500lb, that’s a 3% difference it’s significant. I can see someone saying that since weight is a rigidly controlled aspect of the car design, the weight of the driver is an important component to include.
All sarcasm aside, Gordon really is a mealy-mouthed whiner:
Gordon backtracks on Patrick’s weight:
(Emphasis added.)
Yeah, it sure is a good and useful feature of IRL that the drivers can’t lift weights. Why don’t they realize that the extra weight from bulking up gives them a steering advantage? Those poor deluded fools.
And what was that comment Hornish made about fuel economy? Let’s look back to an earlier article, from May 30th.
Officials say weight not an issue (reg req):
Fascinating.