If NASCAR actually takes driver’s weight into consideration for the official weight of the car then I think it gives Robby’s idea that Indy should do the same a little bit more legitimacy. From what I’ve read though Robby Gordon never had any intention of racing in this year’s 500 anyways, so this complaint is probably more about him being pissed there’s a woman in the 500 than anything else.
As for physical stats, I think most driver’s are a healthy trim because it’s not necessarily “power” but healthy endurance you need to suffer through the sweltering hell that is a modern race car for hours on end without dying of exhaustion. Although there is a good number of Nascar drivers who weigh 180-210 as well, just leafing through the rankings stats.
The median is probably around 170 tho.
Somebody should take a look at Shaquille O’Neal. He clearly has a significant height and weight advantage over many other players in the NBA. No fair, no fair.
Not entirely true. Danica Patrick is the fourth woman to qualify for the Indy 500. The first was almost 30 years ago.
And other racing series weigh the driver and car together. A lighter driver is still at a slight advantage, though; a team will have to add lead weights to bring the car up to the minimum, but they can place those weights wherever they want in the car.
The weight of a driver might be an advantage, but I doubt very much it’s a significant advantage or the issue would have raised a helluva long time before now.
The only significant change is the gender of the driver. If she has the endurance, relexes and support crew to win in her machine, more power to her. Everything else is whining and media hype.
Though it will be hilarious to watch NASCAR sort out this out, no matter which way.
Nah, that have to have it sucked out of their bodies until they meet the weight requirement.
Frankly, I find all big dollar pro-racing to be bogus. The folks in charge of Indy got bent out of shape about one entry using a turbine engine, and rewrote the rulebook before the race was finished to prevent anyone else from doing the same thing. If racing’s supposed to be about speed and performance, then why not allow it? Because it wouldn’t be sporting? Bullshit. Teams would either switch to turbines or quit racing.
As for NASCAR, the SC stands for “Stock Car” but when was the last time you could buy car like they race at your local dealer? And don’t hand me the crap about how racing technology is quickly incorporated into street cars. Disk brakes, fuel injection and 4-wheel drive all showed up in pre-WWII Indy race cars. How long did it take for them to show up in street cars? A couple of decades, at least. Your average race car can protect the drive in the event of a crash at 100+ MPH, try that with the car you just drove off the dealer’s lot. Oh, and if airbags are so great, why don’t race cars have 'em?
It ain’t the chariot, baby, it’s the horses.
If Danica Patrick is beating you, it ain’t because she’s lighter, it’s because she’s doing something better than you.
But I tell you what, just to be sure, calculate how much difference (in time) her supposed “advantage” is.
And every driver who she beats by more than that amount has to stand up and read one hour of Audre Lourde’s poetry in the middle of a shopping mall in Mississippi. While wearing a dress.
I don’t think anyone will take that challenge.
Danica Patrick can race. Let her race.
And shut the fuck up.
@Tuckerfan Roll-cages and the seatbelts used in NASCAR cars would be way too big of an inconvenience factor for most average drivers, and the automakers know this.
TVEblen, I’m the last person that should be correcting someone on motor sport knowledge but this is Indy Car which is a whole different racing organization and whole different type of car than NASCAR.
The seatbelts, yeah, but for years Volvo pointed out that they had a rollcage built into their cars, so it can be done. Tucker’s had something similar way back in '48.
Duh!
Right you are, Martin, and excellent correction. I’m not a fan of either sport, so your catch is a useful caveat I should have noted before my fingers got ahead of my brain. (Translation: I’m anything but an expert, so maybe there are hellishly significant engineering/performance factors of which I’m blissfully ignorant.)
I just doubt that any high-profile (i.e. lucrative) motor sport is so highly dependent on drivers’ weights that it hasn’t been noted before now.
Veb
I don’t think Robbie Gordon is a whiner. I think he has some justification and that the series should consider weight equalization.
Everyone here seems to think that a 100-lb or even 50-lb difference is negligible, but this is far from the case, especially in a 500-mile race. Engineers and designers spend huge sums of money to trim pounds and even ounces from the cars. Races in this series have been won by as little as 24 thousandths of a second–about 3 inches!–so even an apparently tiny advantage could make the difference between first and fifth or sixth place.
I don’t have any cites handy, but in coverage of Formula One qualifying yesterday, commentator Steve Matchett said that a 50-lb difference could be worth one or two tenths per lap. (Kimi Raikonnen didn’t take the pole for Sunday’s race, so they were theorizing he must have a heavier fuel load, and was planning to run a one-stop race.)
IRL cars are roughly comparable to F1 cars, and if the same equation holds, the difference between a 100-lb driver and a 200-lb driver could be as much as two full laps over a 200-lap race:
100 lbs = .4 sec per lap x 200 laps = 80 seconds
Top competitors this year are running laps in just under 40 seconds.
Now, the effects of weight differentials will be most pronounced under acceleration, and there is more acceleration on the road courses of F1 than a superspeedway like Indy, But even if the advantage is much smaller, say one quarter or less, that would equal a half a lap. That is still significant in a series this closely matched.
I’m rooting for Danica, but I think she has a decided advantage WRT weight. (And hotness!)
This is pre-emptive bitching: the racers are complaining about her so they have an excuse if they lose.
I’m not into racing at all, but if this weight difference was such an advantage, why aren’t all the successful IndyCar drivers jockey-sized? Oh, because I guess it takes some skill to succeed, and a difference of less than 1 MPH isn’t that big.
Did a little math on this
500 (miles in race)/190 MPH = 2.6315
500/191 = 2.6178
If the 1 MPH for 100 pounds in weight is correct then it is a decent avantage. None of the races actually average 190 due to pit stops/cautions etc but there is an advantage, ~ a minute over the length of the race.
I think that Robby Gordon has a point, they should factor in the drivers wieght with the weight of the car.
I also think Gordon could have done a much better job explaining his position on the issue.
Last, I hope she wins. And she is a hottie.
Slee
F1 rules make the teams put the cars through the weigh-in with the drivers on board and all fuel drained, so teams with fat drivers can afford to run lighter cars and vice versa, but it all evens out in the end. Drivers tend to tank up on fluids before the weigh-in, too, to allow the teams to shave a couple more pounds off the car. I’m quite surprised Indy rules don’t do it this way, really, so Gordon does have a point (although the fact that it apparently never bothered him before is a little suspect).
That said, I think a weight advantage is going to be much less noticeable in Indy, where most circuits are ovals. Less acceleration/deceleration will mean mass matters less, as it’s more about top speed, (loosely) a function of power and drag. The weight disadvantage in F1 varies considerably between tracks; if their figure of .2s/lap for 50lbs of fuel at the Nurburgring is correct, then the same figure at Monaco (a really twisty street track) is almost double that. Plus, the .2s per lap is over a 1m30s lap, which is more than double the time for the Indy lap you quoted. On a 40s oval lap with little braking or acceleration, I’d be quite surprised if the difference was even nearly as much as half a tenth.
Maybe Alessandro Zanardi decided to come back in the European Touring Car Championship so as not be acussed of getting an unfair weight advantage by losing his legs.
A hundred pound woman could have plenty of muscle - it depends on how tall she is, and how active she is.
I think someone is getting snippy because “girl” is playing HIS game, and doing a fine job of it, too. I suspect that deep down he’s one of those men who believe that if a woman bests them at anything his balls will fall off. Or maybe it’s not so deep down.
Do you have a cite? What would be the advantage of that? The net weight would still be the same. Also, that would be inconvenient for the driver. ~2 hours of racing and nowhere to pee!
No cite, I just seem to remember Martin Brundle chuntering on about it at some point; it’s quite possibly bollocks, or something that only a couple of drivers bother with. They don’t weigh in right before the start of the race however, so I think the idea is that they weigh in heavier than they are during the race, then drink a ton afterwards for the post-race weigh-in (which they’d probably do anyway).
My husband is building a drag racing car, so he reads up on this shit. In drag racing, you save one tenth of a second per 100 lbs. of weight reduction (no cite…he read it somewhere).
He also said that in a NASCAR situation (i.e., guys turning left for 500 miles), probably the only advantage would be more fuel efficiency (probably immeasurable). So you have some indescernable advantage in the pit? This guy is a fucking whiner.
When he’s done building his car, I should drag race for him, since I’m 105 and he’s 165. In NASCAR, it’s not going to make a difference.
Robbie Gordon is definitely a whiner because of this quote.
Most of the IRL guys are wiry, and 150lbs ±10 (wonder why?). He wasn’t complaining about other drivers getting a 50lb advantage over him, now he refuses to race over the issue.
Saying that IRL should do their weigh in just like F1 or NASCAR and include the driver is reasonable. Saying that you refuse to race against a woman because she’s too slight of build is whining crap.