FESS UP!!!
You just want to see all that white milk run down her face.
Does being lighter convey a racing advantage? Because then, a short, horse-Jockey type body would have an awesome advantage.
As for beauty, I wonder if would you still root for her if there was a crash that ruined her looks?
The same media that is building her up now is about to start tearing her down if she doesn’t get a win soon, same with Anna. K. There are hundreds of players like Anna K., but she got picked out by the media to be a star, for obvious reasons. Then same media that made her star for being hot tore her up for not being a star player, when no one ever said she was.
Same here. Danica P. is of about the same talent- consistently 8-10th with a typical race of 17-18 cars. There is no reason to think she a future star, but because she’s hot, she’s marketed.
Yes, being lighter conveys an advantage if it isn’t normalized out by adding weights. I’ve been told in other Danica threads that jockeys have to weigh in, and weights are added to the horse. (Possibly there is a maximum amount of weight added, which is why you don’t ever see normal person sized jockeys, but I don’t know.)
Of note is that NASCAR weigh-ins include the driver, while IRL weigh-ins do not. NASCAR cars weigh almost twice what IRL cars weigh, so clearly a 50 pound body weight difference is a tangible advantage to have on the IRL racing.
To put it simply, if the cars aren’t weighed as-raced, (ie: including the driver,) then they aren’t weighed fairly. During the heated pit discussion of this issue a couple years ago, most people seemd to be of the opinion that women should enjoy an advantage (from weight) in racing because women have had a rough time in general. Personally, I think that attitude is condescending toward women.
Jesus Christ…if people still want to whine because she is 50 pounds lighter, then the other drivers should be forced to wear more restrictive clothing to make up for the fact that men are by nature physically stronger than women. Or, perhaps drivers who are the optimum height for aerodynamic head positioning/steering wheel clearance should have to put risers in their seats to make up for the taller drivers, or sit lower to make up for the shorter drivers. What about teams that spend more on R&D than others? Should they be forced to even up the playing field by sharing the results?
This entire problem is that certain men are threatened by beautiful women, or those perceived as such, and even more threatened by them if they attain success in a field normally dominated by men, because it means those men have to quit using the,“if she wasn’t hot, she wouldn’t be shit”, or “beautiful women are airheads and otherwise talentless” lines.
And, Anna K was one of, if not the best doubles player for years. If she was dog faced ugly, she would still have been the best doubles player in the world, and one of the better pros. She somehow gets bagged on because she is too pretty? Do some people resent her because she was too pretty for her skill level?
How much of a difference does 50 pounds or so make? I mean, we’re not talking jockeys and a less than 2 mile race here. Considering all the other variables, I find it hard to believe that driver weight could have that much of an effect over a 500 mile race.
Well, that’s the thing…if it were a 2 mile race, then 50 lbs probably wouldn’t make enough difference over that short of a duration. But over 500 miles, that little sliver of advantage adds up to a more significant one.
But there’s so many other things that can happen. Wrecks and resulting variable numbers of cautions, bad pit stops, mistakes in passing wasting fuel, and other things that can affect mileage. Sure, with the same power and less weight I agree that consumption should be less and speed slightly greater, but then again, the faster you go the more fuel you use and that difference in speed would need to be constant to really make an effect on actual lap speed difference.
Nice. I didn’t see my old man even post to this thread. I didn’t say anything about winning multiple times either. If you professionally win a tournament in your career, that’s better than virtually anyone else that’s ever picked up a racquet/club/driven a car has. Not someone who is or isn’t pro at their sport, but ever. Hell, even if you do count only professional players, that’s still better than almost all of them has done as well. Ana came and went. She made gobs of money, and she’s having a pretty comfortable life as a result. I don’t see how that’d be a failure in any way. (You didn’t call her a failure.)
I’d like to see the spread in a few sports. What percentage of events are won by what people. If what you’re saying is correct, then at least 50% of the IRL racing will have a tournament victory. Let’s take a look at tennis and golf while we’re at it. What percentage of professional athletes in those sports have won a tournament? I’d hazard a guess and say that it’d range from 15% (in golf) to 20% (tennis?).
If driver weight doesn’t make a difference, then why does NASCAR (with much heavier cars) weigh the cars with the drivers in them?
This is comically ridiculous. You’re focusing on things that make it easier to get the car up to its maximum potential, but lighter weight doesn’t make it easier to drive the car; it makes the car faster. That’s what makes it an unfair advantage.
You seem to be unable to compare like with like.
The dig isn’t that Anna was a pro who never won an individual event. The dig is that she was a very good pro who never won an individual event. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she is the only WTA player to ever attain a top-10 ranking without winning a single individual tournament. I’d bet a dollar than the vast majority of top-20 players have one at least one individual tournament.
To reiterate, though, if IRL works the way I think it does, then this logic wouldn’t apply to Danica, since there wouldn’t be any easy wins where none of the top drivers bother to show up.
A number of things make a car faster, including information gained during R&D, the reaction times of the driver, and the setup of the car. Lighter weight helps in creating a greater top speed. Racing a car is more than creating the highest speed possible. Until you decide it’s fair to level the playing field in every single aspect that affects handling, pit times, acceleration, and top speed, leave the weight issue alone.
How about if we require that all pit crew members to be the same height, weight, and speed on a shuttle run test so that no pit crew can gain an advantage by hiring stronger, faster tire changers?
I wonder why you feel so strongly about this. Is it so that the poor widdle wimminfolk get an advantage over the big mean guys? If not, I can’t follow your logic at all.
Are you against the NASCAR practice of weighing the driver and car together, or is it only in IRL where the weight issue should be left alone?
Crap. Hamsters hate me.
In the men and womens’ tennis tours, there’s 1500 and 1400 ranked players respectively. With 36 (I think) and 30 (I think) winners for 60 and 66 tournaments respectively, there’s a miniscule chance that you’ll win at random. Someone that would never win a tournament is in the VAST majority.
There are 40 IRL drivers. There are 14 races. There were only 6 winners of each of those 14 races last year. Your chances are best in IRL racing, but with those odds, you’ve got to have a fluke year.
In the PGA tour in 2007, the player rankings go to 1347. Last year, there were 40 different winners in 56 tournaments.
Seriously, there’s no shame in being a professional tennis/golf/IRL racer and not having a win on your resume.
What’s the lifespan of an IRL career anyways?
How many top 10 and top 20 players have never won an individual tournament?
ETA: Alternately, how many top 20 players can you find who never won an individual tournament, other than Anna Kournikova?
I’m perfectly capable of comparing. If you’re arguing that Ana Kournikova might have been the only player to have ever been ranked in the top ten and never won a tournament, then that’s a statistical anomaly. Not only that, but that’s even a silly argument to make because everything you’re fighting with has happened exactly once, if that’s true. If that’s your case, then you’ve got some numbers to crunch and some results to comb through throughout the years.
All I’m saying is that Ana Kournikova isn’t a failure because she never won an individual title. Maybe we’re fighting two different battles here.
That’s your case. I’m not making it for you.
That’s it exactly.
This point was made explicitly in ESPN’s episode of You Can’t Blame: Anna Kournikova for Not Winning a Tournament. I mentioned that the haters are already starting to speak up. Wee Bairn explained the reason for it.
I still maintain that failing to ever win a WTA individual tournament is a legitimate criticism of a top player. The schmucks who never crack the top 100, but manage to eak out a brief career? Obviously their failure to win a tournament isn’t a dig, since they aren’t expected to win. But top players are expected to win something just by virtue of being a top player.
No, every sanctioning body is free to make rules as they allow. Nascar was also slow to adopt mandatory SAFER barriers and HANS type devices. Why is Nascar the golden authority for the correct way to administer a race?
I feel strongly that it is such a non factor that people who constantly harp on it must have a hidden agenda. Until you can produce numbers that show how much speed on every single course the IRL races on can be gained by a 50 pound weight advantage? How does the fact that some cars have an extra 50 pounds at the lowest point in the car and in the exact center affect cornering speeds, on speedways, and on road courses? Do you have any data to show that a 50 pound decrease in weight is any advantage in a race(except for drag races, obviously).
There are a million tiny little variables that can account for a .01 second difference in a lap time, I wonder why the fact that a particular racer is 50 pounds lighter is the one that people bitch about.
If weight IS such an issue, then why doesn’t MotoGP have a weight requirement for the bike+rider instead of just the bike? There would be no racing league in the world where rider weight would have a greater affect than MotoGP.
Probably because it would be impractical.
IRL is the only major (car) racing organization that doesn’t add ballast to offset driver weight disparities. (Many apply some sort of cutoff, for example 150. In other words, if you weigh more than 150 pounds, and want an even playing field, get your fat ass to the gym.)
As for whether or not 50 pounds makes a difference, a full gas tank is around 80 pounds. Cars clock faster lap times with a quarter tank than a full one.
No amount of handwaving negates the basics physics of racing. IRL is within their rights to give an advantage to the lighter drivers; hell, with Danica on the circuit it’s in their best interest to do so. But it is a departure from standard (car) racing practices.
I personally am against unfair advantages just on general principle, and especially when it seems to target specific competitors. It would be like having an exception to steroids rules for players that have (dual) citizenship in a country where steroids are legal.