There is no shortage of seeing clips of race car drivers winning and being lauded for their skill but on the flip side I see clips of this or that car being a triumph of engineering that wins races.
It would seem to me there is a mesh between driver and car that wins but can we ever say it was THE car or THE driver that was the difference in a race?
[sub]Assume a legit race with competent other drivers and cars.[/sub]
There’s been at least one race series – IROC (the International Race of Champions) – which attempted to take the car out as a variable in races. In IROC races, the organizers brought together top-level drivers from various series (such as Indy Car, NASCAR, and sports car racing), and placed them all in identical, identically-prepped (and randomly assigned) stock cars.
(One may also note that, not only is the car an important part of the formula for winning, but so are the pit crew / garage crew, and other members of a race team, such as spotters.)
Basically along the same lines as my thought; it depends on the type of race and to some degree what level.
In amateur racing it can be a case of car or driver; a really great driver can win with a poor car or a secondary driver can buy the trophy with deep pockets and a top machine. Lord knows my family saw both in our careers. But when you get to the pro level it really does become more a case of man AND machine and its hard to pin the rose on either one. I did Grand National motorcycle racing and while my record was better than my pocketbook really allowed, even at the pro level, I wasn’t making as many races or beating my body or bike as much as a lot of the other guys were so it was pretty much a wash – they had more backing and possibly experience but I was fresher both physically and mechanically. On any given Sunday we all stood about the same chance of checker and glory — or crash and burn.
My sense is the cars are all tweaked to a fair-the-well and have little to distinguish one from another and it is all drivers.
Without the driver, the car just sits there.
I don’t follow auto racing as closely as I once did, but from what I do know, this varies considerably from racing series to racing series. And, a lot of it has to do with how much money / how many resources a particular racing team has behind it.
At the highest level of NASCAR (the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series), the cars are all very similar now to each other now, but a team which has deeper pockets (such as Hendrick Motorsports) is able to supply its drivers with more / better technicians, backup cars, more engines, etc. A smaller team isn’t able to buy new engines and new chassis as often, doesn’t have as many technicians and mechanics available to work on their cars, may have to make do with rebuilding more often, etc. It puts the drivers who are with one of the big teams at a substantial advantage.
My understanding is that there’s a similar issue in Formula 1 – that a few of the big teams, such as Mercedes and Ferrari, which have the backing of major manufacturers, dominate the sport.
Self-racing cars could be a thing!
A good driver can get a good result from a bad car, and a bad driver can get a bad result from a good car. Given enough time watching racing you can figure out which is which.
Let’s use Formula One as an example. A few years ago Ross Brawn bought a team from Honda, who was withdrawing from the sport. The car used a Mercedes engine and had an aerodynamic innovation that allowed Jenson Button to win the Driver’s Championship that year. He had never had a season like that before and never had one like that again. He was a perfectly good driver, but that clearly was the car that made the driver.
Lewis Hamilton, on the other hand, has always had good equipment, but his skills are exceptional. He won for McLaren and he wins for Mercedes, and in all cases he was clearly the better driver on the team, even when his teammate won the championship. The car is dominant, but you can tell that Lewis would get decent results out of a lesser car.
Drivers without cars significantly underperform their motorized rivals.
But that is not the question. In direct competition - a race between a car with no driver and a driver without a car, I would be backing the carless driver to lap significantly faster.
The answer is “Yes”
I drove race cars for many years. I saw good drivers do amazing things with bad cars. I also saw poor drivers do crap with good cars. I considered myself to be an average driver, the one time I had a really good car I sometimes amazed myself how well I did. The car was built by someone who put a lot of money into it but had no idea what to do on the track. He blamed the car, not himself. I bought the car cheap, other than paint did nothing to it and ran up front. He spent even more to build another car and ran mid pack every week.
Modern F1 is weighted heavily on the car these days. You could put Grojean in Hamilton’s car and he would win. Put Lewis in the Williams and he’ll probably only beat the other Williams and finish near last.
As I type this, I’m watching qualifying. Bottas just beat Lewis for pole.
Ultimately, it’s the driver. If you could put every pro driver in the exact same car, just some car off the showroom floor, and you wouldn’t get a multi-way tie.
I think the point is though that Grosjean wouldn’t win as often as Lewis would. He wouldn’t be guaranteed to make the most of the car on the days it was dominant or make the best of a bad job when it wasn’t.
Lewis in a 2019 Williams would struggle to do too much as the car is two or three seconds off the pace, there is only so much a driver can do. In a top tier car Lewis is worth half a second a lap at least and that’s the difference between first and nowhere but it can’t work miracles on the Williams. Lewis has won in a dog of a car though and lesser drivers just wouldn’t.
It’s the driver. Sure, at a certain point, a car can be so inferior that even the best driver in the world couldn’t get a win out of it, but at elite performance level the cars are all within close proximity of performance.
Without the car, the driver just sits there.
Hopefully, not on the track.
Without the pit crew, they both just sit there (says the guy on a pit crew) 