Fred is sooo excited. The look on his face. LMAO.

http://en.f1i.com/wp-content/uploads...Alonso_RoY.jpg


Thank you for participating.

Alonso is a great driver, but did you see how easy it was for him to do the laps at Indy. So much hype, so much media coverage, but so easy compared to F1. Think about Danica for a moment, its a walk in the park these days.

Yeah, that's what Bourdais and Dixon thought, too.

That's ignorant, absurd, and an insult to everyone who participates in the race.

As a complete Indycar/oval/Indianapolis rookie, he was running at the front nearly instantly. I believe another rookie also finished well in the race (I didn't watch it).

I think that yes, the Indy 500 is a vastly easier race than competing in F1.

I disagree completely. I think they're both very difficult, but obviously they differ greatly in the demands they put on a driver. If you think running at those speeds is easy, then you probably know very little about the many, many subtle nuances of the track itself and probably also have never actually seen a car hustle into turn one in person. It is nothing like it appears on TV.

Motion, you ought to know this from riding motorcycles out on the track. In an open cockpit, the wind buffeting is so extreme it's difficult to even see your reference points. I would expect that you've experienced what it's like at 130 miles an hour. Add another hundred on top of that and tell me how easy it would be to see precisely where you are and where you want to be.

I think this current generation of car design encourages drivers to do things they wouldn't have considered doing in years past. Going four or five cars wide on the straights and hoping to sort it all out before the next turn is somewhat insane.

Alonso did as well as he did because he's a very talented driver and had many very experienced people surrounding him to bring him up to speed.


JR

The caveat is that Indy gives drivers measured entry (rookie program) and a crapload of practice before the race. He was on the team that won the race so he had a good car and coaching.

Those factors still don't make it easy.

I don't think it's easy. Saying that would be absurd, and a great disrespect to the drivers involved. I continue to think that this race is vastly easier than a F1 race.

I used to run a Formula Atlantic on a very bumpy track ( Willow springs) and didn't have any vision problems. But, I'm sure you are right :-)

OK, then how do you think F1 is so much harder? Are you thinking of the physical demands, or certain skills? Apart from the start and shortly thereafter, there's very little wheel to wheel running so it's almost a case of the driver versus the track.

I'm going to generalize and over simplify here, but I believe a lap in the 500 has,say 100 variables to deal with, while a lap at any track in a F1 car has 1,000 variables.

Historically, look at F1 drivers who've come to America to compete in open wheel, versus open wheel drivers from America competing in F1 as rookies and analyze the results. I believe you'll see a very clear pattern

Respectfully, your comment sounds like those who assume that the driver is driving an automatic transmission sedan around the track. You have ignored what goes on inside the car and the changes that are made every single turn such as constant adjustments after every turn and checking wind direction every lap. There are no pre-warmed tires. The pits are a more crowded than rush hour traffic in Manhattan. There are restarts. Drafting and momentum is needed since power is less and speeds are higher. The driver must be changing the weight jacker, fuel mapping (the driver has to be concerned with fuel economy), looking for adhesion changes due to temp and tire degradation, dealing with dirty air from the car in front, racing with oversteer and understeer that changes in the middle of each turn, all while being on the bleeding edge of spinning at 220 mph and dealing with wheel to wheel racing with other cars. How many lead changes and passes are in F1? Not many.
Oh, and the winner must be lactose tolerant.

Man people are critical. Alonso did 484 laps at Indy in May plus what he did for his original Rookie orientation. He's also one of the best drivers in the world and who knows how many laps he had in a simulator on top of all that. Anyone who dismisses Indy car, oval or super speedways as easy is either deliberately trolling, purposefully ignorant or just an idiot.

I think you should do some reading on the net of discussions with experienced drivers on what it's like to go through turn one, for example. It's far more complex than you realize, without any other cars present. Add traffic, wind, sun and temperature variations, and you'll see that it gets pretty hairy pretty quickly. It's also a blind entry and, at 230 miles an hour, missing your turn in point by even a foot or two, has a big effect on where you end up in the second half of the turn.

It's difficult for anyone to get into formula one, because they usually start out with a ****ty team. Then, there's the politics. And the sponsorships... There's not much support from either of those for an American driver. Alexander Rossi had very little backing behind him. Contrast that with someone like a Pastor Maldonado, who had tens of millions helping him. Even successful drivers like Michael Andretti had difficulty. If you look at the details of his ill-fated year in F1, you'll see that McLaren had their head up their collective ass. He was thrown into a crap car at a time when McLaren couldn't get their act together. We think of McLaren is a top team, and they are for the most part, but there are years where they can't find their ass with both hands.

JR