Quote:
Originally Posted by red 928
A couple weeks ago Danica was on a nascar broadcast, and the topic was
a driver's heartbeat monitor.
It was up over 170 and her comment was how hard the drivers work and that
she tries to explain to her friends that when she was racing, she ran a marathon every week.
Uh huh.
Marathon, sitting down.
Moving only hands and feet a little.
Marathon.
Very little braking, almost no turning,
a fraction of the G forces from F1, marathon.
GMAFB
A more logical explanation would be that the driver
had a HB of 170 because he was out of shape or hung over.
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I assume she was talking about Indy Car where most of what she says is true. And no power steering. When Danica went to NASCAR I think she was in good physical condition and stayed that way. I'm not sure training was a thing before Jimmy Johnson.
The overwhelming thing about a stock car is the heat. The drivers are all but frozen in position. The stock cars have power steering but not power brakes. I can say this, driving a laydown enduro kart is not that physical. It's rough, very rough and you can't see very well. Driving a sprint kart is about like riding motocross. It takes all you have.
But, heart rates are up in enduro racing even though the strength isn't needed other than being able to drive the thing an hour (they have shortened the races to 45 minutes since I ran).
I'm comparing what takes strength to what takes a lot of mental work. AFA heart rate goes, stress can do it as well as physical effort. You have to drive one of those stock cars to see what it's like. Extremely confining and you can't see out of the thing beyond the dash or over the door opening. Can't really look too sideways either with that head restraint. Yet they seem to know just where the front, side and back are in relation to others.
Drivers are under a lot of pressure and there has to be an element of fear in stock car racing as they seem to run into things and each other a lot. IDT anyone wants a DNF and the expense of a wadded up race car. You can be damn sure of one thing, they all want to get to the checkers first. They take risks that I would likely not take. Even if I was that good.