Quote:
Originally Posted by sammyg2
Her being is 6th place in the points indicates she has a top ten car and team, not that she is one of the best drivers.
These cars are driven with the gas pedal all the way down all the time unless the car is not set up properly. The steering wheel input is minimal. There is very little driving being done compared to some other forms of motorsport such as road racing.
Put almost any other indy car driver in her car and they would do as good or better.
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Man, is that naive or what? Did you see the in car camera version of the Vitor Mira pass? That's total bravery and control. Minimum input yes, because the cars are on a rail next to being out of control. Race speeds are reduced from qualifying speeds for a number of reasons, but the difference between 222 (at the end) and 228 is not even a heartbeat. The difference in turbulence and prevailing winds changes form lap to lap. You don't suppose there's a wind sock in each corner for the fans to look at do you?
In laydown karts at Willow, we hardly moved the wheel. Just looking toward the corner shifted the shoulders enough to have the kart start to move over. A 16th of a full turn would finish the job of corner entry. After that, there was a little wheel movement to control the slip angle. Many oval car racers liken the skill to driving INDY cars to the same skill set involved in karts.
Likewise, many road course drivers including F1 see a great similarity to sprint karts and regularly work out in them. Sawing away at the wheel shows a lack of confidence in the car. NASCAR rookies running Talladega for the first time tend to try to over drive the cars and not let them drive themselves, which they pretty much do out of traffic. But to say there is little driving done there or at Indy is not correct. Sometimes less driving is more using trust as the key to speed. To me, that's real driving and I can tell you that I never had that last 5 % in me to let go and see what happens.
I don't know if I've made my point in all this rambling, but minimal input is a trained skill. Not to mention all the rest of what a driver does: communicate, set weight bars and sway bars, shift from 5th to 6th and back again on both straights, manage all the fuel settings and last and most important, do the pit stop. It's all part of the ability to drive these cars.
Danica led last year fair and square, no gimme's. She just didn't have the car this year and then she got bumped out.