re: Are F1 drivers athletes?

You can't possibly believe that.

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To be just decent they have to have extreme levels of fitness, laser mental focus that can't go interrupted for 2 hours, world-class reaction times and hand/eye/foot coordination. They basically strap into a ground bound jet and enter a 2 hour dog fight. They have to handle up to 6.5G braking and up to 5G cornering hundreds of times an hour while maneuvering a car with pinpoint accuracy. The term athlete is a tortured moniker that people love to argue about. Being an F1 driver requires elite if not world-class athleticism to do well along with the level of mental focus that some of the most difficult sports require. One thing that really raises the bar is they have to do it for ~2 hours straight, no time-outs, no substitutions just the corners coming up relentlessly. IMO anything that requires elite level of athletism to do means you are an athlete if you are one of the best on the world at it

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Was waiting for you to chime in and you left out an important element.

A fraction of a second lapse in mental focus can kill you, especially in the days of a Jackie Stewart or Mario Andretti.

So for the naysayers, buy an M Class BMW, modern Vette, or Dodge Viper, take it to the Texas Speedway, disable TCS and other aids, and drive as fast as you can for just 30 minutes I did, once, in a friend’s Viper and it was as if I was a 16 year old getting his learners permit.

Modern F1 drivers have a skill level and athleticism that a baw in his lifted F 250 simply can’t comprehend.

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You don't have to be athletic to drive a race car. You need skill.

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Can you explain the difference between the hand eye coordination required to hit a baseball vs drive a F1? How about the cardio required to maintain through an event?

100% athletes.

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could even get an F1 car to start properly.

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Forget starting it. I'd like to see the average poster here try to fit in an F1 car.

This is a good video of a normal guy driving an F1 car and talking about the athleticism involved. LINK

Show this to kywildcatfanone

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girlfriends of the drivers

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I feel like you are discounting bottle-blondes with store-bought boobies that are eager to please.

You're missing out.

“You have to go fast to get the downforce to heat the tires to stick to the road”

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You're definitely not wrong about the skill involved but you also need athletic ability.

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I agree that you need physical stamina and a certain level of strength but those don't necessarily make you an athlete.

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It was Michael Schumacher at Benetton who brought the whole hyper-conditioning thing to the fore. It was insane.

Aryton Senna was still the man.

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Since this thread is a clusterfrick I'm gonna bite.

If you were a team principal you would choose Senna if you wanted the most electric driver ever to don a race suit. He would be the choice for getting the absolute maximum out of a car on Saturday (qualy). You would not want him if you intention was to maximize points and win championships or a driver with even an ounce of mechanical sympathy. The man was the epitome of checkers or wreckers. The best example of his flaw was Monaco in '88. He took pole over his teammate Prost by something like 1.5 seconds, absolutely unheard of. He built up a near 1 minute lead over Prost by the 67th lap of a 78 lap race but he just couldn't help himself. He kept trying to lay down qualy lap after qualy lap and binned his McLaren into the wall at Portier. While he was walking back to his house Prost won the race and collected the 9 points and stood on the top of the podium while Senna was taking a shower.

If you wanted one of the best drivers at racecraft and always in touch with the bigger picture bringing points home while also being wicked quick you want Prost in your car.

If you wanted a driver that could develop a car like no one else (including sleeping at the factory), could respond if you told him you needed 10 qualy laps to make an undercut work, had off the charts racecraft, was one of the fastest drivers ever, and could process information in the car like a supercomputer then you want Schumacher. It doesn't hurt that he was superior at team building and had the ability to rally people around him so that everyone from the team principal to the janitor would run throw a brick wall to help him.


As an analogy you could toss Michael or Alain the keys to you car and ask them to drive you the long way home. If you negated the G-forces and avoided noticing the surrounding countryside has turned into nothing buy a multi-colored blur you would never realize how fast you were being driven.

Do the same with Aryton and when you pulled into your driveway 20 miles later the tires would be down to the cords, the car would be puking fluids from every orifice and every warning light in the car would be flashing like a strobe light in a 1970's disco. The upside is you would have gotten home 2 seconds faster, the downside is that is the last 20 miles that car would ever be driven because it is now mechanically totaled. There would be a massive grin on your face though.