Holy cow!! I’m wiped out after only 15 laps. Alonso did 1100+ laps, in a kart, over a 24hr period! Incredible fitness! 
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Alonso didn’t, his team of five did. 220 something laps each
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I think it says his 5-man team did that many laps. Still impressive though! He never stops!
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For sure. I’m bushed after doing a 90 min Ironman.
I was gonna say! That woulda been super impressive. I think there are a handful of folks that could do a 24 hr solo.
I would love to hear more about the mental bit from someone whose done this.
Lookup Trey Shannon. He’s been on the KP podcast too.
Yes, I was looking for his thread but could not remember his name. He’s the man!
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I can’t find his thread but here’s one where he answers some of my questions…
Podcast:
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What a bunch of slackers. Winners of Machismo would have done 1250… I’m kidding, BTW
My goal is to do a 6hr solo next. The 3hr was a cake walk. 12 eventually. 24 with a pal. (That would be you @tankyx at an Enduro in France 2022, your choice).
Apparently @jd896 ran Machismo this year. First I had heard of it:
https://calspeedkarting.com/machismo-12-hour-team-endurance-race/
There’s an endurance series at Foxwoods casino. Wrinkle is you have to do them all. An 8hr is run over two days, 4 hrs each, for example:
http://monzakarting.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/11/Monza-8-hour-preliminary-rules.pdf
24hrs with 5 is 4.8 hrs each. Let’s call the lap 60s. That’s 288 minutes of driving or around 300 laps. Still, a healthy number of laps for a (primarily) non-karter.
No, Alonso did not run 1,100 laps, unless the track is really short. But, I am cool with the headline since Alonso is kinda special.
“In total, Alonso’s team completed 1,132 laps of the Dubai karting circuit and finished 25 seconds behind the winners, EBC Brakes Racing, and only 0.18sec adrift of runners-up Superdryve Maffi Racing.”
Unortunately for them, @Richard_Jacques was too busy being a paratrooping badass that weekend, or he coulda shown em the way round Dubai kartdrome.
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This raises the question:
Which is more fatiguing? F1 car or Kart? I imagine both are rough, but in different ways.
Tilke tracks are typically long affairs with big straights. These are the chill moments where you can relax. I assume it’s the same thing at 300km/h as it is at 50-75mph.
The F1 cars do get significantly higher g-loads, tho. High speed sweepers at 5-6g, for example. But it’s not like they do that and then do it again 4 secs later, like in a kart.
Curious to know how the car compares to a kart, tiredness wise. All I have to go from is sim and the f1 car feels surprisingly tame and easy to drive (yes it’s hard to drive “well”.)
The F1 car would be more fatiguing, just from the braking. The lateral Gs are higher, but the longitudinal Gs from braking would tear most of our heads off after a few laps. Pato O’Ward noted this in his McLaren test this past week. He said after a day of driving he had to stop because his neck had given out from the braking. And he’s a fit, young guy who races IndyCars, which are pretty physical in their own right due to the lack of power steering.
IndyCars work your arms, F1 cars work your neck, karts work your torso. I think a regular regime of pounding laps in all three would get you pretty swole.
The reason the F1 car feels tame in sim is because it has infinite grip. You’re not feeling the effects of that grip on your body in a sim.
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Thank you. That all makes sense.
Pato drives the McLaren:
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I wonder which would be harder. A 12 hour race at a sprint track (constant workout), or a road race (keeping mentally focused)?
For me, using a KZ shifter an example, sprint is a lot harder.
Thought processing rate in sprint is a lot higher even though the road speeds are lower. Road racing you get a few brain breaks.
Same with punishment on your body, the intensity is not as high with road racing compared to sprint.
Which is why I spent more time road racing 
I would suspect road. Speed is not tiring per-se and we acclimate quickly.
Additionally, I find that in long stints, your mind goes elsewhere and you are only using half your brain to process the driving experience.
The relative lack of “engagement” (ie “turns”) allows one to disassociate further as the mental tickles to “pay attention” are less frequent.
Sprint has you turning every 3-5s.
I’ve done a 36 hour endurance race with 3 other guys, so 4 all together, you try to sleep although it’s noisy, so it’s all about caffeine and not making mistakes lap after lap…after lap.
Sprint KZ racing in a track with tight corners is hard, you will appreciate having a light helmet on your head and your ribs better be used to it, otherwise you’re going to regret it for quite some time.
Check out the 24hrsofnola.com. 3rd annual 24 hour enduro, still a few spots left. Scheduled for weekend of 3/10/22.
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