Karting as you age question

Ok but I think it’s more game. The physical is “optional”.

Now you know what it’s like being a real athlete when someone compares you to a race driver

I’d say “Sit in my kart Mr. athlete. Please learn how to drive it on the knives edge of grip for 15 laps and get back to me.”

… and I’d show you a guy who is overweight, smokes heavily and drinks and can do that in a blink of an eye. Being conditioned to an activity don’t make you an athlete on par with Track ad Field Olympians.

plus I’ve put simmers in karts, good ones, and they deal with it very very very well. When they get conditioned to it, they are often lit as f*ck

Nope. Your fat winded dude will fall apart before the other guy. Short race, sure. No staying power, however. Could well have the skills, but his body is his anchor.

In short, he’s not a serious athlete. If he was, he would have difficulty accepting the limitations he has imposed upon himself.

What is apparent to me is that folks have assumptions about racing and driving that are uninformed and inaccurate. They assume it’s sedentary because driving to the market is sedentary. They have no clue what is up. So people say stuff that is just plain wrong. Just look at that Indy car lap.

People are entitled to their opinions for sure. I just get annoyed when folks make comments about that which they do not have experience. It particularly irks me when a famous person misinforms people.

Preaching to choir here :grinning: sim is a tool which can also be a game.

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Many drivers are very athletic. Do they need to be? For sure, in some respects.

NASCAR drivers do not need to be athletes. Maybe it helps a bit, and for sure some of them are incredibly fit, but then look at Tony Stewart. Probably one of the best all-around drivers of this era, and he’s certainly no athlete.

Hell, Dick Trickle won literally hundreds of stock car races, and he smoked cigarettes under caution flags.

Fitness plays a role in success, but how much fitness is required is completely dependant on the discipline of driving you’re doing. Certainly karting is pretty physically intense, but I would never consider myself an athlete…

For me, a true athlete is someone whose success is dependant on physical conditioning. Traditional ball sports obviously require you to jump higher, run faster and longer etc. Motorsport requires fitness, and it helps to a certain level, but you don’t need to be shredded to be at the peak of motorsport. Take a look at Esteban Ocon at Renault this year. The kid is literally like 6’, 140 pounds. He’s a twig, there is hardly any muscle on him. Yet he is plenty fit for F1, where G-loads are the highest.

I’ve seen plenty of fat, hungover dudes win big kart races.

There’s a base level of fitness you need to be at your peak performance level in racing. Training over this base level will net you basically no improvements on-track. In other sports, you can never train enough, as you always need to be faster, stronger, or bigger.

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In a world where you and your peers raced for money as a living… would it still be the same? Or is this showing up hung over and being indifferent to fitness a function of the amateur mindset?

I don’t see many lazy fat dudes up front at supernats. A handful of guys have paying seats… what are they like? How do they see themselves and how do they train? If I was paying TJ to be on my team, I’d sorta expect him to be all in. If he wasn’t, I’d maybe consider a lesser kid I could develop into a faster, stronger competitor.

Oh and I have no clue about nascar. Never have watched more than a few laps. Looks nuts!

I look at it this way, I maintain a level of fitness that enables me to race a full national raceday without struggling physically by the end of the race. I’ve always said, as long as I don’t slow down at the end of a race because I’m tired, I’m physically in the shape I need to be in. It’s pretty simple. If you get tired and slow down, you’re not fit enough. If you don’t get tired, then you’re not going to see much benefit from additional training in my opinion.

Look at the Masters class, even at SuperNats, and there are plenty of front-running guys who are out late in Vegas, drinking cocktails, with beer bellies and then driving to the podium the next day. I could easily give you a dozen guys I was hanging out with in KA at night who were showing up the next morning a little rough, but still competing at the front. I’m starting to sound like a real partier in this comment, but I promise I’m not. I just am at the track to have fun and win and I think you can reasonably do both.

Keep in mind there are 12 year old kids who haven’t done a day of physical training in their life wheeling around for 20-30 laps with no issues and winning big races. And not just in karting. There are kids running late models, low-tier open-wheel cars etc. who are barely doing any training. If your fitness level can be that of an average 12 year old, I’m not sure you can consider yourself a true athlete.

What about Kimi Raikkonen? I guarantee that guy does as little physical training as possible, as much partying as possible, and he’s a World Champion, will set the record for most F1 starts this year, and is performing as well as he ever did at 40 years old. Now there’s an aspirational figure.

All that being said, standard physical conditioning doesn’t guarantee “karting fitness” anyway. I’m skinny-fat and I’ve seen gym rat types show up and get completely exhausted after half a day of driving.

Hmm. Well I guess I see being an athlete as a mental/physical/behavioral combo. To me, if you give yourself fully to the process of trying to achieve something physical in sport, you are an athlete.
But, there’s a level of commitment that seperates the normal from the exceptional.

I find the whole “athlete vs. non-athlete” argument to be stupid, and a waste of time. That said, I’ll engage…lol

Would Lewis Hamilton achieve the same level of success if he weren’t fit? In other words, is a top level motorsports driver’s success limited in some way by physical fitness?

I don’t think it has to be as black and white as what Alan is making it, due to the face that so many categories within each discipline are not equal to one another. Examples being: F1 ≠ Nascar, shifter karts ≠ LO206 (or any direct drive for that matter), actual karting ≠ sim racing.

Talk to top-level professional drivers about the role that fitness plays in their success…my sample size is of course limited, but those I have spoken with would agree that fitness can be a limiting factor. I’ve never posed the question, but I would be curious to know if Indy Car and Formula 1 drivers consider THEMSELVES athletes…who knows.

I would counter the Esteban Ocon argument (spaghetti arms means non-athlete) by citing what is probably an equally controversial “sport” (in quotes to show my uncertainty in using this term in this context, but let’s leave that alone for now), that being rock climbing. The point here is to illustrate that physical strength does not always manifest itself as the body builder physique. Rock climbers are all skinny as hell, but extremely strong. Should Alex Honnold (free solo climber who scaled El Capitan) be considered an athlete? I say yes. That climb took him almost four hours.

Should Lewis Hamilton be considered an athlete? I say yes.

Should Tony Stewart be considered an athlete? Debatable…ok, no…but he’s still a fucking legend.

Are these older guys former top racers having “fun” or still serious guys with sponsors to report back to that want results?
Are they held to the same standard as senior? Are the senior guys out whooping it up night before a race? Or are they lying in bed, unable to sleep, walking the track over in their minds?

If I ever get the chance to run a Nats, I’ll be showing up ripped and ready (I think). It would be on my dime, I’m pretty sure.

Well most of the front Senior guys these days aren’t even old enough to drink, so most of them are in bed fairly early or Snapchatting their crush.

A whole other take would be, at what point does the pressure of taking it so seriously start to affect your pace? In other words, some stress relief or blowing off some steam with the boys at the bar might relax you and help you cope with the pressure of raceday more easily.

If they’re running up front then what difference does it make if they are there for “fun” or if they are “serious”?

I think like Evan said, this topic is painting this picture far too black and white, and now it’s sort of straying to the topic of “is having fun or being fit more important”.

And I’m not saying none of this takes “zero fitness”. As I said, there is a base level of fitness that gets you where you need to be, and my argument is that any level of fitness above that doesn’t gain you anything. If you meet the base level physical requirements to drive a go-kart for 30 laps at your peak whether you’re hungover, sleepy, alert, awake, or have one hand, it doesn’t really matter. And my point is you can reach that level of fitness all while having fun or staying up slightly too late or having a few beers or whatever.

I knew a kid with serious backing, and I mean as serious as it gets, who didn’t get out of bed till mid-day. He was conditioned to drive, but would I call him an ‘athlete’? No chance.

Didn’t say it was black and white, quite contrary. But if we are to go into semantics based debate, at some point we have to drawn the line in the sand.

I’m on the same page, though I think it’s tough to establish where that line should be, given that there are so many variables.

Maybe we should shift the conversation into something a bit less divisive, such as whether or not CrossFit is cool? :poop:

I am gonna stop here before I start getting too in the weeds. Agree to disagree on what athleticism is and wether piloting a car or kart is athletic.

I see an athlete as someone who is trying to change themselves, physically and mentally, to achieve an extraordinary level of skill at a physical activity. Top pro or not. The process and the effort is where I see athleticism. It’s partly state of mind, partly an ambition, and a whole lot of grunt work.

Importantly if I ever get on tv, I’ll try not to throw shade on other people’s passions.

I think that sort of ties up all the points in this topic in a neat little bow.

Combining all our definitions of athlete in this post, I would say that:

Some racing drivers are athletes. But not all of them. And not all the fast guys are athletes. And not all the slow guys are non-athletes.

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OMG, eagerly awaiting the day that I see this in a shifter kart. None of this broken-throttle-cable-one-handed-wizardry that you direct drive guys seem to dabble in every now and then! :joy::joy::joy:

I think we need to differentiate between “warriors” and “athletes” when discussing NASCAR. :heart_eyes:

He’s a warrior.

Back to the original topic…

DC says that 30-35 is the prime window for drivers, as they have life experience as well as enough youthful speed yet. He’s talking F1 but I think similar things apply across any racing.