My piece. All sports have levels. The pub teams playing soccer on a Sunday would hardly be considered athletes (even if they are increadibly fit) versus the guys playing Premier League. Motorsport is the same, except with the caveat that we have athletes and non-athletes potential on the same grid because having a certain amount of money will get you on that grid. I would happily extend that to Sim racing, me playing F12019 on xbox does not make me an athlete, but the guys racing in the F1 Esports league i’d say could be considered athletes.
To me athleticism is a combination of brain and body, so the Lewis vs Eliud piece, neither of them are going to win without both. I think we all know that physical fitness contributes to your ability to focus and that applies just as much to Eliud as it does to Lewis. Its why you see athletes make more mistakes towards the end of events (marathon runners tripping, or footballers miss kicking, or racing drivers missing an apex).
One thing I do think is sometimes misunderstood is being athletic for your chosen sport. So you’ll see plenty of kart drivers who are race fit only because they drive a kart a lot, then end up with slightly weird shaped bodies but can get away with things like big bellies and not being able to run very far. But the same could be said for Usain Bolt, great athlete but he’d be useless at a marathon (probably).
Esteban Ocon, that kid has some sort of weird metabolism, he eats a 10 egg omelette for breakfast, apparently eating constantly and just can’t put on weight, I’ve heard it a few times in different podcasts.
Kimi Raikkonen, I think that’s an unfair statement, he might not be schumacher esq but you just have to look at him to know he’s pretty fit. He must be pretty into it to take ice bathes after every session too. I also read an article that indicating that a significant draw on most racing drivers physical fitness is stress and it manifests itself in tensing muscles, gripping steering wheels to tight etc. Apparently Senna had a real problem with it at the beginning of his F1 career and had to train to destress. Raikkonen, on the other hand, “whose body rarely signals a particular tension” doesn’t have that problem.
I agree with Coulthard though, 30-35 is probably peak combination of skill and experience (and means I’m passed it ). Someone like Billy Cleavlin or Kip Foster give me hope though lol.
Kimi does seem insanely chill. He probably just goes “Bwoah” when he misses an apex and moves on. Definitely not white knuckler.
Ocon or whoever insane metabolism… I wonder about that. If he’s consuming mass calories he’d need to burn it, right? He must be working out a lot and/or eating less than 2K cal a day. I wonder about the idea of a fast metabolism, wether that truly exists or is actually behavioral. I can’t put on weight because I am not lifting and my stomach has shrunk. Maybe he’s in the same boat with a tiny stomach and he’s working out full time for f1.
I heard on podcasts with him and podcasts with people who know him and they sound like they are on the verge of saying there must be something wrong with him. He’s pretty tall anyway so he has to maintain the skinny look but it seems like it comes more naturally then say Coulthard who had a bulimic period to maintain race weight.
Metabolism can be changed. Regular HIIT exercise has been shown to increase this. Most F1 drivers are doing cardio and strength training for hours every day - on and off season.
Age plays a role for sure - in my teens/20s, I would regularly eat 3000kcal/day and couldn’t put on weight - even w/o exercise; now I put on weight much more easily despite being more vigilant about eating well, and not eating to excess and exercising regularly.
I recently read a publication that talked about the number of fat cells someone has remains relatively fixed, or can be increased, but not decreased. When you burn fat, those cells contract in size and mass, but can easily go back the other way.
That’s super interesting. Next race weekend I’m going to have it record heart rate more frequently. I mean I’m fit. But my heart rate never broke 100 on my last race day. And I never feel like it really goes crazy. Might add my Garmin to compare vs my Apple Watch.
If I could figure out how to go faster I would. Spent the entire last race day hunting a different line. Braking far later than the guys around me. I need to work on race craft. Cause I was clearly being held up but couldn’t find a way around without banging my way through. And coming from cars. That’s something I’m not used to or comfortable doing.
Maybe post an example of how the traffic is a problem, typically. Some interaction on track that illustrates the frustration. Maybe some of the folks have a perspective. The very little I have learned is that patience is rewarded and trying to force a pass that isn’t there just slows you down. The waiting is the hardest part.
If it’s low horsepower rentals I could see a low heart rate, particularly if you are putt-putting behind a wall of slow.
It’s 206 class so definitely not a fast. And yeah I’ll put the footage together and make another thread. I know part of it is difference in driving styles. Gaps are made cause in closing in at places they are still on throttle. Then it throws off my timing. Cause I lift to make sure I don’t plow into them. But then it creates a gap I spend the next couple corners making up.
Hmm 206 oughta get you a little worked though. I drove a 4 stroke gx370 which is maybe 3-4 hp more and while it wasn’t like 2 stroke, it had some hustle. I don’t recall being fatigued, but I was 2-stroke fit at that point. I suppose it depends on how sticky the tires are.
In 2018, I was in excellent shape - got four interceptions in the first half of the final of a two-day Ultimate tournament, and won fourteen races across four classes, never losing places in a final and usually picking off a spot or two in the last five laps of the final.
In 2019, I injured my knee and could not train anywhere near as hard as I could the previous year. I never came close to winning a race, and I even lost my grip on a steering wheel in a collision once - hanging on usually prevents anything but the tierods from getting damaged.
I think physical fitness is critical, to the extent that I’ll recruit additional drivers from Ultimate players rather than autocrossers or simracers when I’ve got more than one kart running. This year (age 34 season) I intend to start the karting season capable of a 5:30 mile; I’m just over 6 now.
Yeah, but it’s nothing compared with one of the guys I’m racing against this year, who runs a 51-second quarter mile and should break my lap record of 2:05 at East Lansing on foot by at least fifteen seconds.
I’m surprised at Alan’s posts. Based on his idea of an athlete, sumo wrestlers, major league baseball players, Olympic gymnasts, platform divers, et al, are not athletes because they do not collapse with exhaustion after each event. I guess he missed the film on Senna after he won the Brazilian Grand Prix with his gear box locked.
@Alan_Dove has a tendency to play devil’s advocate sometimes
Sometimes I do the same, once it a while it’s a good exercise to (thoughtfully, objectively) challenge the things we hear in our own Karting echo chamber.
Any sport where genders are divided because of the biological limitation of being female vs male one can safely assume there’s a truly athletic (strength, speed, endurance kind of thing) attribute with regard to performance. Though there are a couple of scenarios where extreme endurance events women and men are pretty even.
motorsport is like chess with wrist weights. Sure you need some level of base fitness to perform the task well, but it isn’t the primary attribute, though of course it’s not strictly binary.
). Someone like Billy Cleavlin or Kip Foster give me hope though lol.
