F1 MERCENARY wrote:
Sorry, uhm… No.
That Indy is perhaps not as physically demanding and punishing on the human body is one thing, that it's "easy" and hardly strenuous on the human body is completely untrue. Driving on ovals at high speeds is indeed quite strenuous on the human body to the point drivers strap their helmets to the left of the vehicles because it is so strenuous. With course track racing it's different in that the constant changes of direction are endless from start to finish, but drivers must endure those changes for brief periods. What oval drivers do causes far more fatigue on the neck muscles and since it seems you're not fully informed on the genre, drivers at the Texas motor speedway had to lift and pull into the pits due to light headedness caused by the extreme speeds it would've caused them to black out had they continued to run and increase speeds because they were running at a CONSTANT 5 G's.
That's ALL the way over on the other side of the Not Strenuous spectrum.
The only thing Michael struggled a lot with upon his return was squeezing more out of a car that wan't the class of the field and driving with silly putty tires.
But then, oh yeah, he put it on pole at Monaco, likely the most difficult track to drive all out on in the entire world.
People who actually raced oval at top level have said road course is harder on the body. You can look around.
The most difficult part of oval tracks is the mental aspect. Traffic, risk of accidents, sheer speed and little room for error are the biggest issues, not physicality.
And in NASCAR you don't get nearly the same levels of G-force as in IndyCar. The cars are slower (top speed 200 mph, IndyCar goes past 240 mph), much heavier, and run with restrictors at the superspeedways. Out of the current IndyCar ovals, Indy 500 is a round square so the G-force is not constant either, while Pocono is a tri-oval.
Nevertheless, my point was that size of the car does not make it any more difficult to drive. A stock car is unwieldy but reacts slower than any modern single-seater. There are plenty of women competitive in GT racing but none in F1 and the most successful ones at IndyCar have never even mounted a serious title challenge. Whereas men beyond 40 years old are not uncommon in American single-seater series, even during CART era of absurd speeds and spectacular cars, men that were well past their prime to race competitively in F1 at the time.
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