TC was banned before last season!
/points and laughs
TC was banned before last season!
/points and laughs
/me joins. TVE, you seem to be a hardcore F1 fan
eermm... I think you idolise F1 drivers a little too much. If you actually follow the drivers from age 8 up to F1 (if they get there) you will find that generally they were never the BEST drivers. Mostly promoting themselves through the classes through extensive wealth with disregard to their actuial results. rarely do you get a mizture of uber talent/money. hamilton/Alonso/Senna all being cases of having talent, and funding however
For example. -
If Andy Murray entered a low level tennis tournement he would win hands down. If Phil Taylor entered a pub dart competition he would win hands down. if Manchester United entered the conference they would win hands down.
HOWEVER with motorsport it really isn't like that.
On several occasions have F1/Indy/NasCar have gone back into karting and been absolutely destroyed. In America it is common place for pro-car drivers to race in big kart events... mainly because they are not scared of losing and being caught out..... well.... F1 drivers on the other hand are scared...
This is not to say karters are the best blah blah blah but F1 drivers aren't necessarily any better than a lot of other drivers in the world. It's just a perception that the sport likes to give of so people watch it.
Driving an F1 isn't easy, but it certainly isn't out of reach of many many many drivers if they were able to gather enough funding to get these oppurtunities.
90% of the population have the means to buy football boots, go have a play, and potentially reach the top. But I would so no higher than 5% of the population have the means to go motor racing proper and get any where near F1
It's the extensive kartor ball collection argument again isn't it.
no not at all. Just showing why motorsport is so unique. Well 4 wheeled circuit racing. You can take a so called 'top level' driver, stick him in with some club drivers and they won't necessarily win. This is almost totally unique in the world of sport.
It's to show that motorsport is as much about PR/opportunities/funding than it is about actual driving talent. The idolising of F1 drivers as if they are super human is somewhat misguided when you understand how a driver gets to F1
Well back in time I was a hardcore fan, but then it became so borring that no norwegian channel aired the races for some years, so blame them :scared:
When that is said, they need to mount some lazer turrets and afterburners on the F1 cars to improve the veiwer friendly aspect of the sport. And then we need top models that walks _naked_ on the start grid aswell.
If they had done so every damn channel in Norway had aired the races.
It's true, I agree basically.
If you're the 100metre champion, you can safely say you're the fastest runner in the world, virtually everybody realises as they grow up whether they are "quick" or not, the quick ones then race other quick ones (at school or whatever) and so on until you're left with the very best adults at the highest level. Very few obstructions.
Other sports do not come close to this, even other athletic events, pole vault - how many kids get the chance to try that?
Football casts its net far and wide, but even then not every kid gets the chance to play organised games.
Motorsport casts a very small net, a relatively tiny number of kids get the chance to race karts at that important early (single digit probably) age. As good as Schumacher/Hamilton/Alonso/Senna are, what are the odds that the (potentially) best kids were all part of that tiny number who got the chance?
If you take Intrepid's rather optimistic 5% then 5 out every 100 get a chance to race at a basic level as young kids, fewer still will be granted the chance to take it to the "next level" and towards the F1 feeder series'.
Just so I don't sound like an embittered fool (too much), I think obviously people like Senna and Schumacher were clearly hugely talented, and very hard for anybody to better than, but think of it like this - say they never got the chance? We'd be talking about other drivers in much the same way rather than those two.
I think the chances that the 20 or so current F1 drivers are the best the human race could produce (if everyone were given an equal chance) are very very slim. 5 or so of them are probably 5 of the best F1 drivers in the world though
/Off topic.
On topic, love the new cars. Almost.
SinBad on the money again.
Well I have done some rough calculations to give people a better idea. 5% was rather optimistic
10,000,000 people under the age of 16
5000 kart licence holders in UK
2000 ( VERY VERY optimistic guess) licences holders under 16
so out of the 10,000,000 kids under 16 in the UK, approximately 2000 currently do karting.
So 0.002% of the under-16 population currently are being given the opportunity just to try professional motorsport. I suspect an even tinier number have the funding to do cars and then get close to F1.
/off topic
Quite true. Assuming that the number of potentially good athletes at any given sport is proportional to the population of each countries, China should have much more potentially good racing drivers than any other country on the planet. Yet, we don't see many Chinese F1 drivers, do we? To put that even more in proportion, Canada and specifically Quebec province has seen two race winning F1 drivers (the Villeneuves) and there's only about 7 million people in the province. What are the odds that China doesn't have any potentially as good drivers in over 1 billion? Racing really is an elite sport 
You can guarantee though that well over a million people under the age of 16 have tried motorsport at a primitive level at some point in their lives (i.e. hire karting).
yes, but that's like saying millions of kids have tried boxing or football because they played a game on the XBox. It's a totally different thing.
£40 for an indoor race is a little different than actually spending thousands racing for real. If you've tried rallying because an Xmas present rally day at silverstone doesn't mean you've actually tried rallying proper.
I disagree. You can't say hire karting is to "proper" karting what football on the xbox is to real championship football. Playing football with mates is different to playing football on a professional level, just as hire karting is different to karting in a proper championship.
No, it's about level of commitment. I child doesn't have to invest any money to join his local club team. Well maybe a couple of quid. School teams are free also.
To go karting a child's parent have to invest THOUSANDS of pounds.
Hire karting costs about the same as an Xbox and game. It's about the same level of commitment to a chosen sport.
Believe me.
I drove hire karts for 6 years and it is expensive. Now that I drive Outdoor races with my own kart it has become even more expensive....
Actually I don't idolise anyone, let alone F1 drivers. Also, I know full well that just because they are the current F1 drivers doesn't mean that there aren't better drivers in lower series or even that gave up motorsport completely because they just couldn't get the funding required to be competitive. The fact still remains however that the guys that do get to drive F1 do have physical and mental attributes that the vast majority of people on the planet will never have. The same is true for other people at the top of their game, (whatever that may be cerebral or physical etc). There is always an element of luck and politics for the people at the top to have achieved getting where they did. But I think it's pushing it to believe that they are average in any way.
well it's not a fact. 99.998% of people under the age of 16 don't even get the chance to try real motorsport at a competitive level. Not even the chance!
Wait wait wait wait wait.
This is the LFS forum so lets talk sim racing for a bit. Isn't it the case the fast alien drivers are always the fast alien drivers no matter the sim/track/car combo? In terms of casting a net, sim racing casts a much wider one than real motorsport. Now this is assuming sims are sophisticated enough to proxy for the real thing.
Isn't there a video around of some alien sim guy (pause for google), okay so it's David Greco driving a real F3 car and getting close to a good time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoDVeoXq99A
Is it me or is his head in an odd place?
That number may be true, but a lot of kids never get the chance to even do hire karts I'd bet. Plus how much chance do you have of turning a single evening karting with your brother as a ten year old into a career that could lead to F1?
How many young kids would go to a hire kart place regularly enough to become "good", and unless told, how would they know if they are or not?
Even if the karting place said to a father, "look, your son's really good." How often would that father have the means or desire to give his son that chance, even if the kid wants it himself?
Anyway, this is just further to my earlier post in which I agreed with Intrepid. The number of people that get the gift of a genuine chance to "make it" to F1 (a wealthy (or hard working) enough father who ushers his kid at a very early age into competitive karting on the basis (probably) that he was decent at it but his father never gave him the chance, and has the money to progress him up the tiers regardless of initial performance) is teeny tiny.
The actual number of people that have the means to go competitive kart racing is tiny for sure. Just as an example I know dads who will spend £50,000 a year in Cadets alone... some spend more. That isn't just a world away from hire karting, and the Galaxies away from hire karting.
For sure a kid can go racing for a lot less, but if your goals are to become an F1 driver, you need millions of pounds worth of investment. And it's only those kids who have a chance to make it.
If motorsport was as cheap as football to compete in (which is actually can't be by definition) we would see a completely different F1 grid. I am 90% sure Wayne Rooney's family weren't minted to start his career!
F1 is about the cars first and foremost... enjoy it for the cars!
I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying but I don't think it's just down to opportunity alone, even in motorsport. The current F1 guys must have at least been "good enough" and had funding. To an extent you have to perform better than average to attract funding, (unless you're lucky enough that your dad owns a supermarket chain in Brazil
). I don't believe any of the current F1 crop were ever "back of the field" drivers in lower ranks and that they just bought their way through motorsport. They must have at least been finishing top quartile in their past championships. I am willing to concede of course that there are probably drivers out there that for whatever reason just couldn't get a funding deal and were better.That's just in the context of those that are lucky enough to gain entry to motorsport. I accept that 100%. I'm sure that given the chance and the right conditions there are people out in the world who would be wiping the floor with Schumacher, Senna et als records and performances. But in that sense motor sport isn't that far different from any other sports, even those that cost little to participate in. Is Powel the fastest man on earth over 100m, almost certainly no!! There are probably thousands, (maybe hundreds of thousands), of men out there that never even tried their hand at sprinting because sport just wasn't their thing, who with the right training could break his record with ease.
I still say it's a combination of nature and nurture.
But at least you know with athletics anyone who wants to try it... can.
Let's say in the UK 1 million kids would love to be an F1 driver... but the reality is only 2000 of them actually get ANYWHERE near the chance to even try proper motorsport. Hire karting does not represent to me the intent, commitment, or even opportunity to go on to be an F1 driver. its the first stop for many but it doesn't represent what I call an 'opportunity'.
If these kids wanted to be 100m champions 90% (900,000) of them have the chance to try by joining their local club, or school team. 900,000 Vs 2000!
Motorsport is EXTREMELY exclusive. It's possibly the most exclusive sport on the planet. Naturally it can not change, and nor should it.
Anyway lets get back on topic PLEASE
back on topic.
the aerobit on the wheelcover above looks totally wrong.
the aerobit on the wheelcover above looks totally wrong.
They will also not use it. It was used for testing last year too.
2009 spec. Formula 1 Cars
(667 posts, started )
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