Although I really did want to see Schumacher back, I'm glad to see Badoer racing again. Hopefully he can avenge the 4th place he missed out on while driving for Minardi in the 1999 European GP.
Takes a lot of strength and energy to use the brakes. You can't have power brakes in F1 and we've heard so many times that the drivers are applying around 100kg of pedal pressure at the hard braking areas lap after lap after lap. That puts a lot of stress through the leg and also through the hips as the body tends to twist. Think how hard it would be to do several hundred 100kg leg presses in a 60+ degree Celsius environment whilst being subjected to large G forces and having to concentrate on trying to extract 100% from your car.
His manager said the day after the first announcement (when he said he was going to drive) that he was "200% sure" Schumacher wouldn't drive in Valencia. I dunno about it being publicity stunt.
Nice analogy, shame it's not how you apply pressure to a brake pedal. Braking is done almost exclusively by the calf muscle, and counter intuitive as it may seem the calves are actually capable of exerting a hell of a lot more force than the quads in unseasoned weight trainers and do so repeatedly. I'm not saying that 100kg brake pedal force is anything to be sniffed at, (given the environment), but as a pure force it's not that much for a calf. Most people can easily do one legged calf raises of their own body weight. Given the average male weighs 70kg+, it puts a 100kg pedal force somewhat in to perspective. It's mostly down to endurance than actual real strength.
Plus, given their relatively slight builds, I'd be willing to put money on most F1 drivers not being able to rep 100KG squats !! (at least proper below parallel ones).
I'm not for a second trying to say that F1 drivers don't need a good level of fitness, (certainly far better than an average member of the public has). But as with everything, fitness etc is relative and F1 drivers don't have the cardio-vascular fitness of distance runners nor the strength of wrestlers, weight lifters etc and they certainly don't have a combination of both !! Just trying to put a little perspective in to the discussion.
watching the press conference of Schumacher, his doctor said:
"He will be able to do sports again and I regret to say it, he will be able to ride motorcycles under racing conditions again." I lol'ed a bit about that passage... Even his doctor dislikes Schumacher's collection of highsiders^^
not trying to argue with you here but I've always been mystified about these "100kg on the brake pedal stuff". When they calculated it, would the g-forces generated from the braking affect the pedal pressure calculated~? lets say if there're 5gs during braking, would this has any affect on the "100kg pedal pressure", which means there were actually only 20kg~?
