2014 Russian Grand Prix Thread

[Malbec]

If you mean try be fitter myself and see if it improves my skills I've already done that for many years and it doesn't make you more skillfull but it did allow me to harness my skill better on the track. In my home circuit where I did all my testing/karting, I set the lap record when I was at my optimal from a fitness pov. It wasn't that I was more skillful as a result of working out, it was simply that there were minute differences. A slide I'd catch or feel earlier. Those tiny differences added up to a couple of tenths of a second lap time. It didn't make me more skilful, it just allowed me to harness my skill a little better This was Schumacher's philosophy really, if every component of his body was working at an optimum then that would allow him to harness what he already had better. Optimise everything.

Fitness doesn't improve skill, it does however increase the period for which you can maintain your best performance.

[Malbec]

There are more buttons on the steering wheel. But the stuff your saying drivers have to do now, they did then.

Lets compare Senna's period to today, i.e. turbo era with turbo era. Senna had two controls for his engine, one was the throttle, the other was a boost pressure selector. IIRC in 1988 he had 4 possible boost pressure selections he could make.

Compare that to today. Obviously they have a throttle but on top of that they have to juggle different engine modes, the two different energy recovery systems (including when to harvest the energy which affects brake balance), when to deploy, how to deploy the recovered energy, how to deal with electronic problems as they occur, different fuel saving modes as well as other transmission settings such as opening and closing the diff. The number of things they have to stay on top of is illustrated by the fact that none of the buttons on the wheel are single function, they scroll through menus so are multifunctional. Remembering the codes so when the engineer gives them the order to select a certain mode they know which buttons to press in what order is another task they have to complete.

Thats just the engine and transmission. Sure you could argue that back in the day the gearboxes were manual and physically that was harder but it is utter nonsense to say that the current drivers have less to deal with than back in the day.

In any technologically dependent field, sports or otherwise, the nature of the job changes drastically over the years. That doesn't mean that someone now is less capable than someone back in the day, it just means that different skillsets are rewarded and that a different type of person comes to the fore.

Senna would likely not have made it to F1 had he driven the way he did and raced back in the 50s, his body would have graced the armco pretty early on in his career with his aggression. Ditto Schumacher and quite a few others. Could Fangio or Senna have coped with the complicated electronic packages (ignoring the fact that the former wouldn't even be physically capable of fitting into a modern F1 car)? We don't know and its more than possible they wouldn't have. Is it easier for a current kid who has been brought up on Playstations and iPhones to go into a modern F1 car and learn how to scroll through menus and select modes? Sure it is. Could anyone from the '80s onwards have coped with an F1 where 1/4 or more of the drivers wouldn't survive? Was it easier for the post-WW2 generation for whom the carnage that was the war was normal to cope with such odds? Of course. People are the product of their generation, their values are those of their generation and so are their skillsets. To claim that one generation is simply better than the ones after? Smacks to me of someone saying "in my day…"

[journeyman racer]

There are some holes in that piece. But too much for me to counter. You win.