2014 Russian Grand Prix Thread

[The Black Knight]

Yes, there's a certain level of physical strength to drive the cars, and keep it up. But there's only so much training and diet can do. It doesn't make you more skilful at driving a car. You can try it yourself.

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.

As far as Schumi goes. All that talk about his fitness was the media embellishing him, and in turn, F1 as a whole. Ihaven't seen him do anything which suggests he was fitter than anyone else, as in a physical test. He never won a race as a result of superior stamina, like you do see in a footy code. Damon Hill did the reaction tests at the British equivalent of the Australian Institute of Sport. Of the thousands of sports people they tested, he was the best at that. No one gave a ****, because it was Hill.

Schumacher did do a physical test back in the 90s. All GP drivers of the time did somewhere around 95/96 and he came out head and shoulders above the rest. I remember John Watson speaking about it on Eurosport. I doubt there is any link I'll find online about this though since it was so long ago.