We let a pro driver out in our racecar. He cut 6 seconds off our lap times immediately after getting in the car. Even at that speed we still wouldn't have won.
It's both.
We let a pro driver out in our racecar. He cut 6 seconds off our lap times immediately after getting in the car. Even at that speed we still wouldn't have won.
It's both.
In reply to buzzboy :
I'd say you can get a lot better in that case. I'm not going to name driver's but many years ago I watched my dad outdrive a LeMans championship driver in the same car on the same course. It was a stock car and not a prototype and it was on a course the driver was unfamiliar with and had way less laps on. This can go both ways. I've literally let nearly anyone drive my Subaru on dirt and only one person has managed quicker times than I have, and I'm not a pro. Drive more. You can learn to drive a lot faster than you think.
You can look up if you like Larry Bendele went from a stock car crew member to a multi-championship winner is his region. He did not want to drive cars but build them. He built one, and my dad told him to go drive it. It's both.
One of the biggest secrets to being fast in your car is to not have much empathy for the car. If you are worried about it, worried about tires, worried about spinning etc.; you'll never go nearly as fast as you could.
The corollary to my previous comment:
If the driver performance is different enough, there is no amount of car performance that can make up the difference.
If the car performance is different enough, there is no amount of driver performance that can make up the difference.
Yeah I think it's over simplified to say one or the other. It's obviously a combination of both. Lauda and Schumacher both were pay drivers to begin with and look where they ended up in the annals of F1 history.
In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :
Well said. Except. By having a complete understanding of everything in the car I built I had decades of experience driving it.
That familiarity let me feel as the tires wore and I could drive around them by trading slip for position and tactics.
As tires wore I sometimes felt I was in a drift contest rather than wheel to wheel. Often enough those with faster tires would see the smoke pouring off the tires and back off giving me a corner they were faster thinking I was losing control.
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