What do you think? Younger drivers seem to drive in over their head, current generation racecars, allow for the pushing to the limit, essentially 24 hour races have become sprint race compared to years past, where they were about reliability. On the other hand, an older car takes more finesses, which might not be a current skill that is developed thus hampering a young driver and giving an advantage to an older driver.
age and treachery > youth and enthusiasm
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vl_42B-uxsc
Depends entirely on the driver, not the age. There's an ex-road-racer in my club who is pushing 80, if not there already. He can hand me my ass in a kart, and not just because I have 50 pounds on him.
Duke wrote: Depends entirely on the driver, not the age. There's an ex-road-racer in my club who is pushing 80, if not there already. He can hand me my ass in a kart, and not *just* because I have 50 pounds on him.
Talent is talent, I bet Mario A. would beat Marco A. In my question I am assuming the talent is pretty close.
New cars are faster, skill level being the same, old drivers are just as fast as young ones, so the new car will win every time.
Going to have to agree on the cars....new cars are so much better in every way a minor difference in ability between drivers can't overcome that.
A Honda Odyssey makes damn near as much horsepower as an LS1 (98-02) powered F-body!
…also, define old.
I went through a graduate program in Human Factors Engineering and I remember seeing a scatter plot of average reaction time as a function of age. Contrary to common wisdom, reaction time is held almost perfectly constant from late teens to early / mid fifties and then it takes a big step loss at one specific point followed by a slow meandering down from there.
What’s happening is that there’s a special type of pancake shaped cell called myelin (sp) that wraps itself around nerve cells to insulate out noise allowing them to be more sensitive. So long as the myelin cells haven’t started to die off yet (52 to 54ish), you’re good-to-go.
So, I’ll put my money on any racer with good myelin in a new car.
Myelin dieoff at 52 to 54? Oh, I am SO screwed. 
Not necessarily…it’s equally fair to say that you’ve got 52 to 54 years to develop such keen anticipatory skills that you don’t even need the E36 M3 anymore.
Mrs. Curmudgeon – “Why are you slowing down”
Mr. Curmudgeon – “Because in 3 seconds, the red car will realize it missed it’s off ramp and frantically cross our path trying to exit”.
Mrs. Curmudgeon – “3-2-1…I’m impressed”
RX Reven' wrote: Not necessarily…it’s equally fair to say that you’ve got 52 to 54 years to develop such keen anticipatory skills that you don’t even need the E36 M3 anymore. Mrs. Curmudgeon – “Why are you slowing down” Mr. Curmudgeon – “Because in 3 seconds, the red car will realize it missed it’s off ramp and frantically cross our path trying to exit”. Mrs. Curmudgeon – “3-2-1…I’m impressed”
Yeah, I've always said that the object of experience and coaching at the track is to get to the point where you don't need to have the reaction time of a 19 year old.
While those reaction times are nice to have, it would be preferable to at least only use them when someone else has screwed up.
What I'd really like to see would be a younger guy driving an old car with comparatively lousy brakes and high slip angle bias ply tires...
In reply to Karacticus:
Check out Victory by Design, there's plenty of footage of a (relatively speaking) young Alain de Cadenet wrasslin' them old beasts. The Jag one is particularly good with that.
Curmudgeon wrote: Myelin dieoff at 52 to 54? Oh, I am SO screwed.
you're screwed ?????? I was wondering what my problem was 
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