The One Thing You Need to Become a Race Car Driver

Back in the day, you could starve yourself and gain an advantage. E.g. Senna. The way it is now, lighter drivers have to carry ballast. Kart series have ballast requirements as well.

A big boned 250 lb person might not fit in the car. A fat 250 lb person probably wouldn't last the race. Consider running for 2 hours without a break. Proper diet and training for the fat person would take the weight off.

 

As far back as I can remember every race series has a minimum weight that includes the driver. This is one of the easiest things to check at the end of the race and weight plays a significant role to the performance of a racing car. It is generally quite rare that exceeding the minimum weight without adding some ballast is not an issue so this story of Senna 'starving' himself to gain an advantage is nonsense.

One of the odd exceptions to this rule is that until recently NASCAR would only weigh the drivers once a year and then use that reference weight all season when the car was being teched. It was not uncommon for drivers to load up their suit with wrenches and other stuff to show a heavier weight at weigh in only to race at a lighter weight. As with all cheats that loophole has since been closed.

 

Read his book.

 

I've read lots of books on Senna and am very close friends with one of his doctors and we have spoken at length about his preparation. Please provide more supporting information.

 

This has been part of racing for a long time. You apparently didn't know about it.

https://www.drivespark.com/four-wheelers/2014/f1-drivers-starving-themselves-lose-weight-006975.html

 

I see what you are getting at and without wanting to start anything I'll say that the linked article does not tell the whole story and actually only really reports on a small period of time in F1 racing when the driver weights started to encroach on the minimum vehicle weights.

Driver fitness in F1 for the longest time was something that was not given anything like the priority it is today. For all his preparation and dedication Senna entered into F1 relatively un-fit and it took him some time to get his body up to the rigors of a full race. Even so he never achieved the level of physical preparation that Schumacher did who was the first F1 driver to really take fitness seriously and pursue it in a truly scientific way. This is now commonplace in F1 and hit a bit of a watershed a few years back.

Some excellent dialogue on this subject can be seen in the following video where Pat Symonds (who worked both with Senna and Schumacher) speaks of the change in fitness of drivers and Schumacher's preparation:



The move towards the hybrid power units really started to push the weight of the cars with designers looking everywhere for grams. Everything down to the amount of material helmet painters were allowed to add to the graphics were specified with teams still fighting to make minimum weight. As such the drivers came under increasing pressure to shave off any weight they could and it led to dangerous conditions and the rule makers had to step in. Vehicle weights were increased and the drivers were permitted to add some muscle mass to help them combat the higher cornering speeds anticipated with the new tire and vehicle rules. As such F1 drivers today have a larger operating window for personal weight than they did a few years back.

 

Cutting weight went on long before hybrid power units. Even prolific eater Nigel Mansell did it. Top series drivers are keenly aware of how weight affects performance.

https://www.planetf1.com/features/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-nigel-mansell/

Quote:
But that didn’t mean Mansell had no interest in having a lighter car than his team-mate; in fact, it was the complete opposite. While Patrese was sweating away in the gym, Mansell took out all the spare lining from his helmet and shoes and also dehydrated and starved himself to beat his team-mate on the scales.

“That really blew Riccardo’s mind,” Newey said.

“He was so proud of the fact that he’d lost weight over the winter and was super-fit. To be beaten by burger-chomping Nigel was a huge psychological blow.”

 

Cutting weight is nothing new but the Nigel Mansell story is being presented well out of context and is being mis-reported. This is pretty typical of modern internet journalists who tend to spew out endless rubbish. While I am not close to Nigel Mansell I am close to a few people who worked with him in period who were able to chime in on this story.

The more complete story is that the weigh in was a newly introduced FIA protocol in 1992 that was loosely policed. As such Nigel (purely to psych out his team mate) gutted his race wear and prepped for the weigh in using some techniques used by boxers in order to cut pounds before an official weigh in (A very common practice among boxers). Mansell NEVER raced in this state and the minimum vehicle weight rules included the driver and even so the team still had to add ballast to make the weight.

Years in this game I'm always super careful to take any media story as gospel. It is so very rare to have things well reported.

 

No dog in this fight, and I agree with Nuvolari's sentiment about much of today's "journalism", but the Mansell story is not "Modern Internet Journalist Rubbish"; it is the reprint of a direct quote made by Adrian Newey in his book, "How to Build a Car" (p.158 in my edition).

 

I don’t question for a moment that what Adrien Newey said was not factual. It was however presented so out of context in the planetf1 article as it was cherry picked and not properly qualified thereby misleading the reader. Again typical modern ‘journalism’