Driving Skill Appreciation
- F1 Car’s Abilities Tax the Body’s Limit -
Arguably, the human body - designed to amble along at about 3mph with occasional bursts up to about 6mph – wasn’t meant to race F1 cars.
Human reflexes were intended to anticipate and avoid 40mph charge of a animal weighing maybe 400 pounds, not to interpret the herding instincts of 26 individual 1500 pound cars traveling 100 yards per second . And all trying to occupy the same space and time.
The human heart was intended to provide blood to the brain under normal gravitational conditions. It was not intended to pump 200 times a minute at often 4 times the weight of gravity.
Our eyes operate on the premise that their carrying care (the head) remains stead with the rest of the body absorbing any shocks. Clearly, they weren’t designed to function at their maximum with 10,000 pulse a minute vibrations transmitted to the optic nerves.
And the human brain can get just a trifle befuddled by the ear-ripping 130 decibel challenge of a F1 engine at full song. Especially when it’s trying to command flesh and bone to perform exacting and physically strenuous maneuvers in 120 degree heat for two hours while stuffed into a form fitting monocoque.
Consider this: From a standing start, an F1 car will reach 100mph in just under 3 seconds. In the first second after acceleration, a drivers head is pushed violently back, into the headrest, his face distended as his body experiences three times the natural force of ravity.
At two seconds, he’s shifted twice, the force of acceleration making his hand feel like there’s a bowling ball attached to his wrist. And with each flick of the gear lever, (or tap of the steering wheel in the case if the Ferrari or Williams-Renault) the acceleration smashes backwards.
At three seconds, he’s now over 100mph and still shifting up. His only clear vision is straight ahead. Peripheral vision of stationary objects has blurred. A 800 hp engine sits six inches behind him, as he sits less than 3 and a half inches from the ground.
Once in top gear, the un-muffled exhaust of the engine passed the pain level of hearing as each piston completes four combustion cycles 10,000 times a minute. And the buffeting of the airflow over the open cockpit causes the drivers helmet to bounce from side to side.
In one heartbeat an F1 car travels 325 feet. For a drivers every heartbeat on a qualifying run, his car travels the length of a football field. In 50 seconds a Formula One driver can travel close to three miles – in a chassis low enough to slide under a 4x4, small enough to fit easily into the average bedroom.
With human physiologies so ill designed for the tasks, it’s all the more amazing that Ayrton Senna can not only consistently break lap records , but can do it while assimilating telemetry data, watching tire wear, calculating overtaking points, and executing an attack strategy.
Perhaps his $1million per race salary isn’t so outrageous after all.