Become a Racing Driver?

As we sit on our sofas on a Sunday Afternoon it can be easy to idly day dream about our own driving skills as we watch some international grade motorsport on the TV. It doesn't look too difficult does it? Its just pointing the car at a track you have driven a thousand times before and waiting for the vehicle to do all the work. But appearances can be deceptive, there is a lot more to being a racing driver than meets the eye, most people won't appreciate the skills that are required to reach the top levels of motorsport.


Driving talent


This is a pretty fundamental one as you might imagine. Driving talent is an innate sense of how the car is performing and how you can extract the ultimate from it. Some drivers just seem to be able to 'feel' how much grip a car has and them be able to drive right up tot that limit in order to maximise its performance. If you step over the line then you will end up off the track - if you are too cautious then you are slow. Its a very thin, very difficult line to cross.


Race-craft


Race-craft is the ability to know how to drive safely in a competitive environment. Being a safe racing driver will not only be to your own health and financial benefit but will help you make friends with other competitors as they will know you to be a good driver. You need experience lining people up for overtaking, unsettling them in their normal rhythms in order to place them in a position where you can pass - all in a safe manner. Not an easy job.


Financial Backing


This seemingly mundane element is in fact absolutely essential. If you can afford to race then how can people see how good you are? Getting people to sponsor you is one of the most difficult aspects to become a professional driver. So if you don't have a wealthy family to back you then you need to get a 'business head' as well.

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Will NASCAR Ever Stop Pandering

The now familiar sight of empty seats in the cup series has continued into the Chase. But it was truly shocking to see the entire section of turn 3 seating naked for all the world to see. That's in addition to the swaths of empties scattered throughout the stands at Dover recently. There is absolutely no doubt that the non recovering economy is a huge factor in this. And at the same time, neither NASCAR nor its car owners seem to care about its current car destroying double-file re-start system. In a very subtle way, the rich of NASCAR's 'ruling elite' mimic the bankers and congressman who are perpetuating misery on the unwashed masses, the same ones who nowadays cannot afford to take their families to the races near as often as they used to. Yet NASCAR has no problem destroying 1/3 of the field week in and week out. Simple solution: single file re-starts with less than 50 laps to go. Which will not happen, because NASCAR is obsessed with its pandering to the mythical holy grail of television land; the jaded, couch potato "race fan", who also becomes a "football fan", basketball, etc. The powers that be down in Daytona have come to the conclusion that what these "fans" want to see are wrecks, it's just that simple. And since there is no lack of money at the top, the car owners keep feeding the wreck monster whenever it gets hungry...which is pretty much guaranteed to happen when you bunch up a whole lot of extremely talented and oh so hungry drivers who will run over their mothers to gain a spot for those 5 precious points, never mind what they will do to win the race. Yes, there is plenty of money to burn at the top, while the rest of us agonize; "race tickets, or can we put the roof repair off a while longer."

I think that is only part of the problem, there is something else going on here. While some of the empty stands are most definitely economically driven, I think that over the last decade, for whatever reason(s), a whole lot of Johnny come lately folks have joined the ranks of the dedicated fans that make up the core of NASCAR's support base. These are the folks who look at you with a blank stare when you ask "have you been to your local short track?" Who think the 'entry level' of the sport is the NASCAR truck series. Who, in fact think the entire SPORT of auto racing is "NASCAR". These are stick and ball people, and they are very sensitive to the notion that the outcome of sporting events might be manipulated. Now...the rest of us know that NASCAR manipulates the outcome of its races all of the time, and has been doing so for a very long time. Yellow flags for invisible magic pixie dust have long been a part of the sport. And if it suits the purpose, carnage on the track will have nothing to do with the last few laps of green flag racing. The hard core, we accept this, bitch about it at times, and we "fuggettaboutit". But, as NASCAR is finding out, our sport does not play well with others.

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