Whenever we think about race car drivers we usually don’t see them as top class athletes, with their fitness levels not comparable to top level sports athletes. Although watching a race on TV yesterday, an in car camera revealed that the heart rate of the driver inside the cockpit was at 196 BPM. Now since the average human heart beats at 76 BPM at rest, 196 BPM is reaching heart attack levels. If we go on this basis alone it shows us that the heart of a top race car driver has to be in peak condition to be working at 196 BPM and that heart rate is usually achieved by top athletes.
In order to be able to reach a heart rate of 196 BPM and not get a heart attack because of it, it requires the race car driver to be immensely physically fit. One would think that how fit does a person driving a car have to be and it might make sense that if the driver is able to keep their weight at desirable level then the overall weight of the car comes down and this could become an advantage for the speed of the laps being undertaken in the race. But the levels of fitness needed to be achieved outweigh a simply weight issue, because the stress and exertion experienced by a race car driver while in a very demanding high speed adrenaline pumping race are extremely high.
A study conducted a few years ago revealed that the level of fitness needed by a top level race car driver is similar to other sports players in different fields. The study mentions the following facts. “Professional race car drivers demonstrate physiological responses during competition similar to those reported by elite athletes participating in traditional team sports, according to research published in the December issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine. Data from the study, performed by re-searchers at the University of Miami, indicates drivers qualify as elite athletes, possessing great physical and mental stamina, similar to energy requirements in sports including football, baseball and basketball,” (http://www.acsm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home_Page& TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=4285).
Another aspect of the fitness levels required by top race car drivers is the physical exertion experienced by their bodies by the g-forces they experience while driving. Driving into a corner at the high speeds that race car drivers do pushes a serious and unhealthy amount of g-forces onto their bodies. Admittedly these forces are a lot less than what air fighter pilots and air race pilot’s experience but they are significantly higher than a normal person experiences in their daily lives. G-forces for all those that don’t know are the forces that are exerted on something when it is in free fall or going through bends at high speeds. The scientific definition of it from Wikipedia is; “The g-force on something is its acceleration relative to free-fall. Such accelerations, termed "proper accelerations," not produced by gravity itself, (can) cause stresses and strains on objects which can make these sorts of forces significant. Because of these strains, sufficiently large g-forces may be highly destructive to objects and organisms,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force). With the significant pressure of g-forces being pushed onto the bodies of race car drivers if their bodies are not at peak condition these forces may cause irreparable damage to their insides.
Scientists also found that NASCAR drivers experienced higher levels of stress and needed to be in better shape than most other race car drivers because of the heavier weight of their race cars and also because of the race being longer in length, (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/ 23/health/main534035.shtml). What is interesting in this is the fact that race car drivers because of this study have become elevated to a level of top class athletes. They have always been top class drivers but now they can say that sitting in the seat of a car and moving their arms and legs slightly can make them athletes on par with basketball players and footballers. Driving cars for a living going around a track not only seems to take besides phenomenal skill but also the need to be very physically fit.
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