Aesto wrote:But what basically amounts to calling today's drivers a bunch of boring, anorexic wimps is? Especially the anorexia comment is just the type of utterly unqualified knee-jerk posting that unfortunately Ive come to expect from opinionated forum warriors. ''Someone is unusually thin? Well, they must be anorexic!'' Anorexia is an eating disorder related to self-worth and a distorted body image. What does that have to do with athletes who lose weight in order to gain a (or negate someone else's) competitive advantage? With a body-mass index over 20 (according to the numbers in the link you posted), Vergne is nowhere near that level, he isn't even underweight (and being underweight is also not a sufficient condition for anorexia).GitanesBlondes wrote:Drivers back then might not meet your ideal standard for what a professional race driver should look like, but to casually dismiss them as nothing more than out-of-shape guys is a stretch, and not really a fair assessment to make.
The whole ''today's drivers would never be able to drive a race car of the 19xxs'' argument, now even perpetuated by some F1 journalists (I think it was MB who made a similar comment at Singapore), is just completely missing the point. Yes, Kvyat or Gutierrez very likely would not have the strength to wrestle around a mid 1980s turbo-powered car, but so what? What exactly is that supposed to prove? Do you think that if those kinds of cars were re-introduced these guys simply would not be able to drive in F1? Of course not. They would simply change their training regimen and gain the necessary weight and muscle in a matter of weeks. Every idiot can get heavier and stronger. Becoming thin while staying fit and resilient is much harder. The diet and exercise of modern F1 drivers is much more controlled than it used to be. Back in the day, between races, the drivers were certainly more likely to be found on a yacht or a five-star restaurant than the their team's fitness studio. Michael Schumacher was really one of the first successful F1 drivers who actually considered his job to be that of an athlete and only since then have racing drivers started to put greater emphasis on their fitness. So I actually think it's a very fair assessment to make that it would take Fangio much longer to get into the physical shape required to pilot a modern F1 driver's car than vice versa.
How is that even relevant to the discussion? Or do you propose that F1 races should require the driver to hop into a different type of car every 20 laps?GitanesBlondes wrote: I consider that to be a far greater indicator of how good a racing driver is; what is their diversity level? Do they only look decent in one particular discipline, or are they fast in everything they drive? Think Mario Andretti or Juan Pablo Montoya. Or do they look good in say F1, but languish as soon as they hit the DTM or other race series?
Or that? What does it have to do with F1 driving (supposedly) not being challenging enough? Plus, it's also utterly biased. The only reason we think of the drivers of the past being charismatic is because we have simply forgotten all the other ones (just think of Denny Hulme, for example. He's a WDC and yet nobody EVER mentions him).GitanesBlondes wrote: P.S. today's drivers may be more professional, but they also have none of the personality that made drivers at large so fascinating to watch years ago. They are bland and dull.
It's already been discussed at length about how the drivers starve themselves to meet the weight requirements.
I didn't bother reading the rest of your rant.
P.S. I remember Denny Hulme just fine, as do many.
