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scarlet wrote:Of course there's luck. You could be on pole by 2 seconds and leading into the first corner for someone else to miss their braking and take you out.
You can minimise the chance of bad luck hitting you though - what people refer to as 'making your own luck'. Something Red Bull did brilliantly last year with Seb.
That's not luck. It's human error. Sure, it's not under your control but so what? There's a probability that this will happen at each race. That it doesn't happen all the time just shows that it's a small probability. No luck involved.
Uhh, if it's not affected by you, it sure is luck. Yes another human controlled it, and it's not luck from their point of view that they're out of the race, but it sure is luck from your point of view. i.e. luck is not an absolute concept – it's a relative one.
Consider Mario Andretti, driving and winning with just about everything on for wheels from the late 50s to late 90s,
without ever being seriously hurt, bar that Indianapolis crash in 1992. That's not luck.
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"
xpensive wrote:Consider Mario Andretti, driving and winning with just about everything on for wheels from the late 50s to late 90s,
without ever being seriously hurt, bar that Indianapolis crash in 1992. That's not luck.
No it's not... Does that mean that luck doesn't exist?
scarlet wrote:Of course there's luck. You could be on pole by 2 seconds and leading into the first corner for someone else to miss their braking and take you out.
You can minimise the chance of bad luck hitting you though - what people refer to as 'making your own luck'. Something Red Bull did brilliantly last year with Seb.
That's not luck. It's human error. Sure, it's not under your control but so what? There's a probability that this will happen at each race. That it doesn't happen all the time just shows that it's a small probability. No luck involved.
Uhh, if it's not affected by you, it sure is luck. Yes another human controlled it, and it's not luck from their point of view that they're out of the race, but it sure is luck from your point of view. i.e. luck is not an absolute concept – it's a relative one.
Small probability that something bad will happen = bad luck.
Small probability that something good will happen = good luck.
I don't think it matters if its human controlled or not.
Little silly if we're debating the semantics of the word "luck" itself.
It's random chance. Sometimes those random variables outside of your control work in your favor, sometimes they don't. If we ask, "Does bad luck exist in racing" we might as well be asking, "Can random chance ruin your race weekend?" Absolutely. How could that even be argued against?
Does good preparation help mitigate "bad luck" ? Some would say so. But even the best preparation cannot prevent things 100% out of your hands. Perhaps the distinction here is in "unforeseen issues" vs "bad luck" striking you down. Grey distinction between the two.
And even with unforeseen issues, there's a limit to just what you can avoid. The analogies to the OE or consumer product world of zero-defect, six sigma, whatever.. don't quite always apply. In racing there is just not the time to eliminate all risks or questions before a race. It's not the much more leisurely pace of the consumer world - I've been on both sides of the fence on this one. There isn't sufficient time to "100% optimize" your setup or any crap like that. Certainly not in NASCAR with a race every 7 days all season anyway. So you cross as many things off the list as you can, and that's that. Whether your series has limitations on budget and/or testing (think RRA), there is a practical cap to how much preparation can be done for every event or every season.
So it comes down to this: You can be very well prepared in minimizing "unforeseen issues" - but probably never perfectly prepared. And regardless of that, there are still random events which can just come together in such a way that it bites you... like when a hot dog wrapper or some other sort of piece of paper floats around and gets stuck on your grille and causes your engine to start overheating (these things happen!). That's some bad luck, but through good knowledge and preparation you can respond to it.
So yes. Bad luck in racing is a real thing.
Grip is a four letter word. All opinions are my own and not those of current or previous employers.
haha .there we go.
JT has hit the nail square on its head.
But still there are teams consistently coming out better than others in certain departments of "luck" so we can conclude:
You might be able to eliminate 3500 known factors with potential for causing a serious problem ,you have to compromise on say 100 of known risks and weigh up a better than nothing approach and there is the grey zone of a black hole with factors one cannot fatom and which will popup someday and make you shake your head in disbelief.
A lose wheelnut ,loss of fuel pressure ,failed gearbox or cclutch failure ...is surely to be counted towards those 3500 ...in my book and that´s really the point here.
Is it allowed to say we have been unkuckky ..when you have encountered quite similar problems before -so it´s a known issue in racing and still get it wrong more than once in one season AFTER analysis and redeisgn or restructure of process.
like Mclaren having constant ´trouble with their rear tyre change.
Another issue with semantics - to me "luck" implies (to an extent) something that a particular driver possesses or doesn't possess. So one driver will be more likely for good things to happen to him than his teammate, simply because he's "lucky".
And I firmly believe that such a phenomenon does not exist.
Probability will sometimes fall in one drivers favour and another driver will have some misfortune, but if there is a consistent pattern of this, there has to be a real factor influencing it, rather than simply one driver being 'mystically blessed with good luck', so to speak.
Schumachers bad luck will be over in Valencia as Hembery predicts a MSC win.
I don't think it is clever by Hembery making such kind of statements (again), what if Schumacher really wins? Would look fixed! http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/100478
Finishing races is important, but racing is more important.
FrukostScones wrote:Schumachers bad luck will be over in Valencia as Hembery predicts a MSC win.
I don't think it is clever by Hembery making such kind of statements (again), what if Schumacher really wins? Would look fixed! http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/100478
Hembrey's reasons why MSC could win are not really good. In my opinion, it will be hard for MGP and even harder for MSC to be competative at Valencia.
Yeah. Schu's turn in the lottery was back in Monaco, ultimately negated by the penalty & DNF. Would look ridiculously suspicious if Hembrey suddenly turns psychic.
good luck:bad luck