Quote:
Originally Posted by MaDalton
i think one of the problems is that F1 driver are very close to the evolution process of their cars - which are very complex compared to nascar. they must be able to analyze how the car behaves on straights and corners and tell their engineers what to change. as a nascar driver you get no chance to learn that on the same level - how can someone with no experience for example on a track like Monte Carlo give valuable information to his team?
i am not saying they cant learn that and be successful, but it would take a while. and probably longer than most team owners would give them.
another example: DTM is very popular in Germany http://www.dtm.com/index.php?lang=en&
there's a couple of ex F1 drivers who were later driving there - including Alain Prost, Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard. None of them ever won shit there. Because it's a completely different way of racing.
last years DTM champion Paul di Resta is now driving F1 - we'll see how good he's doing the other way round. |
Certainly the F1 cars are far more complex than Stock Cars and NASCAR purposely tries to keep the teams costs down by limiting the cars complexity. They've even gone as far as to ban testing on tracks they race on to save teams money.
You say that F1 drivers tell their engineers what to change on the car for performance. NASCAR drivers will describe to their crew chief how the car is handling and based on the description the crew chief will make the necessary changes. There's a difference there.
While Danica knows how to drive a race car, one of the things she had to learn was how to speak in NASCAR terms and relay the cars performance to her crew chief so he could figure out what changes to make. She has to become a living onboard computer and relay data to her crew chief. It's one of the obstacle open wheel drivers first face when coming to NASCAR. Terms like understeer and oversteer in F! become lose and tight in NASCAR. Both describe the same thing.
NASCAR drivers are very talented and I think over time one or two could compete in F1 but you made a great point and it's probably the reason they don't make the switch. No F1 team would be willing to train one from scratch and there is far too much money involved to give one a chance. On the flip side an open wheel racer can come into NASCAR and get a ride in a car for just a few thousand dollars. That makes sense to me
