Danica Patrick's Victory in the Indy Japan--Are the Rules Fair?

GlennSacks.com ^ | 4/24/08 | Glenn Sacks

[Dead Corpse]

If this had a substantial effect, she'd be winning a LOT more races. As it is, this is her only win in what... 4 years?

Sour grapes...

[Hatteras]

What a bunch of whining loosers!

Signed,
Eddie Gaedel...

[RJL]

Added weight makes sense to me. That’s how it’s done in horse racing.

In general, men are 20% stronger than women. In a long race that strength will play a factor too.

How will we equalize that?

[Ignatz]

Maybe she should get a boob-job^*.
That might help equalize the weight difference. And raise my blood pressure.

^*Of course she's gorgeous just the way she is. I'm just sayin'...

[vpintheak]

Okay. Make it that every car with the driver in it has to weigh the same. Before the race begins at line up, each car has to be weighed, if you are over or under you have to adjust and get reweighed before you can race. Problem solved.

[Little Ray]

Its fair. If they want to beat her, and they can’t out-accelerate her, they’re gonna have to out-drive her - good luck at that, though.

[Little Ray]

Bull. If you build a better (lighter) car and find a better (or lighter) driver, you should be able to enjoy the advantages that brings you.

[MarkL]

Of course it can. But it is just plain unsporty and lame for a man to complain about losing to a woman. Men lose in sports to women, it happens, but whining about it... only a girly-man does that.

The key here is that you're not losing to a woman. You're losing due to a mechanical advantage. If it were just a test of skill, it would be easy to take. For instance, I saw something on TV about a minor league baseball player who simply wasn't able to hit pitches from Jenny Finch. There, you're dealing with skill, nothing else. On the other hand, when there's an advantage due to weight, it's not really competition of skill.

Mark

[Oztrich Boy]

If you can’t deal with losing to a girl... then don’t play the game!

It's even worse when you get get to carry the extra weight, and first time out, she beats you.

[Oztrich Boy]

Before each race each fully fueled car should be driven by its fully equipped driver onto a scale and weighed. Each car should then have weights added to it to make it weigh the same as the heaviest car/driver combination in the field. After that, start the race...

And Indie drivers will all end up looking like The Governor of California

[poobear]

Maybe all the male drivers could go on Jockey diets?

[grellis]

Why do we have to equalize that? Like I said before, it is the same in horse racing. All racehorses carry 126 pounds, jockey and gear plus weights. It is up to the athletes--jockey and steed--to prove their strength. Some fillies got it, most don't. I don't see what's unfair about that. What am I missing?

[dalereed]

“How about the Chicks that run top-fuel...never heard a gripe then either”

In the early 50s everyone wanted a 12# mongoose to drive their rail.

[RJL]

Why do we have to equalize that?

They tell us that wrestling one of those cars around the track for 500 miles is hard work.

Since they are penalizing her for being small and only weighing 100 lbs, isn't it also fitting that they penalize the guys for being strong?

While some posters are writing that women have more endurance, I have to believe that someone having 20% more strength is going to have a definite stamina edge.

I'm just trying to point out some of the hypocritical whining going on in racing. Personally, I'd like to see much more freedom to engineer and innovate in race cars, requiring them to be virtually identical gets boring.

[grellis]

I disagree--the two can't really be compared, strength and weight. Weight is tangible, easily proven. Strength can be proven, but only to a certain degree--say, bench pressing. Ditto stamina.

I just don't buy into the argument that all men are 20% stronger than all women, and I certainly don't buy into a consistent correlation between weight and strength. I weigh 95 pounds at my heaviest. I can outrun my husband any distance longer than 220 yards, and he weighs around 160.

Sports are about proving one's own physical abilities, but if athletes don't begin a race on tangibly equal footing, the fairness and outcome of said race should be called into question.