Posted on 04/24/2008 10:43:23 AM PDT by PercivalWalks
Danica Patrick became the first female winner in IndyCar history recently, winning the Indy Japan 300 by 6 seconds.
Some women's advocates and Patrick herself are complaining about a new rule which feminists claim is "aimed at the women in Indy." The rule says that lighter drivers have to carry ten more pounds on them.
Race car driver Robby Gordon has a different perspective, saying that Patrick is at an unfair advantage over the rest of the competitors because she only weighs 100 pounds. Because all the cars weigh the same, Patricks is lighter on the race track. He says:
The lighter the car, the faster it goes. Do the math. Put her in the car at her weight, then put me or Tony Stewart in the car at 200 pounds and our car is at least 100 pounds heavier."
I know nothing about auto racing beyond what I learn from watching old Speed Racer cartoons with my daughter, but Dan H., a reader, does. He writes:
"Auto racing is about accelerating and decelerating weight in a straight line and an arc (corner). It takes a calculated amount of fuel (power) to accomplish this feat with the largest variable by several orders of magnitude the amount of weight that is being thrown around. Ever hear of 'Power-to-Weight Ratio?' In heavily equalized cars weighing 1500 pounds, a 100lb driver vs. a 165lb driver is a rigged race. Robbie Gordon is dead right: Forget It!
"With nearly the sole exception of Tony Georges Indy Racing League, all of the major series, and quite a few of the club racers, recognize this and either weigh the car and driver together or separately and make adjustments. The IRL introduced a laughable adjustment just this year.
"While racing officials do not concern themselves with the drivers height, muscle mass, shoe size, eye color, gender, carbon footprint, or about a hundred other personal characteristics, they very much want to balance the weight across the drivers then let 'em race. In auto racing, the drivers weight looms as large as horsepower, tire width, vehicle height, spoilers, and more.
"People demanding that Danicas huge weight (speed) advantage be ignored have never fielded a $45,000,000 race team. She weighs 75 pounds less than the average male driver in a sport where the teams pay $500,000 to get 2 pounds out of the weight of a manifold.
"She is a mid-pack performer at best that finishes higher up because of her incredibly advantageous weight. Bolt 20 pounds in the chassis beside each shoulder and her gender-provided weight bias disappears...and so does her up front finishes."
From what Dan H. says, it sounds a little like the Boston Marathon where a woman "won" the race because the female runners started the race 29 minutes before the men. If they spend $500,000 to decrease a car's weight by two pounds, a 75 pound difference seems staggering, and the 10 pound balancing that Patrick and feminists are complaining about seems pretty minor.
On the other hand, I wonder if Patrick's strength disadvantage also means something. Let's say, for example, that they equalized the weights, as they apparently do in most of the races. Would it then be unfair to Patrick because she is effectively forced to carry "dead weight," while the male drivers' extra weight is at least in the form of muscle that helps them drive the cars?
On another level, even to compete and be a "mid-pack performer" as a professional race car driver, as Patrick has done, seems like quite an achievement.
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Glenn Sacks, www.GlennSacks.com
Sour grapes...
Signed,
Eddie Gaedel...
In general, men are 20% stronger than women. In a long race that strength will play a factor too.
How will we equalize that?
*Of course she's gorgeous just the way she is. I'm just sayin'...
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.
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.
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.
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
It's even worse when you get get to carry the extra weight, and first time out, she beats you.
And Indie drivers will all end up looking like The Governor of California
Maybe all the male drivers could go on Jockey diets?
“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.
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.
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.
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