Yeah, what he said.
O
In a message dated Sat, 22 Jul 2000 3:20:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time, The
Narbys <narby@centurytel.net> writes:
<< Ok so it is probably egotistical to reply to my own reply but I thought of
some other stuff to say.
The Narbys wrote:
> Not sure who wrote this:
>
> > Take a random, team. Driver A, the star, Driver B, the teammate. Driver A
>can hop in B's car and turn a lap that is 2 seconds faster on a 1:20 lap. 2
>seconds out of 80. All day in racing terms. It's 2.5%. At the highest
>levels of competition the driver is about 2.5% and the car is about 97.5%.
>This appears to be true at the highest levels of almost any driving sport.
>It's only at the lowest levels (ie novices) where the ratio is really in favor
>of the driver (and even then it almost never gets to less than 60%/40% except
>in really rare instances).
>
> This statement is utterly false. The driver IS making ALL the difference
>here. Even though the difference in times is only 2.5%, 100% of the variance
>(difference between lap times) is accounted for by the driver. It has to be.
>The same car is used throughout this hypothetical example. It wouldn't matter
>if it was an F1 Ferrari or a Yugo, if the lap times in the same car differ
>based on the driver, the driver is accounting for 100% of the difference in
>lap times. Period.
>
> Doug
The issue I think the previous author was trying to address is the MAGNITUDE of
the difference. I agree that at the highest levels of the sport the difference
between drivers is smaller than it is at novice/regional levels. So at the
highest levels, you have to tweak the car a lot as well, since the driver is
already pretty well tweaked and the relative differences between drivers are
small...
In terms of bang for the buck in a given car, however, driver improvement is a
very efficient improvement to make - that and tires.
Doug Narby
>>
|