Slim and obese...

Looking at the F.1 drivers, we can see all athletic and slim people.
But in the past we have seen also some fatty guy, normal person at the wheel of racing cars, not only supermen. I think Giuseppe Campari was an incredible obese driver, if we compare him with an anchovy like Nuvolari... but also Froilan Gonzalez was not so slim, Fangio and also Alberto Ascari (his italian nickname "Ciccio" means someting similar to "fatty"...) had a large belly...
I remember when I saw for the first time a picture of David Piper, after he had won in 1966 the 1000 Kms of Paris with Clint Eastw... ooooops, with Mike Parkes I wondered as it was possible that a fat man like him could fit into the tight cockpit of a 250LM...
If you have the magazine Autosprint, last week issue, you can find one picture of the Giancarlo Minardi goodbye-festivity: he had invited someone of his old drivers and friends. You can see in the picture Minardi, Pierluigi Martini, and a big round gentleman with a glass of champagne in the hand: he is an unrecognizable extra-large-size Alex Nannini...

I always get the impression that HORACE GOULD was super-large...and natuarally also Gerry Marshall. So much for the theory that Englishmen are skinny...

...skinny, well, I always think of Depailler. He weighed in the region of 48kg, but these days it seems quite normal for racing drivers.

Nannini must be spending too much time in the pastry section of his coffee bars!

BTW, he was pretty good shoe in his day before the helicopter accident.

Bummer Scott struggled with the Thomas "Flat Iron" in 1927 due to his girth and also his height.
I seem to remember Nigel Mansell having similar trouble when he returned to F1.

Depailler 48 kilos ? I weigh more than that and I'm a size eight woman !

Nannini was not known to be health conscious, even in his driving days.

Originally posted by LotusElise
Bummer Scott struggled with the Thomas "Flat Iron" in 1927 due to his girth and also his height.
I seem to remember Nigel Mansell having similar trouble when he returned to F1.

The Mansell - Mclaren thing was a source of much tabloid amusment but it was thoroughly relative as Nigel wasn't exactly overweight, the chassis was simply amazingly narrow and most of the rest of us wouldn't have fitted into it either. But it made for a good story...

As for Gonzalez, there is a story about the ambulance men who attended him after his major accident in the RAC TT . One of them scratched his head after shutting the ambulance door and said to a spectator "that isn't fat y'know. He's solid muscle!" (or something along those lines)

Simon Lewis
Transport Books
www.simonlewis.com

Mansell can't have been especially big - he fitted into the 1994 Williams well enough to win the Australian GP in it just a few months before (and how he must wish he ended his career there and then, without the embarrassing Mclaren coda). Although on the other hand, Blundell drove the car in the interim, and he was never exactly small. Perhaps some drivers are a little less fussy than others

For example...when Montoya went in McLaren he must had lost some Kg!!!!!

Originally posted by Haddock
Mansell can't have been especially big - he fitted into the 1994 Williams well enough to win the Australian GP in it just a few months before (and how he must wish he ended his career there and then, without the embarrassing Mclaren coda). Although on the other hand, Blundell drove the car in the interim, and he was never exactly small. Perhaps some drivers are a little less fussy than others

Lets be fair to Mansell. He is broad across the shoulders, ie muscular. This was his real problem at McLaren, not an expanding waistline. On the other hand, Alan Jones admitted he was overweight when he made his Arrows comeback.

On the general theme of this thread, I remember when we had wrestling on TV on a Saturday between the club racing, some of the heavyweights, for example Big Daddy, looked fat at first glance, then you realised that a lot of it was muscle. Look at the operativeson a building site and you'll see the same. Campari, Caracciola, Fangio, Ascari etc were big men because they had to be to haul those heavy cars around in the style they did. Nuvolari, Varzi and the other lighter and less muscular drivers had to develop a different technique. Modern cars don't require big muscles and drivers have evolved accordingly.

Originally posted by D-Type


Lets be fair to Mansell. He is broad across the shoulders, ie muscular. This was his real problem at McLaren, not an expanding waistline. On the other hand, Alan Jones admitted he was overweight when he made his Arrows comeback.

On the general theme of this thread, I remember when we had wrestling on TV on a Saturday between the club racing, some of the heavyweights, for example Big Daddy, looked fat at first glance, then you realised that a lot of it was muscle. Look at the operativeson a building site and you'll see the same. Campari, Caracciola, Fangio, Ascari etc were big men because they had to be to haul those heavy cars around in the style they did. Nuvolari, Varzi and the other lighter and less muscular drivers had to develop a different technique. Modern cars don't require big muscles and drivers have evolved accordingly.

True and I recall one book from the 1960s saying "many Grand prix drivers are tall, Gurney & Hill are over 6 foot.." which is something that definately doesn't apply now even though the average height of todays 25 year olds has to be several inches above that figure from the early 1960's.

One might speculate that in the days of chubby/tall/skinny racing drivers the level of driving ability far overshadowed the driver's physical size and compensated for any minor reduction in car performance . Today anyone outside of a certain 'envelope' suffers from affecting the car's performance due to simple weight distribution. A half-pint size mediocre driver fits the requirements better than someone like Oliver Gavin, very talented but literally too tall for modern F1.

It all compounds the argument that the performance balence between car and driver has swung too far in favour of the car and that the driver's talent doesn't count as much as he once did.

Simon Lewis
Transport Books
www.simonlewis.com

Two theories, on two slightly related topics.


1. Drivers start racing very very young now. Long before theyd have been lighter or heavier than average. I imagine the constant exercise of karting and later formula racing keeps them lean. Most junior level racing drivers are impossibly thin, and usually get knocked for six in their first proper fitness assesment.

2. Drivers starting racing very very young now. I dont know about the kart weight rules, but you rarely see tall(big) karters at all, and certainly not successful ones. You could use the example of Jenson Button who is maybe 180cm? But he weighed *nothing* when he came to Formula Ford. Maybe 65kg? The weight limits in most classes simply dont allow anyone of normal size to be competitive. Formula Renault allows 75kg for the driver in the total car weight. Im 180cm and for me to be 75kg with all my safety gear on, full energy levels (ie water level in muscles from optimum glycogen levels), and full stomach of food/fluids, is very very very very difficult. Unless I just want to be skinny and weak, which most Formula guys are.

I once did a race where my gap from pole was almost identical to the weight penatly I was giving up by being out of shape and overweight. Benefactor wasnt terribly happy with that. I went on a pretty serious fitness routine after that.

Originally posted by Ross Stonefeld
Two theories, on two slightly related topics.


1. Drivers start racing very very young now. Long before theyd have been lighter or heavier than average. I imagine the constant exercise of karting and later formula racing keeps them lean. Most junior level racing drivers are impossibly thin, and usually get knocked for six in their first proper fitness assesment.

2. Drivers starting racing very very young now. I dont know about the kart weight rules, but you rarely see tall(big) karters at all, and certainly not successful ones. You could use the example of Jenson Button who is maybe 180cm? But he weighed *nothing* when he came to Formula Ford. Maybe 65kg? The weight limits in most classes simply dont allow anyone of normal size to be competitive. Formula Renault allows 75kg for the driver in the total car weight. Im 180cm and for me to be 75kg with all my safety gear on, full energy levels (ie water level in muscles from optimum glycogen levels), and full stomach of food/fluids, is very very very very difficult. Unless I just want to be skinny and weak, which most Formula guys are.

I once did a race where my gap from pole was almost identical to the weight penatly I was giving up by being out of shape and overweight. Benefactor wasnt terribly happy with that. I went on a pretty serious fitness routine after that.

Good points Ross. I recall record producer Matt Aitken racing F Renault, in the early 90's I think, not very successfully despite having the cash to run with a top team. Matt was much heavier than all his ex-karter, teenage rivals. A regular series hotshoe was brought in to test the car and lapped significantly faster. But THEN the team added ballast to bring his effective weight up to the same level as Aitken's and the lap times fell to a point where they matched, almost exactly, what Aitken had done. The basic speed was there but the physical weight penalty wiped it out.

I guess it's like basketball,where it really helps to be 7 foot tall !


Simon Lewis
Transport Books
www.simonlewis.com