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Strange Question thread: the "10,000 hour" rule in motorsports


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#1 ronsingapore

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 10:47

i recently have been reading the book called "Outliers", where the author, Malcolm Gladwell, specifically highlighted scientific studies that if a person puts in a lot of practise and training since a very young age, from maybe the period of 3 years old and onwards, and there is constant practise, with at the very least of a minimum of 10,000 hours of practise or more, the person would be able to attain an expert level of performance.

 

There are many specific examples: for example, Tiger Woods started playing golf as soon as he could walk, nearly all the great tennis stars and great athletes started training in a very specific sport at a very young age. Aryton Senna started karting, and if what I've read is correct, he practise karting day and night in all weather conditions obsessively.

 

I remember reading a study where it was showed that what 10,000 hours of practise resulted in was not faster reflexes gifted by natural talent, where a Olympic level  badminton player was electronically recorded to actually have the slowest reflexes, but due to practise over and over again, his mind immediately knew where the shuttlecock would be.

 

i wonder if this does indeed apply to motorsport and if so, are motorsport skills transferrable across different kinds of motorsports? For example, a fantastic driver in open-wheel racing may not do so well in touring car racing and rallying? I have zero experience in this.

 

But do you think motorsports skills are very specific in one category and may not be transferable?



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#2 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 12:31

I'm not sure there's many drivers who even get to 10,000 hours. Think of how many laps that is across all categories for years and years and years. If you did one hour of driving every single day, it'd take you 27 years to get to 10,000 hours.

 

10k hours for pilots, military or civillian, is a pretty elite group. That's an insane amount of flight time.



#3 cheekybru

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 12:48

I'm not sure there's many drivers who even get to 10,000 hours. Think of how many laps that is across all categories for years and years and years. If you did one hour of driving every single day, it'd take you 27 years to get to 10,000 hours.

 

10k hours for pilots, military or civillian, is a pretty elite group. That's an insane amount of flight time.

 

Change it to 3 hours a day tho and it would only take 9 years, or the age from 3-12, I bet a hell of a lot of them do :p



#4 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 12:54

90 minutes of laps every single day? EVERY SINGLE DAY? Not a 90 minute session, but 90 minutes of logged laps.

 

 

Theyll be getting a lot more hours now with simulators, but they still travel a lot, go training etc. Even a race weekend lowers their average.

 

Lewis Hamilton did 67 laps at Silverstone across three practice sessions, 14 in Q1/2/3 and 52 race laps. They do 1:34s but to make the calculation easier let's call it 1:30 or 90 seconds.

 

133 laps in total or 199 minutes 30 seconds. That's 3hrs 19min 30 sec over a 4 day period. 133 laps is also a heavy day of testing, but each driver get's about 6 of those pre-season?



#5 Burtros

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 13:18

The wear on any car doing 3hrs tracktime everyday is going to be insane - if you take into account the fact that you'd need to be pushing whatever it was you were driving hard in order to gain the required skills.

 

I had my road car on track day in April and even with the correct brake fluid and the largest discs I could fit I still had the brakes fading within 5 laps if I didnt manage them properly.

 

The stress on menchnical components on a track is immense, I dont know if people realise that.



#6 balmybaldwin

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 13:22

The other thing to consider is whether you are developing "muscle memory" with these levels of practise

 

Provided you don't regularly left foot brake, a good way to spot the difference is to attempt to brake gently using your left foot instead of your right (do it at slow speed in a quite road and make sure no one else is about - especially behind you) you will find you have no where near the same level of finesse and control in your left foot (and most likely will slam you brakes on far too hard)



#7 Kalmake

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 13:23

What he did was cherry pick examples and come up with a sexy idea to sell books. It has been debunked. http://www.businessi...ule-2014-7?IR=T



#8 Dan333SP

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 13:41

What he did was cherry pick examples and come up with a sexy idea to sell books. It has been debunked. http://www.businessi...ule-2014-7?IR=T

 

Something he's notorious for. Gotta say I can't stand that guy.



#9 Jejking

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 13:48

Did Gladwell mention an upper limit on age where you should have started before eliteship or near-perfection at something is out of reach?



#10 jimjimjeroo

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 13:51

Mark Knopfler said 10k hours of practice to be professional guitarist

#11 brr

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 13:53

Does there exist a top F1 driver who didn't practice a lot?



#12 Atreiu

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 14:04

Rossi must have beat the 10000 hours comfortably already, right?

#13 BoschKurve

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 14:12

The 10,000 rule is a load of crap.

 

You either have it or you don't. 

 

There is no magical amount of time you can spend to be great at something.

 

Mind you that doesn't mean you do not go out there and practice as even the greats have to refine their skill. Talent is what the difference is between Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, Suarez, compared to everyone else. 



#14 ANF

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 15:26

Did Gladwell mention an upper limit on age where you should have started before eliteship or near-perfection at something is out of reach?

10,000 days?



#15 Kalmake

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 15:59

Does there exist a top F1 driver who didn't practice a lot?

They all come from karting nowadays. There are big differences in starting ages, though. Rosberg was 10, Vettel 3½.

 

Villeneuve and Hill were the last champions who didn't do karting as kids. Villeneuve started in his teens, and soon moved to cars. Hill only raced bikes until his twenties.



#16 HopkinsonF1

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 16:01

The 10,000 rule is a load of crap.

 

You either have it or you don't. 

 

There is no magical amount of time you can spend to be great at something.

 

Mind you that doesn't mean you do not go out there and practice as even the greats have to refine their skill. Talent is what the difference is between Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, Suarez, compared to everyone else. 

 

Exactly this. People like the '10,000 hours' theory because a) numbers sound scientific, and therefore important; and b) because it supports the idea that being good at something is just a matter of putting in the time to practise. Unfortunately, it's complete nonsense with no backing in research, logic or reality.

 

Edit: I'm not saying that practice doesn't make you better. But saying that everything comes down to practice, or putting a specific number on the amount of practice required, is total bunk.


Edited by HopkinsonF1, 06 July 2015 - 16:03.


#17 Talisman

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 16:10

The 10,000 rule is a load of crap.

 

You either have it or you don't. 

 

There is no magical amount of time you can spend to be great at something.

 

Mind you that doesn't mean you do not go out there and practice as even the greats have to refine their skill. Talent is what the difference is between Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, Suarez, compared to everyone else. 

 

I don't subscribe to Gladwell's theories, some of them are laughable.  However the 10,000 idea which is really about having had plenty of experience, more than most of your competitors clearly holds SOME water.  Unless you're completely and totally incompetent having had the equivalent of 10,000 hours of experience will clearly make you pretty damn good at whatever it is that you're doing.  However to go the final furlong and be really special, that needs something that experience alone will just not give.

 

BTW I would love to know how much it would cost to stack up 10,000 hours of on-track time assuming adequate career progression through karts, FRenault, F3 and so on.  Would probably cost so much even earning Hamilton amounts of money wouldn't be enough to cover it.


Edited by Talisman, 06 July 2015 - 16:13.


#18 kvyatfan

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 16:50

Keep in mind that drivers don't just drive, they also use simulators and visualise, things which are easier on the body and allow them to memorise turn placement, timing, etc. They would also be studying different aspects of the car, learning the car's physics, learning new techniques, training their bodies, and studying telemetry.

 

I'll use a few examples, not racing since I don't do it. In mixed martial arts a high-level amateur will train 15-25 hours a week, and a pro will train 25-35 hours a week, approximately. 10,000 hours at 30 hours a week equals 333.33333 weeks, which is about 6.4 years. This is probably about the time it takes to get a black belt if you are skilled and dedicated, (keep in mind you would need approximately the equivalent of two black belts and a third area of expertise to fight in MMA professionally).This would also be approximately the time it takes to become completely fluent in a second language, again if you are skilled and dedicated. And you'd likely have to double that to write a book in the other language.

 

Unfortunately there are levels of extreme skill growth and stagnancy, you can hit walls. Just think of any sport you participate in, there are people who seem great immediately, perhaps they have some crossover from other sports/areas of knowledge; some people are slow to pick up the basics and then take off like a rocket at a certain point; and others take forever, they may never get good no matter how much time they put in. In my experience, what one person can achieve in a month may take others more than a year.

 

There are also levels of expertise. As we see in racing, or any other pursuit, there can be quite a lot of variance between the experts themselves. There are many who may put in as much time or more than Alonso, Hamilton, and Vettel but never get to their level.

 

As a further example, go (a classic board game) is arguably the most intense and difficult skill anyone could ever learn (it is also a good example since it requires intellectual, intuitive, aesthetic, logical, and scientific knowledge while also being easily studied scientifically for a competitive pursuit, which is not all that common. It is also pure skill with no luck involved, perfectly balanced, and has a very clear skill rank, which no other game/sport has; there are 30 ranks for beginners, 9 ranks for amateurs, and 9 ranks for professionals which are all very clear and objective.). Many of the professionals begin at a very young age, 3-5, and turn pro in adolescence, 11-13. They are effectively experts at this age, but there are a further 9 levels of expertise they go through which can take the top players another 8 years or so. And then they are still learning throughout their lives until their body can no longer keep up with the focus required within a game.

 

I would expect most race drivers would be on a similar timeline, 7 years or so to become first-level experts (pro teen/junior kart racers), and then another 7 or so to achieve a super-license. And then for another decade they can compete with other racing experts to prove who is the greatest, some will improve in this time, and others may peak or not be able to get over a wall. At this point we're talking 30,000-50,000 hours.

 

Purely intellectual pursuits are probably the only ones where you can increase your skill for the majority of your life. Philosophy and fiction writing for example. Then we could be talking about more than 100,000 hours.

 

In short, it's too generalised a theory based on experts themselves in single fields, and in no way has it been studied in terms of non-experts becoming experts. There is also huge variance between individuals, across fields, and across physical/intellectual pursuits which could further distort the numbers. Likely you will get an idea of your full potential at 10,000 hours or so, but that does not mean you're an expert. Humans aren't robots who can become experts at something based upon mechanised time, in fact, the opposite is more likely true. Often people become swept up in a pursuit, or as Senna suggested God chose him to race.


Edited by kvyatfan, 06 July 2015 - 17:09.


#19 BlinkyMcSquinty

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 17:19

What we're talking about is an individual's capacity to learn and develop to their full potential in whatever field they choose. And I believe most will agree that all individuals are different. But associated with the ability to learn is the desire to do so, the drive, the motivation, the willingness to put in those long hard hours that may or may not pay off. There is no guarantee that putting in all those hours of practice will deliver an individual into world-class territory in abilities. Every person has a ceiling, and that ceiling may also be restricted because of physical imitations, or the reverse, higher because of some exceptional attribute. For example, some fighter aces were born with exceptional eyesight, the simple fact was that they could see their opponent long before that opponent could see them. You may be the world champion in aerobatics, but in a combat situation, you are dead meat against those kinds of people.

 

This is an exceptionally complex subject, just stating that attaining "X" will deliver certain results, I do not agree with. Here is another confusing example. One of the ladies on the US Women's football team that just won their World Cup is a very respected defender. She is so good she was almost a guarantee to make the team. But she admits that she isn't the fastest, or strongest, or most talented. But she had worked all her life on being very good on her positional play. How do you measure her "talent"?

 

Another example is Mark Donohue, a driver from the US who won in every category he competed in. He was not the most talented, but he was an engineer and probably was the best in developing and setting up a car.

 

But the capacity to learn is something that has been studied by many smart people. Studies have returned results that many accept. For instance, if you use flash cards on a young child (for example, 3+3=6) if you do it 687 times they will retain that information. On adults that can be as low as 27 times. Why do you think advertisers pound us repeatedly in their attempts to convince us to use their products? Repetition.

 

I'm heavily involved in the sim racing community, and because racing simulators have become quite realistic, a trend is now forming where successful sim racers have been able to transfer what they learned into real world racing. In the 12 hours of Bathurst, 2 of the 3 drivers in the winning car are graduates of the GT Academy. Then there is the story of Gaetan Paletou, who went from being a gamer to this within one year....

 

 

There are others, such as Atze Kerkof.  http://www.atzekerkhof.nl/

 

Any sport discipline is a culmination of a subset of various skills that an individual assembles to become competent. For instance, as mentioned was the ability to brake with the left foot. And those with any time driving on questionable traction have developed the ability to counter-steer when the car gets sideways. They have developed this reaction so that it is immediate and they don't even realize they are doing it.

 

Many of those sub-sets of skills are applicable to all cars, and are transferred from one car type to another. One good example is Nigel Mansell, he went directly from Formula One into CART and oval racing, with immediate success.

 

Practice is definitely essential in developing an individual's skills, but there are many intangibles that take one past the point of being just competent into the realm of Lewis Hamilton. You can't teach what he is capable of.



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#20 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 17:35


I would expect most race drivers would be on a similar timeline, 7 years or so to become first-level experts (pro teen/junior kart racers), and then another 7 or so to achieve a super-license. And then for another decade they can compete with other racing experts to prove who is the greatest, some will improve in this time, and others may peak or not be able to get over a wall. At this point we're talking 30,000-50,000 hours.

 

30,000 hours divided by 24 years(7+7+10) = 1,250 hours a year = 3.4 hours a day. Every day. For 24 years.

 

Sorry, no.

 

You can practice the violin that much(but I think youd never want to see one again after the first 7 years?) but no one has that much race time. I don't think I could *watch* that much racing in 24 years.



#21 Risil

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 17:39

I don't think I could *watch* that much racing in 24 years.

 

Now we're talking. How much of a racing bore could you be with 10,000 hours of watching?



#22 kvyatfan

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 17:43

I think you missed an important part of that, Ross. The drivers also have to train to keep in top shape, condition reflexes, study telemetry and video, visualise the races, practise, and use simulators.

 

Do you think they go to the strip club or make guest appearances on The Kardashians for three weeks and just show up for three practises before a race?

 

3 hours a day is only 21 hours a week, not a lot when you factor in training for two hours one day, a few hours visualising another day, practising another day, and then spending 6 hours each day of a race weekend. Jenson Button trains physically 10 hours a week or more, so that's already a big chunk of that 21-25 hours a week required for what I estimated.

 

How many hours do you think it would take for all this?

http://www.technogym...e-pilota-di-f1/


Edited by kvyatfan, 06 July 2015 - 17:55.


#23 PlatenGlass

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 17:49

I think motor racing is quite different from a lot of other skills in this respect. As Ross Stonefeld says, it's very difficult to get that number of hours in. It's not like playing a violin where you can just pick it up and play for a few hours. You have set practice sessions etc.

Also, motor racing is not just one skill. Whereas chess players, violin players and football players are following largely the same pursuit throughout, racing drivers drive different cars in different circumstances. And it's quite clear that some drivers who are good in one category aren't always good in another. So if it takes 10,000 hours to master driving an F1 car, the hours in karts etc. aren't necessarily all of the same level of productivity. Just like playing table tennis for 10,000 hours doesn't make you the best tennis player. (OK, so that might be further removed but the general point still stands.)

Also, it's much harder to evaluate something like this in motor racing than other disciplines. Motor racing is just about the least meritocratic thing out there. The number of sons of racing drivers that make it to the top level is just ridiculous. (Yes, there might be some genetic factor, but why more in motor racing than anything else?) And with drivers in better equipment than others all the way up the ladder there's not enough to go on. So basically you can't say who are the best drivers in the world and how long the best drivers have been practising.

#24 kvyatfan

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 18:02

Repetition and position are really good points, Blinky. For a dog you should be able to repeat something 100 times for them to learn it for good, but if you're a good trainer with a high-drive dog with some foundational training he may get the same thing in a single attempt.

 

Working on a single attribute like position can improve in so many other areas, if you learn one thing extremely well it generally improves your ability in a lot of other areas.



#25 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 18:26

I wouldn't count physical training into the hours. You could train like an F1 driver for decades, you won't beat an out of shape person with basic racing experience.



#26 Afterburner

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 18:54

I suspect most of us haven't even spent 10,000 hours in the bathroom with the door locked, let alone driving a race car. Kinda sheds a little light on MS's comment about 'a kid who has his toy in his hands and is happy', now that I think about it.



#27 chr1s

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Posted 06 July 2015 - 22:34

I remember many  years ago Derek Warwick (i think) talking about this.  He said something along the lines of that he could teach you 90 percent of what you needed to know about race car driving in X amount of track time but you would then spend the rest of your life trying to find that last 10 percent that some are born with.... something like that! 



#28 krapmeister

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 00:13

The wear on any car doing 3hrs tracktime everyday is going to be insane - if you take into account the fact that you'd need to be pushing whatever it was you were driving hard in order to gain the required skills.

I had my road car on track day in April and even with the correct brake fluid and the largest discs I could fit I still had the brakes fading within 5 laps if I didnt manage them properly.

The stress on menchnical components on a track is immense, I dont know if people realise that.


Try some different brake pads... ;)

#29 ClubmanGT

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 00:26

I wouldn't count physical training into the hours. You could train like an F1 driver for decades, you won't beat an out of shape person with basic racing experience.

 

Ah yes, the Montoya theorem 



#30 George Costanza

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 02:24

The 10,000 rule is a load of crap.

 

You either have it or you don't. 

 

There is no magical amount of time you can spend to be great at something.

 

Mind you that doesn't mean you do not go out there and practice as even the greats have to refine their skill. Talent is what the difference is between Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, Suarez, compared to everyone else. 

 

Talent, application and luck, I would say,



#31 ronsingapore

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 03:34

What we're talking about is an individual's capacity to learn and develop to their full potential in whatever field they choose. And I believe most will agree that all individuals are different. But associated with the ability to learn is the desire to do so, the drive, the motivation, the willingness to put in those long hard hours that may or may not pay off. There is no guarantee that putting in all those hours of practice will deliver an individual into world-class territory in abilities. Every person has a ceiling, and that ceiling may also be restricted because of physical imitations, or the reverse, higher because of some exceptional attribute. For example, some fighter aces were born with exceptional eyesight, the simple fact was that they could see their opponent long before that opponent could see them. You may be the world champion in aerobatics, but in a combat situation, you are dead meat against those kinds of people.

 

This is an exceptionally complex subject, just stating that attaining "X" will deliver certain results, I do not agree with. Here is another confusing example. One of the ladies on the US Women's football team that just won their World Cup is a very respected defender. She is so good she was almost a guarantee to make the team. But she admits that she isn't the fastest, or strongest, or most talented. But she had worked all her life on being very good on her positional play. How do you measure her "talent"?

 

Another example is Mark Donohue, a driver from the US who won in every category he competed in. He was not the most talented, but he was an engineer and probably was the best in developing and setting up a car.

 

But the capacity to learn is something that has been studied by many smart people. Studies have returned results that many accept. For instance, if you use flash cards on a young child (for example, 3+3=6) if you do it 687 times they will retain that information. On adults that can be as low as 27 times. Why do you think advertisers pound us repeatedly in their attempts to convince us to use their products? Repetition.

 

I'm heavily involved in the sim racing community, and because racing simulators have become quite realistic, a trend is now forming where successful sim racers have been able to transfer what they learned into real world racing. In the 12 hours of Bathurst, 2 of the 3 drivers in the winning car are graduates of the GT Academy. Then there is the story of Gaetan Paletou, who went from being a gamer to this within one year....

 

 

There are others, such as Atze Kerkof.  http://www.atzekerkhof.nl/

 

Any sport discipline is a culmination of a subset of various skills that an individual assembles to become competent. For instance, as mentioned was the ability to brake with the left foot. And those with any time driving on questionable traction have developed the ability to counter-steer when the car gets sideways. They have developed this reaction so that it is immediate and they don't even realize they are doing it.

 

Many of those sub-sets of skills are applicable to all cars, and are transferred from one car type to another. One good example is Nigel Mansell, he went directly from Formula One into CART and oval racing, with immediate success.

 

Practice is definitely essential in developing an individual's skills, but there are many intangibles that take one past the point of being just competent into the realm of Lewis Hamilton. You can't teach what he is capable of.

 

this really interested me; i was surprised to see that drivers in sim racing could translate the talent into real life.

 

But guess that sim racing does count as practise time too; this has wide-spread applications; a racing driver, with access to the right kind of technology, could easily attain thousands of hours of practise without wearing out an actual car.

 

But I have seen videos where you take a badminton olympic-level player and put him in tennis, he actually does quite badly.

 

Similarly, I have also seen videos and studies where a olympic-level tennis player does badly in squash.

 

Yet, badminton, tennis and squash are similarly enough.

 

Thus, what is the argument that driving skills might not be transferable across different classes??



#32 BlinkyMcSquinty

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 04:40

this really interested me; i was surprised to see that drivers in sim racing could translate the talent into real life.

 

But guess that sim racing does count as practise time too; this has wide-spread applications; a racing driver, with access to the right kind of technology, could easily attain thousands of hours of practise without wearing out an actual car.

 

But I have seen videos where you take a badminton olympic-level player and put him in tennis, he actually does quite badly.

 

Similarly, I have also seen videos and studies where a olympic-level tennis player does badly in squash.

 

Yet, badminton, tennis and squash are similarly enough.

 

Thus, what is the argument that driving skills might not be transferable across different classes??

 

 

Steve Kinser. Arguably the greatest and most successful dirt track racer ever. He attempted to go to NASCAR and flopped massively.

 

There is no definitive set of rules or science where anyone can predict if a driver in one discipline can take that to another series.

 

As I mentioned earlier, any sport is a sub-set of skills assembled to complete a package. But even with successful Formula One drivers, they do not all have to posses the same sub-sets. One good example is Prost versus Senna. Each were incredibly successful, darn quick in qualifying and race pace. But each driver drove differently, had different setups, utilized different positive aspects of the car they had. The thing about racing is that there is no one specific line or technique that is the best, instead each driver had to find what they are comfortable with and what they can use the best.

 

A good part of any sport skill is learning it by repetition until it is automatic and second-nature. Muscle memory and conditioned responses are some of the things required. For example, when I first learned to drive I was so overloaded by what was happening that I had tunnel vision and was only able to deal with a very limited amount of input.  But after some experience I began to automatically process those inputs, where I don't even realize I am responding to something. Now, I can comfortably drive down the road, listen to the radio and enjoy the music, track the traffic around me, be aware of any traffic signs, and even notice a cow at the side of the road.

 

We all hear the statement about a driver "finding the limits of traction". But to find those limits you have to exceed them. With a skilled driver they can go over the limit, but recover so quickly and automatically it's amazing. And that is what talented drivers do, exceed the limits and recover dozens of times a lap.

 

In this mind-boggling video of Colin McCrae, he is able to not only go freaking quick in a rally car but also talk and follow the conversation. You can see him making constant corrections with the wheel, but in the views showing the throttle, he is constantly dancing on it, quickly stabbing it down, lifting, then down again. Each time he gets past the traction limits, he lifts, recovers, then continues.

 



#33 Dan333SP

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 12:39

I suspect most of us haven't even spent 10,000 hours in the bathroom with the door locked, let alone driving a race car. Kinda sheds a little light on MS's comment about 'a kid who has his toy in his hands and is happy', now that I think about it.

Since I was curious, I conservatively assumed I've spent an average 5 minutes per day taking care of post-coffee issues. I'm 29 years old.

 

(5 * 365 * 29) / 60 = 882 hrs. Guess I'm far from an expert in certain matters.



#34 Nonesuch

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 13:47

Mind you that doesn't mean you do not go out there and practice as even the greats have to refine their skill. Talent is what the difference is between Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, Suarez, compared to everyone else. 

 

Agreed, you can't have one without the other - not at that level. I recall that oft-quotes anecdote by Jesé Rodríguez, who supposedly said: "I remember the first time I trained at Real Madrid, I got there two hours early to impress the coaches and Ronaldo was already training." Michael Schumacher's endless days at Fiorano or Friday evenings in the pitbox with his engineers also come to mind.

 

As has been pointed out, 10,000 hours is a very long time to be driving race cars. Rubens Barrichello participated in 323 Grand Prix weekends. People can work out how much time that adds up to, and add a couple of hundred hours here and there for testing and his pre-F1 career. He'll not even be close to 10,000 - and he's the guy with the most F1 Grand Prix starts ever.



#35 FLB

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 14:16

I remember many  years ago Derek Warwick (i think) talking about this.  He said something along the lines of that he could teach you 90 percent of what you needed to know about race car driving in X amount of track time but you would then spend the rest of your life trying to find that last 10 percent that some are born with.... something like that! 

Juan Manuel Fangio essentially said the same thing when he said that a good driver could do in 20 or 30 laps the times that a great driver would do in 5.



#36 BlinkyMcSquinty

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 15:43

Juan Manuel Fangio essentially said the same thing when he said that a good driver could do in 20 or 30 laps the times that a great driver would do in 5.

 

Very true. Fact: I am not a great driver. But in my sim racing career I have invested a lot of time and effort on improving my skills. In what took me 30 laps to learn a new track, I can do the same within 10. Even though a driver may be incredibly good, it never hurts (discounting the costs and wear to the machinery) to put in as many laps as possible. Each lap you learn the little nuances and incredibly minor improvements.



#37 ClubmanGT

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Posted 07 July 2015 - 22:57

In this mind-boggling video of Colin McCrae, he is able to not only go freaking quick in a rally car but also talk and follow the conversation. You can see him making constant corrections with the wheel, but in the views showing the throttle, he is constantly dancing on it, quickly stabbing it down, lifting, then down again. Each time he gets past the traction limits, he lifts, recovers, then continues.

 

 

This always amazed me about the early live Bathurst broadcasts - talking to drivers in the race.