Originally posted by Mihai
The drivers themselves are paying much attention to signs, coincidences, things that one can consider as common, but in their mind all these are taking symbolic proportions. The thought of failure, fear of death or simply the anxiousness before every start - all of these are disturbing their inner equilibrium. I think it comes easy to understand why so many race drivers have superstitions or strange behaviour (dressing rituals) in the tensed moments before the start.
There was a university study a few years ago that looked into the prevalence of superstitions in american major league baseball players. Interestingly, sluggers were found to be much more likely to have superstitions/rituals than pitchers; this difference being attributed to the different psycholgical angles these players faced (i.e., hitters having less control over the outcome of a play in comparison to pitchers).
I wonder if today's drivers (with such safe cars and tracks) are less superstitious than those from F1's yesteryears, when death and injury was much more common.