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Re: Buying a win?? Spend it on school.

To: "autox@autox.team.net" <autox@autox.team.net>
Subject: Re: Buying a win?? Spend it on school.
From: The Narbys <narby@centurytel.net>
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 14:14:08 -0500
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


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