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floid:
Whoa! Down boy! I'm only the parrot here!
These are not opinions made up by me - these are the opinions of the top drivers we all respect ! Guys such as Mario, Rick, Al, Danny, etc. Many times over the years they've all said the same in interviews.
Don't confuse Indy's being a great race - lots of hype, great worldwide exposure, lots of tradition, etc, etc - with being technically difficult from the driver skill standpoint.
Does a driver need endurance? YES.
Does a driver need large gonads ? YES.
Does the driver have to be super skilled ? NO.
Again, we are talking in reletive terms here. Would you put guys such as Dick Simon, Barbazza, Vitolo, Miller, etc., on the same plane skill-wise as Mario, AJ, Big Al, Emerson, etc ? Gads, I hope not ! One only has to look at the reletive performances of these guys at the more technical tracks such as Milwaukee, Phoenix, and Mid Ohio to sort the chaff form the wheat !
As far as the engineering goes, a driver can only tell what the car feels like, how it has responded to a change. He cannot tell the engineer how far the car has moved, or what the absolute change in dynamic ride height was, how much grip was developed by the right front vs. the left front, etc. It's the enginer who has to calculate these numbers, verify via the data aquisition that it did indeed respond as calculated, etc. A .010 inch ride height change cam make a heck of a diffrence there, or a 1/10 degree wing angle change. Or even a 5 degree air temp change. If the engineer plugs in the wrong tire deflection numbers, forget it ( shades of Penske ) , no driver, no matter how skilled, can make up for those engineering deficiencies !
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