Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Mallett
Well thank you. Actually watching Goodwood it really is impressive seeing the likes of Ash Sutton etc. a relatively young BTCC Champion making shapes with his Lotus Cortina. Certainly I'm not complaining about this. Just rueing the fact that slowly us amatuers are being sidelined.
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It is rather interesting to note that younger racers who have probably very rarely had to grapple with things like clutches and manual gearboxes in any sort of competitive environment can arrive on a scene and seemingly just "get it".
Oddly the same is sort of true on the roads. There are all sorts of people who make reasonably competent drivers who you might think of as being totally incompetent at anything else. Race driving is a different matter ... or is it? How old was Graham Hill when he started out?
But I digress. There are a number of young drivers who have appeared in Historics well before they would be old enough to be able to lease/insure a car with fairly minimal engine power (by modern standards) who are quite capable of driving quickly, learning quickly and adapting to whatever they find themselves sitting in.
They need some luck to make it as professional drivers in the long term (or a different career path to become regular competitors).
I was chatting (briefly) to someone yesterday who, though a leisure boat operator, was clearly also a petrol head of the Cortina and Capri era.
The subject of wheel waving Lotus Cortinas came up, reminding me that one rarely sees a 60's LC waving a wheel these days.
Maybe the skills of some of the current pro generation are not quite so clearly encompassing the cars of the 50s, 60s and 70s so much as the cars of those periods are encompassing the skills of more modern engineering thus bringing them a little closer to the learned competence of modern day hot shoes.