Stop debating: race car drivers are definitely athletes. Period.

In Driver’s Eye with James Hinchcliffe, the six-time INDYCAR winner will take you into the mind of a driver while breaking down the inner workings of the sport for fans. As INDYCAR drivers, we constantly fight this battle with people less familiar with motorsports: Are drivers athletes? The common argument is: “All you do is sit and spin a wheel.” And I understand. It’s hard to identify with car racing, but the drivers are undeniably athletes. Almost everyone has swung a golf club and tossed a ball into the woods, so they can say that what Scottie Scheffler does is really difficult. Almost everyone has tried to drain a 3-pointer and throw it into a ball, so they can appreciate Steph Curry’s talent. But very few people have ever had the chance to try driving a race car at the limit, which has given them an understanding of how difficult it is, mentally and physically. Most people equate driving a race car with driving a road car, which is, objectively, a fairly easy and not physically demanding activity. But what you do on the road is not what we do on a track. Let me explain. THE PHYSICALITY BEHIND DRIVING A RACE CAR What makes racing physical is simply speed. When you go fast, you feel G forces, or gravitational forces, and it’s a crazy thing. It is essentially a measurement of the force a person feels against their body in relation to the force of gravity. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that your head weighs 10 pounds. If you go through a corner in 3G – something an Indy car can do easily, but no touring car in the world could do – that means your head now weighs 30 pounds. Or wants to, anyway. Imagine supporting 30 pounds with your neck. And that’s a turn of a turn. Now imagine doing that at a track like Barber Motorsports Park, where there are 17 turns, and we race for 90 laps! If you pay attention, you’ll notice that drivers have unusually big necks, because that’s a pretty unique force they experience. This is also a difficult thing to master! Some of the devices that have been invented to assist drivers with this element of training resemble medieval torture devices! And that’s just the neck. Let’s talk about upper body strength. Indy cars – unlike NASCAR stock cars or Formula 1 single-seaters – do not have power steering. So when you round a corner in 3G, the 2,000 pound race car you’re driving now weighs 6,000 pounds. The force required to turn the steering wheel without power steering increases significantly as this number increases. In addition to your neck, you need to have a ton of strength in your arms and shoulders to fight a car on the track. Your core must be able to control your legs, which float in the cockpit when these G forces are applied. Core strength is therefore essential. (To prove this point, one of the current pilots, Marcus Armstrong, is attempting to break the windsurfing world record! Totally true and completely crazy.) Speaking of legs, you need to be able to put hundreds of pounds of pressure on the brake pedal with your left leg in order to slow down these fighter jets on wheels. Meanwhile, your right leg must have extremely refined and precise motor skills to control the throttle controls. All this to say: you work extremely hard in the car. And when you work that hard, your heart rate increases! And unlike football, which is explosive for a few seconds then reset, or hockey, where a shift is very intense but lasts one to two minutes before a shift, drivers push their bodies this hard for up to four hours straight, often with little or no rest at all. All of this comes with having to be perfect down to the millimeter, otherwise you could find yourself in the wall and out of the race… or worse. Oh yes, let’s not forget how hot it can get in the car. Temperatures in the car can easily reach 120 degrees during the race, which adds another level of physical endurance required. It’s absolutely crucial that riders stay hydrated, because sometimes you can lose up to 10 pounds in a single race, mostly from sweating off water weight. So, let’s recap. You need crazy strength in areas like your neck, upper body, core, and lower body. You need to have the cardio capabilities to do high-intensity exercise for the same amount of time it takes to run a marathon, and you need to be able to perform and maintain in an environment as hot as the hottest place on Earth. And your concentration can’t stop for even a fraction of a second, otherwise you might end up in the wall. But of course, we’re not athletes… TRAIN LIKE AN INDYCAR DRIVER Because the demands placed on a driver’s body are unique, so is the training. Over the years, drivers and teams have hired more and more sports coaches and companies to develop very specific programs for races of all types. The diets incorporate all of the areas mentioned above, but they also involve a number of cognitive training mixed in with the physical training. All in an effort to keep your mind sharp when your body starts to tire. During the offseason, you train a lot. It’s very difficult to stay out of the race car for months, but that’s the reality of this sport. Once you’re in season, your training changes dramatically. You’re on the road so much that it’s hard to be as consistent and progress as you would in the offseason. Plus, you back off in certain areas because you don’t want to risk injury at the gym. However, everything evens out in season, because the best training in the world for driving race cars is… driving race cars! So while you may not have as much time to train during the season, you’re in the car three days a week, and that’s better than any time at the gym. 1 FOR THE ROAD After this last non-INDYCAR weekend, we next have Road America, and this place has a ton of long, fast corners, as well as some of the biggest braking zones of the year. So during this week off, the pilots will make sure they are tuned up and ready to go for that one. Taking a quick look at Gateway, I just have to say that there are few things I enjoy more about this sport than an INDYCAR race at night. There’s just something beautifully raw and cinematic about seeing these open-wheeled, gleaming monsters racing wheel to wheel at 200 miles an hour under the lights. This is something I always loved as a driver, because it gave you the feeling of being on stage or in an arena in a way that normal racing doesn’t give you. And as a fan? There’s nothing cooler to see. Hopefully we’ll find a way to add more to the schedule in the future. MORE DRIVER’S EYE: