Litle progress face Tazio Nuvolari.
Imagine a car stripped of everything that is superfluous. A huge, in-line engine, often with a supercharger. Power reaching 540HP or more. Manual gearshift, dry, a metal lever planted in the truck. Unthinkable for racing cars today.
Narrow tires, similar to a modern passenger car. Steering without any assistance other than a large steering wheel. It has no windshield, hood, seat belt, rollover bar, fire extinguisher. Hard suspensions, zero comfort. Drum brakes. Basic instruments. That is, motorsport in its pure state.
Now imagine yourself with an ordinary outfit, shirt, trousers, shoes and, acting as a helmet, a kind of cloth cap tied under your chin. Glasses, those goggles worn by the Red Baron and other pre-jet age aviation aces, shielding the eyes from wind and insects, but dangerous allies of flying stones.
You shoot through circuits with no guardrail, no escape zone, no protective barriers, surrounded by trees, spectators, walls of ordinary houses. No firefighters. No specialized medical care.
This at best.
At worst, dirt roads, where animals cross in front of you at any time. Muds. Straight into open fields where a slightly stronger gust of wind can easily throw you off the road.
Will you face it?
Let's assume you look at it and like it. Begins to develop driving techniques.
You see, for example, that the ease with which this type of car slides can be an advantage.
You discover a way to slide in a controlled way, around certain curves in less time. Once, twice… most of the race?
It depends, because obviously the tires will wear out differently than usual and an unforeseen tire change can throw all your effort into the trash.
So you need to develop ways to manage all these factors, maintaining concentration and still defending yourself against opponents, especially when considering superior equipment.
There was a perception that this pilot was kind of crazy, had a completely irresponsible disregard for risk.
Was that why he won so much? Nothing more wrong. He studied in depth all the fundamentals and possibilities of the car he would drive. He searched hard for the best possibilities to buy time. In training, it was common to walk with half the car along the edges of the tracks, to anticipate possible reactions to unforeseen events, mentally noting how the characteristics of the surface in each stretch.
Evidently he was taking carefully calculated risks. No computer or simulator.
Reportedly, a team manager once took a specialized journalist for a walk around the track after the final practice. This journalist, who had not yet seen this driver run, compared the tire tracks on the track and noticed that there was one that showed a different trajectory at a certain point. He concluded that they represented a wrong route, which could only lead to an accident.
Because this pilot followed this route the next day and won, without an accident, being the fastest in that stretch.
Team members used to like him. Not just because they worked for a driver who “could never be considered defeated before the start”, but because he shared the cash prizes, at the time a huge asset.
There wasn't any kind of sponsorship similar to today's, so giving conditions for a driver like this to win was the best possible deal for any team.
And he was only interested in a victory. Everything else except a family was secondary.
Evidence of this is that in his 30-year career he has achieved 72 victories, with a disproportionate 17 second places.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2021 07:14PM by livejackass.