NASCAR drivers are athletes man.

[IndianaJones]

They're athletes.

[Zomby Woof]

1. Hell yes

The stamina and reflexes it takes to drive 300-500 miles at speeds averaging 150-180 mph is to be commended.

There's more to it than that, but if one can't appreciate the basics, why bother browbeating the willfully ignorant?

[LostInAnomie]

2. Hell yeah!

I've heard they can bang their cousins for hours.

[RushIsRot]

3. Well, running around in circles has to eventually take its toll.

And, no, this is NOT a Delaware thread, but I suppose it could be!

[BlooInBloo]

4. My gut! Please! Stop!

:rofl:

[SKKY]

5. Yea, right.

So that would make Truck Driver some of the most conditioned athletes in the world then. Puhleeezzzee!!!!

[bridgit]

6. so are ping-pong players...

[JCMach1]

7. Then so are PS/2 players...

:crazy:

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. Right up there with golfers, bowlers, and billiards players.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

9. below golfers.

[Omphaloskepsis]

10. It can get really hot in those cars..

That is hardcore.. Wait, my bedroom gets really hot too. Shit, I don't think it is fair to curling to call NASCAR a sport.

[Clintonista2]

12. LOL! Someone actually said that on GD

"It gets really hot in the cars"

[Omphaloskepsis]

13. So is NASCAR the outrage of the day over there?

And how do they incorporate Bush into NASCAR? What a clusterfuck that place is.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

16. Let me guess -- you've never played before, right?

I know it LOOKS easy, but golf is actually fairly taxing on the body.

I'm in pretty good shape, and my back/chest/arms are always an aching mess after the first few rounds of the year.

I defy anyone to move a 1.5" diameter ball 500 yards through a field -- without ever directly touching it -- in 5 strokes or less and then tell me that it's easy.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

17. i think golfing is pretty difficult. which is why i said below golfers

[Tyrone Slothrop]

20. Sorry -- I read that wrong

Thought you were saying that golfers should be ranked (athletically) below bowlers, pool players, etc.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

21. i think golfing takes a lot of talent. nt

[IndianaJones]

19. bowling is fairly taxing as well. nt.

[Jack from Charlotte]

23. Most drivers used to smoke during the 60's and during yellow flags.....

that is "Caution Periods" where the cars don't race and are just lined up and slowed in order to clean the track of debris....they used to all light up and smoke while driving.

Doubt if any of the current crop of drivers smoke. If so, I've never seen them do so in public.

[Orsino]

11. And if golf carts went a little faster...

Tiger would be a NASCAR driver.

I'm sure that baking at a hundred and fifty degrees for hours while gripping the wheel and shift and never losing your concentration is demanding, but I have trouble applying the word "athlete" to those drivers. The car is doing the brute work, you see.

But I would have said much the same thing about jockeys, once.

[IndianaJones]

14. hater. nt.

[mitchum]

15. They are pitch men with nerves of steel

[cobalt1999]

18. Real athletes can turn right...

:)

[texas1928]

22. In a Nascar stock car, the drivers have to be in very fit shape.

They are sitting in a seat that the temps range anywhere from 100 to above 115 degrees, inside that car. Studies have shown that the can lose about 10 pounds of fluid in a race. They take in fluids throughout the race and have a cooling unit that blows in their helmets, but the rest of their body is not being cooled and has a pretty hot fire suit on.

Now turning left looks easy, but those cars have to be set up, so that they are just a step away from crashing. To make that car as fast as possible you have to be able to control a car that is almost out of control. Takes a lot of muscle control to do this when you are almost sliding all over the place and you are racing with 43 other drivers doing the same thing. As well as being only inches from other vehicles and walls. The worst for the drivers is Watkins Glen raceway. It is a road course and that means they turn right too.

I know some people still think it is just driving a car, but it takes a lot out of you to try and make that car as fast as it could be without wrecking it.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

24. Yeah, but they don't rank very high

Auto racers rank 32 out of 60 in a panel on sport skills difficulty conducted by sports scientists from the United States Olympic Committee, academicians who study the science of muscles and movement, a star two-sport athlete, and of journalists who spend their professional lives watching athletes succeed and fail.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/sportSkills